Video game years are kind of like dog years, and that makes the game EverQuest, which turned 14 this month, positively ancient.
-David Brancaccio, host of Marketplace
The NPR show Marketplace had a spot this morning where they spoke to Dave Georgeson of SOE about EverQuest turning 14 years old.
The interview will annoy some, as the host kicks right off in calling EverQuest being “the first big game to be an MMO,” a phrase which will make those into the genre raise objections almost immediately. What counts as an MMO, what counts as big, and what
(And I am going from the actual audio in the interview, not the transcription on the linked page, as that differs from what was actually said. Nice work NPR! So listen to the audio, it is less than three minutes long.)
Once Dave Georgeson gets on the line there is a lot of talk about free to play and making that work. And then comes the question about what makes games like EverQuest so compelling to some people, which Dave pins on the camera view.
To me, that seemed like an odd thing to pick, all the more so when he spoke of the whole first/third person camera view being something new at the time. In 1999 there were plenty of games with first person or over the shoulder points of view, though they were mostly shooters.
I suppose that contemporary role playing games… such as Baldur’s Gate or Diablo II… had a different relationship with the camera. But did EverQuest change things up all that much?
How important was the camera to you back then? Did EverQuest really go some place new with that? Did the game defaulting to first person view (I played in that mode for a long time after launch) impact how you felt about the game?
Addendum:
I had to find a screen shot of the original UI in first person mode to remind me what things looked like 14 years back.
EverQuest in 1999
And another view:
Out in the dark night
Wow, how things have changed.
Image sources: Ten Ton Hammer and Something Awful.
The Ancient Gaming Noob 