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â okay, marti, so i have an idea. why are the cameras here? >>i'm going to do a documentary on everquest --like sort of like the 10 years of everquest. you don't know crap about documentaries. >>picture this. ten years of everquest jace hall show style--pow! at least let me tell you how i'd start it, okay? i would start like this. [â™ª dramatic instrumental music â™ª]

[narrator] welcome. for the next hour, it will be my privilege to share with you the amazing 10-year history of the game, everquest. sony online entertainment has asked me to introduce to you our film's host, game industry guru, jace hall. jace hall? [music abruptly stops] oh, that would explain the smoking jacket. i thought you guys looked familiar. is this part of his internet thing? documentary. he's doing documentaries! of course!

all right. it is with great sadness and our mutual detriment that i now inflict upon you jace hall! sorry! i'll be in my trailer drinking. humph, there is no trailer--it's a jace hall thing! i'll just be drinking. [â™ª dramatic music continues â™ª] [the jace hall show presents evercracked! the phenomenon of everquest] my name is jason hall, [audience boos] and i'm here at sony online entertainment,

[audience cheers] the creators of numerous hit games over the years. i'm not here to talk about all their games. i'm here to talk about just one of them-- everquest. it's a game made more than 10 years ago that changed game history forever. it also changed people's lives, and i want to go in here and actually meet some of the people in the culture that created it. let's go check it out. oh, the doors are locked.

stop. this is not that 5-minute show. this is everquest. this is epic. this is eq. this is going huge. we're going deep in the investigation-- >>okay, whoa! hey, hey! whoa! >>hey, we're shooting. >>can i help you with anything? i'm here to see john smedley. >>you can't have no cameras here. [jace] no, no, no, no, it's cool. it's cool! no, no, seriously. i'm a colleague. >>no, no, no, come on. >>i made video games. i ran warner brothers interactive! i ran monolith, and i'm doing fear and shogo. i did shogo. >>i don't know anything about that. i'm sorry.

you're not on my list. >>i was just testing you. yes, we can! brother, yes we can. >>no, no, we cannot. you have a seat. i'm going to call and find out where you're supposed to be. okay. i'm not going to tell you again. >>i was just checking. all right, fine. the 1990s--basically ancient history now. you had dial-up modems. you had pagers. you had shoddy internet connectivity for games.

it essentially sucked. if you were a role-playing fan, the only way you were going to have a good time was if you called up all your buddies and you got in a room and you played a tabletop game together or--if you were really adventurous-- you'd log into your computer and play a text-based mud. [multi-user dungeon] well, necessity is the mother of all invention, and it is during this dark period that a guy simply known as smed had an idea that would change the landscape of gaming forever. sit down! [alarm siren going off] yeah, jace was just trying to get up here.

see what i mean about jace hall? what, you still want me to read the everquest facts? everquest fact number 1: everquest launched march 16, 1999, with a level cap of 50. and again, i apologize about jace hall. is is john smedley? captain smedley? mr. smedley? john? [john smedley] smed is fine. >>smed is what you prefer. [applause] smed--it's what everybody knows me as. >>perfect.

i was a absolute huge, huge, huge fan of the ultima series. i started gaming with ultima i. probably the single biggest influence for me was dungeons and dragons. i played on the weekends with my friends. so we'd see you walking with your monster manual and all that stuff? that would be me. i was definitely one of those kids in high school. and proud of it. it was a lot of fun. so when was--when did it happen? everquest was kind of--the idea of it came to me in late 1995.

i got hooked on online gaming probably in the 1993 time frame. my wife and i, we were doing bills together, and she said, "what's this bill? six hundred dollars? for an online game?" and it was a $600 bill for this game called cyber strike. basically a mech-fighting game. the first time i'd ever been exposed to online gaming, and i played it heavily, and from that point on, i was just addicted to online games.

i knew that i wanted to make one. we are here with russell shanks. [applause] >>hello! [applause and cheers] your position here at the company could be summarized as--? well, the official title is coo, but what that really means is i've just been around here a really long time. the story goes back quite a ways. i was working at sony interactive way back in the day--kind of the early to mid '90s. i was working for a fella by the name of john smedley, and one day john comes in the office and he's telling me about

these crazy online games that he was playing--cyber strike, in particular-- and how he really wants to do sort of a massive multiplayer game. i'm not a sports person, but i worked in a studio that was primarily doing sports. a hockey game and a baseball game were kind of what paid the bills, and we had to do those because it was really important to the company. and i approached my boss at that time with the idea of doing an online game, and this was 1995. there was no precedent for it. and so at the time, he turned me down.

a few months later, a new boss came in, kelly flock, who came in to run sony interactive studios america. when he took over, i re-presented everquest to him. so kelly said yes. was it a big fight with kelly or did he kind of get it? >>not at all. not at all. he wasn't sure exactly what it was, but he knew that i was passionate about it, and he said, "you know what? i'll take a bet on this." [green light] [â™ª rousing orchestral music â™ª] there are over 100,000 trees in everquest.

really? real trees? computer trees. so there aren't any actual real trees in it? so i just lied. we were doing all this stuff and we had no budget for this, and there was no way we were getting a budget going through the door. and john was a pretty savvy leader. he was looking for guys that could come in and hit the ground running. so he was just going through every piece of shareware that he could find.

the reason i like shareware is these were people that were building this with no expectation necessarily of making money. see, he finds a shareware game, and it's actually pretty good. try to focus here. brad mcquaid. [cheers and applause] you're the original creator--or one of the original creators--of everquest, are you not? i was one of the two original designers on the team, yeah. and the internet was very new at the time. we had a little side business,

and we had put together a demo called, war wizard 2. was it successful? >>i think we sold about 1500 copies or so. so, no, it wasn't terribly successful. it caught the eye of john smedley, who called me one day and said, "i want to do a 3-d online rpg." and i was just like--that blew me away. smed contacted brad and said, hey, you know, do you guys want to come work for us?" and we were like--so you want to pay us to make video games?

oh, heck yeah! >>so steve and i quit that monday. we started to begin working on it. we began work on the initial design. and the world--working with the engine-- and that's how it all started. i hired brad mcquaid and steve clover as the first two people on what became everquest. he says that he like hired you guys on the spot. oh, yeah. smed wanted us to come down. we went down. we basically signed the paperwork, and that was pretty much it.

yeah, brad and i were the first two people on the team. [â™ª rousing music playing â™ª] so you have smed. >>un-hunh. you have him show up, and he brings these two guys in-- steve and brad. >>yep. these guys worked at a nursery. >>that's right. they were doing accounting software or some spreadsheets. that's what they say. >>so john went out and met them. he knew instantly that these guys had the passion--

that they were working at the nursery essentially to make ends meet, but they wanted to do gaming. this is sort of a side note, but the business that you were working in before you were a programmer--what was that business? it was a wholesale nursery called flynn rainbow nursery. okay, an it department at a nursery. i'm assuming this was like a plant nursery? yeah. the plants need a lot of-->>well, there were inventory systems, keeping track of how many plants you have,

and it was fairly complex because we also had to keep track of how old the plant was or how young so they know when to ship it. it wasn't rocket science, but it was somewhat complicated. you and brad changed the entire scope of online gaming forever. that's pretty much what it comes down to, and we owe this to your free time at a nursery. >>yeah, pretty much. so some guys that worked in a nursery invented online mmo gaming as it is known today. but before everquest, there was neverwinter nights,

the first 2-d graphical mmorpg, which was very simple compared to eq's immersive 3-d mmorpg. does it matter at all that i don't understand what the hell i'm saying? no? here's jace with the creator of neverwinter nights. we've got to have you in this documentary. are you up for it? i'm all set. >>okay, it's really noisy in here. you were going to take me to lunch by the bay, and here we are next to the airport. i don't know. >>the airport's over there, but this is a great shot.

everquest. this is a--is that coming through? [jet engine noise] everquest went boldly, fearlessly forward in a world where it wasn't clear yet how you could make money doing an mmo. you had to be by the airport. [airplane taking off] >>i'm sorry. [jace] quincy, we're here with quincy. one of us is here with quincy. >>well i didn't get your last name. >>my name is not quincy. i'd expect you to have a little more preparation for this. i have to be honest. >>they said it was quincy. some people said i was quincy. those people might have been named quincy.

but i am not in fact named quincy. my name is dok whitson. i work at sony. >>dok quincy? >>whitson. >>whitson. what are you doing in the schema of the everquest franchise? why am i even talking to you? why did they book this? well, it's incredible. i just show up, and they pay me to draw pictures. i was hired at sony online in september of '96. john smedley himself hired me. do you have any smedley stories? he took a bullet for the team. >>did he really?

he took the office next to the bathroom, and john smedley was the only guy that said, "all right, nobody else wants to take an office next to this thing. "it comes through the walls. i understand. i'll take the office next to it." which was really big on his part, but strange when you were interviewing with him. we are here with don vercelli. >>vercelli. like the pasta. [cheering] let me turn the way back machine on for a second.

no, i'm the same schmuck going to the retailers. i just take this beautiful product--the box top--me and this thing. but that's too big. >>i know, but this is how we sold it then. like our game is bigger--bigger than anything out there. so what was sony online like back then? we just launched playstation 1. smedley and a couple of other guys had these pc ideas-- tanarus, everquest--nobody really back in the console days understood what massive multiplayer gaming was.

at that point in time, too, i was a sports gamer and a shooter. i had no idea what a paladin was or a cleric. they were just these little figures that have funded our beautiful world that we live in. everquest made a huge difference in people's lives. but before that could happen, the game had to be built. somebody had to have the guts to spend that much money on the game, and they took it, and they ran with it, and they made it work. [jet engine noise] you have smed trying to figure out how to make something that's like 20 times bigger than anything that's ever been made before

on a business model that hasn't yet been proven to exist. this is where in the documentary we go forward and explore that struggle. david and goliath type stuff. have you been talking to me? >>yeah, the struggle. he's got to make them-- >>what--what do you do with that? so we're here with clint worley. [audience applause and cheers] nice to meet you. where were you and what were you doing when you first heard about this everquest project being done at sony? and what did you think? brad mcquaid and steve clover and some of those guys were

brought in. i didn't really know who they were or what they were doing. but they were all focused on making this role-playing game, and they were really passionate about it, and no one at the time-- because we were very console--like playstation i and some pc games-- we were really focused on those things, but the whole concept of this like online world thing--i mean i don't even think people were using chat rooms at the time. you just think it was kind of just a bad idea coming out of the gate? if they weren't as passionate as they were, it would have definitely been like these guys are crazy.

brad and steve had a great vision for what the game was. brad and i pretty much were more or less left to run with it at that point. right from the start, there was a couple of page kind of concept document. what that concept document was is what everquest was made into. i've never seen anything that followed so closely to the vision that they had and the ideas that they had to actually getting made into a game that was just like what the vision document was. how many of there were you at this point? well, at the beginning, it was just steve and i.

and then once we needed some artwork, rosie cosgrove came over. i was the original art director on everquest. were you the only female in this clover here? >>yes. >>okay. and i'm guessing that the hygiene wasn't fantastic in this thing, right? uh, well, we had air freshener, so-- and you would just spray it on the people? >>yeah, yeah, directly. there was bill trost to brad mcquaid and roger mcpherson and roger uzman and--that's a ton of rogers.

i think your dog is passing gas, and is there anything we can-- if you say it was him, okay, you know. i know i'm not. so it just slowly and surely built up from 2 people to like 23 or 24. john put him into a little cube area all by themselves and kept them away from the core group for awhile-- just to keep it under the radar--and they kept on edging people into the group. it was called the cube of love. it was a clover leaf-shaped cube meant to handle 4 people, one at each of the 4 petals. instead, we got up to 10, so there were people at all of the corners

of this lucky clover. okay, you know, the heat and the farting-- because everquest was probably the most unprofessional development cycle we'd ever done, we had just people from all walks of life in these meetings talking about what was going to work in the game, and they were just nothing more than argument sessions. people were screaming at each other left and right. >>well, it was like, hey. should we try to go for the dungeons and dragons license? everyone knows dungeons and dragons. there was a lot of friction around that.

like should we go for something a lot of people know and love? or should we make our own thing? >>there was constant chatter going back and forth. politics, religion, all this stuff--watching this like little family-- the family squabbles that went down in that--that was fun. if you knew at that moment how much work lay ahead, would you have still done it? >>uh, that's hard. ugh, everquest fact number 275: there are over 11,221 rats in everquest. [sighs] sounds like my place.

ultima online came out roughly about half way into development on everquest, and it immediately showed us that there was a commercial market. for the first time, we could actually point to something and say, "look, this is kind of what we're trying to do." and for the first time, we actually had something tangible to explain to a marketing or sales person--or hell, a boss--and say, "this is what we're building and why we're going to be pve." and we probably made a choice early on that we were going to be more of a player-versus-environment game,

and ultima online quickly had gotten the reputation for being player-versus-player activity. there were people on the team that wanted pvp, and those of us that had gotten and played ultima online and experienced the pvp that happened there and everything, and we were just like whoa. we can't do that. a large band of guys come and freeze you and kill you and take all your stuff and laugh at you. >>right after ultima online released, it was a huge high point for us. we felt like wow, this is absolutely gonna work. [audience applause]

there were definitely times when i thought that we would never be able to do it. [audience gasps] wait a minute. what? he's like it's gonna work, it's gonna work, and you're all naw, it ain't gonna work. what's the deal? there was just a lot of work. ohhhhh, it's a lot of work. and the occasional let's hit the reset button kind of feeling. when that happened, i mostly just wanted to crawl under my desk and go to sleep. it was kind of funny. the rest of the company in those days began to nickname the game

neverquest because there was no way this thing was ever gonna show. i think we were a little crazy, honestly, to take the thing on. we were the crazy guys moving away from the core of the business. the game was being made for the game's sake. every decision was being made essentially in the context of is this going to be a great experience. there was no concept that this thing wouldn't be as huge as it was. did you see smed going through peaks and valleys of stress? you know, he was trying to get the support from corporate,

and he's making sure that the game's coming out on time and doing everything, so yeah, he was in stitches the whole time. we were pretty much working like at least 14-hour days like 7 days a week. i remember kevin mcpherson sleeping under his desk. he would stumble around the office with a blanket wrapped around himself. all you saw in the cubes and in the corners of the walls were sleeping bags and dog bowls. oh yeah, there were times where team members came and said, "i can't do this any more. i'm quitting."

and you try to calm them down, and smed helped some of the time just giving them perspective. the sheer volume of art was absolutely astounding. i've never seen a game have that many assets in development for so long. with mmo, obviously you've got thousands and thousands of assets to create. you've got to keep track of them. you have to keep them in style. and you also have large teams. we had to actually make the decision at one point that

we're not going to do software rendering. we're going to bank on the fact that people are going to buy these cards and that it's actually going to work when we ship. and i was probably pretty nervous about it, and smed was like, "let's do it. let's do it." and he was right. did it wind up driving the sales of those cards? oh, yeah. i think so. the first time rosie put together qeynos and just walking around and actually seeing what the engine could do--

you know, there's a feeling of immersion there. it was one of the first true 3-d engines. i didn't think a game could look that good. [â™ª dramatic orchestral music â™ª] a lot of people to this day don't realized qeynos is sony eq spelled backwards. [â™ª violin music â™ª] so do you think that everquest is really a result of the personalities? >>absolutely. if you look at everquest, it pays homage to all the games that people on the team were playing.

actually, if you look at the original special thanks sections for the credits, it's just this huge cacophony of different influences that we threw in there. does anyone ever play monopoly any more? if people are looking at this game with such anticipation this far out, it's gonna be huge. >>we knew we had something magical. at that point in time, we knew that it was going to succeed commercially. we didn't know to what level. we're talking like, oh yeah, we're hoping to get 70,000 people. if we can just get 70,000 people to play,

then we'll be doing pretty good. so when eq launched, it was either going to sink or swim literally. literally 3 to 4 months before we shipped everquest, we could feel it because we would go to events, and you'd have like 20 editors sitting in the corner talking about everquest and this game that's coming out, and it just started bubbling out. and i did a search for everquest, and the first 2 pages were just full of fans talking about when the game was going to come out. this is what i'm going to be when the game launches.

and it just seemed like everybody wanted a piece of this. every hardcore editor, every hardcore gamer wanted it. and then when we shipped it, it was just an explosion. [sound of explosion; â™ª large chorus singing joyful, joyful, we adore thee â™ª] there were 10,000 concurrent an hour after launch, and the servers went down. [sound of explosion] we had a lot more people show up on day one than we had expected, and the internet provider that we were going with for this didn't have any concept of really how much bandwidth we were going to be taking up.

and once we got over that problem, we went straight to 100,000 concurrent within a few months. at that time, getting to 100,000 concurrent--that just didn't happen. nothing was even close to that. >>nothing was even close to it. they made this game. they pulled it off. they brought the whole team together. they fought the naysayers. and then it launches, and it's like the biggest launch of a video game ever. it's huge. why are you talking to me?

there are over one million npcs populating the world of everquest. what is an npc? non-player character. non-play--? then who's playing the actual game? nevermind. now we talk about everquest with future hall of fame pitcher, curt schilling. the most vivid memory of everquest for me was probably the moment i'm least proud of as well, which was -- we were playing in florida against the marlins, and we had a day game

followed by an off day followed by a night game. the day game got rained out, and i logged in to everquest at about 2:00 in the afternoon on a sunday, and i logged out at about 1:00 in the afternoon on tuesday. two showers, 7 or 8 eight room service orders-- i never left the game. >>wow! and it was no sleep, nothing. when i was done, it was like, what did i just do? how many hours total do you think has gone into--?

i can't even fathom. i have no idea. it could be in the thousands. >>oh, it's definitely in the thousands. and it's not a number i would want to publicly admit. [footsteps running] so you're up next? when will you learn that i'm tough as nails and you can't beat me? [sounds of fighting] oh! argh! is that the best you have? i really thought you'd be a tougher opponent. i look at everquest as the first true mmo. ultima didn't capture you the same way everquest did?

no, the main reason was because it's totally different visually. it was a totally different game. there was an immersiveness that that first-person mmo was offering that everquest was the first to do it. [announcer] live on the internet. embark online with hundreds of thousands of people to form alliances, friends, and enemies--enemies, enemies. why are we standing in a hallway? you guys keep clowning me. dude, it's not cool. [door opening and closing]

so you guys met through everquest. yeah. >>and then here you guys are at blizzard making massive multi-player online games. >>yeah, totally. all 3 of us met through everquest. i think everquest was a brilliant game. in a lot of ways, it kicked off a lot of what's going on right now. there were so many great aspects not only to the game itself but the community--you have guys like alex who was an absolute superstar to those of us who were playing the game, you know.

oh, my god! furor plains defiler--like the ultimate bad ass. that was you? you were a superstar on everquest? i don't know. apparently i was. that's not the way he talked on his website. this oh, gosh, gee. >>that was in character, though. bow down before the plains defiler. [door opens and closes] i think we had something like 50,000 people or so show up day one wanting to play like right away--

over 100,000 concurrent at one point. we were looking at the usage reports, and people never logged out. we saw the races to get to like level 50. we were kind of surprised by it, and we were certainly surprised with how fast they got there. in fact, we had to go back and re-tune a few of the dragons. we certainly didn't predict that people were going to be spending 18 hours a day in there blowing through that stuff. it was the first fan faire we actually had. everquest was on fire, and we had it, and i walked in,

and i saw a bunch of jesters and a bunch of wizards, and to me that was all--i couldn't believe that people were dressing up. families were all dressed up together as jesters or wizards or whatever it was-- little dwarfs--and i was pretty shocked. it was really magical because you were having people from all different kinds of walks of life--people that would never interact with each other--and they show up at these fan faires. they're long lost friends because they've been playing online forever. and then you meet each other, and it's just the most--

it's a collection of odd couples. we are here in norrath. >>real life norrath. it's a park. norrath does not have water fountains. we've managed to find some of the biggest everquest players that there are. and here they are. my name is ryan, and my character's name is the apprentice fishermen tnexus the rift walker of the plains scoundrel of the oath breakers. [yawn] >>do they actually let you put that much text in for your name?

yeah, i think i'm actually pretty much at the cap for my name because i couldn't get another word in. go wood elves, by the way. when i go on everquest, i play lil brain. he's an ogre berserker level 85. i do some raiding, some grouping, and he's pretty much a big idiot, but he gets the job done. if you need something killed, you say, "lil brain, finish this guy off," and he kills him. what would you say lil brain's biggest accomplishment in everquest was? epic 1.0.

he has no idea what that is. >>he doesn't know what it is. >>no, what is that? jace does not know what epic 1.0 is. [laughs] everyone knows it's the weeks-long quest through the trial, blood, mirages, strategy, fervent rage, hunting, and mastery to obtain the epic weapon, the kerasian axe of fire! [rumbling and screaming] [cheers and applause] it was history from there out. we were off and running with the game. it just was an absolute monster hit. and then we had to mature up and actually build a business out of it

and figure out how to sustain it because, again, we had built this thing kind of under the radar, and now we had hundreds of thousands of users in there, and it was never architected for that. so would you say that they effectively forged what are today's business models for how you're making money in an mmo? i think that what happened was everquest made its own history. they picked a way of letting customers play their games, and they took it, and they ran with it, and they made it work.

it's the same model that people are still using today. [jet engine taking off] we're here with-- >>greg short. >>greg short and he's from-- casters realm. >>and that's--it's the--basically like the number one everquest fan site? i would say. so i started playing it and rapidly realized there was no manual. there was no tutorial. there was no--you know--you started the game in a dark cave that you had to find your way out of a maze to find the first thing to kill. i mean i had a great starting experience my first time in eq.

i was a halfling, so i started in rivervale. i fell into the lake in rivervale, died a chomper, spawned back in misty thicket, had no idea where i was, ran around for like 2 hours, and thought it was the greatest thing ever. now how long did you play everquest for? like how many--how many years did you--? four-plus years. five years. do you think you would be here at blizzard had everquest not existed at all? no, i don't think so. [door opens and closes] everquest fact number 143: over 12 million characters have been created

by players in everquest. ooh, kinda hot. you know, that to me was--the power of it, for me, was that i could hang around people, and who i was or what i did was insignificant. >>right. and that was a big deal for me. myspace and facebook and all the social networking things i think are a result of everybody understanding how powerful that whole social piece was. at some point, you have to review the game. >>yeah. now did you guys do that immediately after it launched or did you give it 6 months?

but i think what we didn't understand then that we later learned in future mmos is that writing a review of a game like this early-- it's like reviewing a movie after the first 10 minutes. there's so much later-- >>this is an important point. >>yeah. because these games never end, right? >>they never end. i guess that's why it's called everquest. >>everquest 'cause you're questing forever. yeah. >>i think everquest has gotten into the psyche of a lot of people that are making mmos today, and you'll find that a lot of the blizzard guys played everquest fanatically.

for the blizzard guys, i think it was diablo ii or one of the diablos was a little late because of everquest. >>there's a ton of us here at blizzard that are playing. we'd go to a new server, and we'd plan out on our white board--you know-- [door opens] who was gonna be what in the new guild. [door closes] everquest was like one of the last of the generation of games where, chances are if you played it, you probably didn't know 100 people in your real life who played it, so you'd go online, and you'd make friends. the characters that you guys play in the game, do they make you some magic at all? >>we use magic.

sometimes we use our weapons. sometimes we just blow things up with magic. is it that you have just one character that's a magic user? or do you have a bunch of characters that actually use magic? i just have one. >>what are you saying? one magician? [cat meows] i am the one magician. wait--the cat is telling me there's a battle. i don't mean to be rude, but i must disappear. [cat meows] was that a teleportation spell? >>if he's just level 2, then yeah.

i don't know. he might have been level 3. he's pushing it. everquest fact number 532: there are over 15,000 quests and 21,000 spells in everquest. did that guy have a cat on his shoulder? he did, didn't he? it was about a month after we released. we put out a note to the fans in the patcher that said, "hey, we're going to be at carl straub brewery at 6:00 tonight. stop by if you'd like to."

and 100 people showed up. jim lee showed up there. >>from dc comics. >>he was just a fan. yeah, smed. i'm just a fan. just this idea that you could put a note up on an online game and 100 people show up to have beer with you. i mean, it was a blast. me and the guys were getting ready to roll out for lunch. come out of the door and you've got 4 or 5 people that are standing there asking you, like, "hey, are you brad mcquaid?

"are you john smedley? because we want to get a picture with you. "we drove here from texas. we're trying to track down these people." there were definitely some situations where it was really flattering to the people that were involved with it. what shows through more than anything with the fans is the fact that we interact with them in the first place because if you think about it, you don't get to interact with movie directors. i don't get to send an email out to sam raimi and give him my suggestions

for the next spider man movie. you know, my understanding is that you actually get into this game and actually you interface and talk to these people directly. we do. >>is that how you do it? these games are all about community. they're all about socializing. they're all about meeting each other. yeah, you kill monsters. you slay dragons and earn treasure, but in the end, it's about making friends and relationships. hey, hey, we're [bleep] filming in here! you'll be in the game like this, and you'll actually be one-on-one

helping people. >>eh, sometimes. a lot of the interaction we do is chatting with them. not so much helping, but we do answer questions about where they can go or where they can get help. wow! the game just crashed. a kid being in the hospital and it was something wrong with him unable to run. but we got a letter once where he was like saying thank you so much. i can run inside of everquest. so stuff like that where it really touched the hearts of people. people who have some disabilities--who feel like they're productive members

in our world where they have no limitations. they can run around and slay monsters and participate. when i moved out here from australia, i slept on the couch of a bunch of people that were in my guild. my wife helped deliver the baby of a friend that i met in everquest. so you're basically saying that the creation of this game literally altered the entire course of your life. >>absolutely. this changed your life? really?

[door opens and slams shut, car engine starts and races away] we're here now with tal blevins. [applause] he's basically king of game content for ign. i don't know if i get that much respect as king. am i detecting frustrated game designer here? isn't everybody who writes and critiques about video games a frustrated game designer, jace? so were you skeptical when you heard about everquest coming? i was really looking forward to getting out of that isometric view and

really getting into the full, first person kind of immersed in this world. and everquest was one where you could really kind of make your own stories and talk about it with your group of friends and hey, did you see this? no, i haven't seen this yet. oh, i gotta go check that out. i can remember a couple of raids where everything went completely wrong or where we pulled off a win at the very last second with only 2 people out of 54 still alive or something like that. and we all still talk about it. [whooshing sound] yeah, i'll take a vanilla--

when you think back to those memories, does it feel like they're real? for me, it really was like exploring a real world. hey, i want to go visit freeport today to see this person. i wonder what they're up to, you know? i want to go across the world to qeynos. when i look back on these types of events, i get together with my friends who game. we don't talk about, hey, do you remember that night we all

sat at home and ate pizza and drank beer until 4 in the morning. we talk about, hey, do you remember that night that we raided fear and we kept getting glitched out but we finally got that bossmobi. so i think for the people that had those close social relationships and the people that really invested their time and space into the world of everquest, those memories are as real as any real life memory that you could have. so there was a time when you just played it all the time. >>absolutely. that's all i did. it was a complete nightmare in a way. it goes from i'm going to play it as soon as i get home

or maybe i'll play it after my family goes to sleep to i'm going to wake up early before i go to work and play a little bit. then [bleep] it. i'm just going to play it at work. >>right. it was a whole kind of genre to find an experience. there would be no world of warcraft, i don't think, without everquest. do you think that if everquest and sony online entertainment never existed that world of warcraft would have come into existence when it did? no way. i mean, we were heavily influenced by it. we were also extremely influenced by ultima online,

but it was really everquest that spurred us to the idea more than anything. who is that guy? raiding, for example--probably one of the biggest things that exists in mmo gaming today. it was something that we started, and i'm really happy with the legacy that we've left there. in a lot of ways, i feel like everquest was the first place that spawned-- i mean online dating wasn't new, but it sort of brought this new dimension to the idea of like meeting somebody online and actually

carrying on a relationship. i get stories all the time of players who met in our game and are now together. >>it's amazing to me to see people get married-- to see that people meet somebody they're gonna spend the rest of their life with. were there marriages? >>lots of marriages. lots of relationships. in fact, last year at fan faire in 2007, we had a marriage performed right there on stage at the fan faire, but that isn't the only one. [â™ª wedding march playing â™ª] i charge you to be true to the vows you've spoken here. i do. >>then by the power vested in me by the state of nevada

and by the word of god, it's a very great honor and privilege to pronounce you husband and wife. [cheers and applause] and seeing kind of the impact that it has on them. when they come up to me at fan faire and say, "thank you for making this great game, and we play it together," to me that's a really powerful thing. it touches people's lives in a real way. [computer game voice] two people are one. gothin, quadra, i now pronounce you husband and wife in the lands of norrath. [cheers and applause] you may now kiss the bride. let the celebration begin! [cheers and applause]

well, honestly, i mean online games are what they are largely because of the social aspect. more and more, people are choosing to play online largely because they can play with their friends and, like you just saw tonight, they can play these games and some rare few even get married in real life as a result. maybe a guy playing as a female and then the guy who's--nevermind. it doesn't matter who you love. it's do you love? >>okay. and in everquest, there are ways to express that love? we have a very robust text system.

[typing on keyboard] [age/sex/location check] there's no nudity in everquest, is there? well, not publicly. >>no. >>you've got to get the special expansion. it made people understand that there was a deep-seated desire for people to be connected. >>my wife and i played together. we hit level 50 simultaneously. that takes a lot of practice. i met my wife in everquest as well. that's huge! >>yeah. >>thank god that it was actually a woman.

my wife, phil, who's recently got his weight down to 300 pounds-- he and i are extremely happy these days. [door opens and closes] this was on the box. that tv guide there--i remember that image in the ads. was that you? >>i'd like to say so and take all the credit, but no. that was brad and keith parkinson in a way. they and the team. but once we got this beautiful portrait, we just ran with it. is the suit comfortable? have you found that it's something you could wear everyday? everquest. >>everquest. i see a bunch of signatures on this thing. is this like a fully signed--

this is the fully signed everquest from the original team. >>can i have this? i have that one right there. that's yours, sir. that's from march 16, 1999. yes! >>i just made the interview, right? we're going to make sure that this is edited per- per- per- per- per- perfectly. ah, it's my pleasure. [off-screen voice] i'm going to email you when he ebays that. i'm not ebaying nothing. did you know at the time that you guys were building something that was going to be so influential?

on this project, i did not know--to answer your question--if it was going to succeed or not. but i did know the people were right. the people were the right people to get something done-- get something out the door that was fun. [dog farts] in the 10 years that everquest has been around, there's been roughly 10 quadrillion bytes of information uploaded from the everquest server. or basically the same amount of data as one day of youporn. we're here at sony online entertainment.

it is the 10-year anniversary of the massively multi-player online game, everquest. there's a party, and we got invited, so we're going to check that out. [dragon roaring and fire crackling] congratulations on all of this. [â™ª happy birthday being sung â™ª] i know you guys have all been working hard on the expansion pack and stuff. yeah, yeah. [applause and cheering] guys, this is the tenth anniversary of everquest today. right? >>yeah, right. this is actually a very historic moment because there is nothing else

in the mmo space that's hit a 10-year milestone in this way. [â™ª dramatic orchestra music and chorus â™ª] do you pay attention to what people are saying now at this point? clint completely ignores everyone, but harvey and i try to pick up the slack. i'm not even sure what they're saying right now. is there a feature you want to put in the game just to punish some of the users? after 10 years of hearing their lips flap about something-- i'm not sure punishment is the right word. revenge? >>unique content experiences, i think, is what we usually go for.

the players have been playing this game forever. like they don't go out and buy other games. they buy this game. and so we've been trying to kind of flip the script and make it where it's like what do you players want? like this is your game. you've been loyal to us for 10 years. i've invested 10 years after this thing. >>a lot of money. >>a lot of money. a lot of money. >>a lot of money. at this point, it's like i don't want to put it down. a lot of real life friends who now--who i've made on everquest

that are now real life, i guess i should say. congratulations. you are a magician. they don't let you into vegas, do they? >>no. ten years, dude. huge milestone. yeah, it was maybe 13 years ago for steve, here. when he first started working on this thing, he and brad and a bunch of hard working people made a hell of a game. everquest has had 10 years of loving life. what's the finishing part of that sentence?

i think just a huge, huge thank you to all the fans out there. we cannot say enough thanks for all the great times that we've had with you, and we hope that we've been able to give you a lot of great time in the world. [phone rings] in my show, people don't turn off their cell phones. he's taking the call, too. what would you want to tell the people out there now about this whole 10-year escapade? give me a sentence that sums up what the meaning of it is. the first 10 years was great, but we're looking forward to the next. still going strong. >>i think i'd have to go with save me. that's probably the one. >>save me? >>that's a winner.

what about everquest keeps you interested? >>the people. the people keep me in it. i've made a lot of friends. the big organization. you get together with a bunch of equally minded, equally focused people to accomplish things, and that's one of the best parts about everquest in my opinion. then we get 54 people together in a raid, and they all look to one person for instructions, and they all follow those instructions. they all shoot to accomplish one goal. that's beautiful in my opinion. everquest is going to evolve, isn't it?

everquest is everquest. i mean if you look at everquest ii, i think we did something special there. and the sky's the limit going forward. the future of everquest is something that we're internally calling everquest next. the idea is to make the next generation of the world of norrath. and it's something that we're putting a lot of care and attention into now. we've got a team actively working on it. >>get out of here. it's in the network. keeping quiet on the details now, but we're really focusing-- [sound of chair breaking] smed, what are you doing to me?

what kind of unprofessional bull [bleep] is this? if someone's watching this documentary and not getting upset, what would you want them to come away with that everquest stuff represents? seven. [dog farts] so that's it. that's the story. look, i'm all for an everquest documentary. okay. >>not like this. and not with you. that's embarrassing. i can't.

can you please get out? and stop doing this to me. it would have been good, i think. i don't know. i think it would have been good. >>you're still talking. >>i can do a documentary. you can leave, too. [the end] good night. if you did not receive that magical call--that call to action-- what do you think you'd be doing now? >>well, i don't know. i'd probably be working at like home depot or something now.

really, i do go outside. it's just--you know. no, no, i wasn't saying you didn't--i just said it's nice that you have a window because you probably don't go out much. >>probably about as often as you leave the gym. wow. okay. thank you. thanks. steroids working for you there, buddy? >>wow, okay, you know what? cut. i'm leaving. i don't know why he thinks he's gonna talk about stuff like that and-- and he's gonna be the community guy. so how's this work out? are you like felwithe or kanos or--? i am from kanos.

and that's the best thing there. and the worst thing are cameras. [dog barks] woof! woof! i just saw the evercracked! film. do you know greg short/baelish of casters realm? yeah, he was like the number one fan site. he said it on the tape. no, no, no, no. allakhazam is 100 times bigger than casters realm. there was a list, and we went down the whole thing, and the casters realm-- greg short doesn't roll like this. we're done with this. i just saw evercracked!, the documentary, and tnexus thinks he has a longer name

than me. i know i have a longer name than tnexus. my name is journeyman's fisherman seven key of the nexus champion of war hero of the old found. >>yeah, but my name's apprentice fishermen tnexus journeymen fisherman is much longer than apprentice fisherman. well, apprentice is cooler. [sony online entertainment] [sound of a whip and horse whinnying] that's awesome.