EverQuest - virtually real
By Kathryn Balint
Copley News Service
'Tis the tale of a mystical new world, the people who dwell there, and their never-ending quest for adventure and fellowship.
In this strange medieval setting, people slay mythical creatures, seek elusive treasures and form alliances to help each other. They sew clothes, buy goods at the market and attend parties and poetry readings. They earn money to buy food, and put their savings in the bank.
Some marry. Many die. So goes the universe of EverQuest, a wildly popular online role-playing game that is being acted out by tens of thousands of players at any given moment.
EverQuest is at the forefront of a new breed of video games: one that combines interactive computer software with the social interaction of the Internet.
In many ways, the game is the Digital Age version of the 1970s role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, in which players pretend to be wizards and warriors fighting make-believe monsters.
Such fantasies apparently hold universal appeal. From Borneo to Belgium, Australia to the United States, more than 330,000 people have paid $30 or so for EverQuest's software, plus $9.89 a month over and above their regular Internet access fees for the opportunity to masquerade as an elf or any one of a dozen other "races" in EverQuest's virtual world.
The game has no clear winner. There is never a clear end to it. And for many, there is no clear line between the real world and this fantasy world.
"It is part of the real world, just as Disneyland is part of the real world," insists EverQuest regular Bridget Agabra Goldstein. "We know that Mickey is just a kid inside a suit, but our experiences there are real. EverQuest, and other online situations, are just other arenas for the same old human interactions - having fun, falling in love, taking safe risks, feeling a bit of a thrill, learning and mastering something new."
IT'S NOT FOR KIDS
Just who are these players who hole up in front of their computers an average of 20 hours a week exploring virtual continents, battling computer-generated enemies and making real friends?
Two out of every three players are between the ages of 13 and 29, and nine out of 10 are male. But there are players representing just about all walks of life: judges and lawyers, septuagenarians, even married couples and entire families who play together.
This is not a game for young children, though. For starters, it's not easy. It also requires the ability to read and write, because all of the communication in the game is text-based. Then there's the violence: characters basically kill to survive. But at least the slaughter occurs with no blood-spattering, guts-spilling graphic effects on the screen.
Unlike EverQuest's closest competitor, Ultima Online, where powerful, established players get their jollies slaughtering unsuspecting "newbies," EQ players have the option of deciding whether they want their character to be able to kill other players.
Only about one in 10 choose to be a player-killer, and even then, they're forbidden from fighting unless they challenge the character and the challenge is accepted, said Scott McDaniel, Sony Online's executive director of marketing and public relations.
The point of the game is to climb "levels," beginning at 1 until you reach the most powerful of all, 60. Some people don't necessarily want to get to the top. They're just playing for the camaraderie. Others spend months and months trying to work their way through the levels.
Characters earn "experience points" by slaying computer-generated foes. But there's more to the game than just killing. EverQuest has its own thriving economy and its own flourishing social life. And those two aspects of this online world cross over from fantasy into real life as no other computer game has.
Characters need food and weapons. So, naturally, they have to make money to buy these necessities. Some do so by selling loot they find on their kill. Others learn a trade, jewelry making or tailoring, for instance, then sell their wares at in-game auctions. And then there are those who auction off their otherworldly goods for real, honest-to-goodness cash in the real-world marketplace.
Sony forbids the practice as a matter of fairness, yet as many as 4,000 EverQuest items are listed on eBay at any given time. An "Xegony Froglok Scale Chestplate" fetched $355. And bidding on an entire character, a level 55 wizard complete with fishbone earring, evil eye bag and ceremonial dagger, was approaching $1,000 recently. After the auction, the seller and the winning bidder meet online in EverQuest and exchange the virtual goods.
FRIENDSHIP IS KEY
But it's the relationships that people build while playing the game that blur the line between fantasy and reality more than anything else. A good part of the game play involves going on quests for hard-to-get treasures, usually too big a job for just one person. That's where a bunch of friends come in handy.
Many players belong to "guilds," whose members help each other out and, in the process, form lasting friendships that transcend the boundaries of the digital world.
When little Dawn Leiker, whose parents were EverQuest fans, was battling leukemia, updates on her progress were posted on the game's main message board. EQ players sent notes of encouragement, and mourned when she died last October, at age 7.
There's the tale of the player who couldn't afford to fix his computer. As EQ community relations manager Cindy Archuleta tells the story, everyone in his guild pitched in to pay for its repair. And there's the story Archuleta relates about the young woman who was going through a divorce. Her guild-mates chipped in to pay her way to a get-together of EQ players in Las Vegas last November.
Marriages - both in real-life and those strictly of the virtual variety - are major events. Computer programmer Tracy Schuhwerk and his wife, Raina, a medical student, "met" in EverQuest in 1998, when they were among the first 100 beta testers for the game.
He was a "human ranger" named Modius. She was a "wood elf warrior" named Kilian. They - the real-life people behind the characters, that is - married in October.
"We had so much fun initially just talking, becoming friends and exploring the areas that we could survive in together," Schuhwerk said. "It became very apparent that the main person I wanted to see when I got into EverQuest was Raina. We would meet on a daily basis and play together.
"We had a unique advantage in that we spent so much time ignoring the physical side of the relationship and learning the mental side of each other, that when we met face-to-face, we knew each other amazingly well."
Now that they're married, they continue to maintain their own separate EverQuest accounts so that their characters still see one another online.
GAMUT OF EMOTIONS
Sometimes, these online lives get really weird. Players have been known to take marriage vows online before an entourage of EQ friends - even though they were already spoken for by someone else in real life. Suicide threats are not unheard of.
Sony's technical support staff, which patrols EverQuest's virtual world in the form of "game masters," are trained to keep the suicidal person chatting online, while they notify authorities.
"Usually, they're upset over something that's happened in their real life," said head game master Michelle Butler.
One player even faked a suicide after she was stripped of her position as a volunteer guide in the game. Announcements of her "death" shocked EQ fans, who expressed their sorrow, until they found out it was all a cruel - and perplexing - hoax.
NICKNAME: 'NEVERREST'
Ask almost any player about EverQuest, and the conversation is sure to turn to a discussion of its addictive nature. They don't nickname it "EverCrack" and "NeverRest" for nothing. Tales abound of players who spent so much time online that they lost their jobs or spouses.
"It is very addictive," said player Gerald Goff. "You get emotionally involved with people online."
That emotional involvement keeps pulling people back, which was the result that the EverQuest team had intended. One of the game's developers, Geoffery Zatkin, was hired because he has a degree in psychology and was experienced with online communities.
"EverQuest is really a game about bringing people into contact with one another, and everything else is secondary," Zatkin said. "We built a world in which you can't win and it doesn't end. We were trying to mimic real life."
Research into online relationships is still in its infancy. But Dr. Mark Wiederhold, a faculty member at the California School of Professional Psychology, said the anonymous nature of the Internet lets people get emotionally close quickly.
"People tend to feel more comfortable in revealing more personal information about themselves online because they're anonymous," Wiederhold said.
Add to that the emotional ups and downs players experience in an online game, he said, and the bond can become just as strong as if they had met face-to-face.
"Studies show the intensity of an online relationship is no different than a relationship in real life," he said. "The same feelings of bonding and closeness develop online."
MORE GAMES TO COME
EverQuest is just the beginning of a revolution in video games. Sony, which initially marketed EverQuest to hard-core gamers, is broadening its reach.
"There's a large number of people who would love to play a game like EverQuest, but they don't even know it exists," said Brad McQuaid, EverQuest's executive producer.
But just in case EQ doesn't capture your fancy, Sony has other online, multi-player games in the works that may: Star Wars Galaxies, based on the movie; PlanetSide, an action game that takes place in a distant galaxy; and Sovereign, a political strategy game.
Because of the popularity of Internet role-playing games, in addition to new gaming consoles like Sega's Dreamcast and PlayStation 2, which are capable of connecting to the Net, online gaming is expected to skyrocket.
Market research firm Datamonitor estimated U.S. online gaming revenues at $57 million in 1999. But the firm says that will soar to $2.8 billion by the year 2004.
Some people even predict that multi-player online games will become a major form of entertainment.
"I think in five or 10 years," McQuaid said, "we'll have millions of people playing these multi-player online games and the budgets of these games will rival the budgets of mainstream movies."
If so, you may find that rare "Xegony Froglok Scale Chestplate" that was selling on eBay for hundreds of dollars packaged in a box of cereal.
Liz Woolley