26 Years Later…
If you’re a gamer, and especially a fan of MMORPGs, you’ve at least heard of EverQuest. Released in 1999, EverQuest was not just a game but a cultural phenomenon. It was maybe the first game around which a thriving community of players formed. It had to, because EverQuest was nearly impossible to play solo. EverQuest — nicknamed EverCrack — was one of the first games to highlight the dangerous obsession that players could develop, ruining careers, marriages and lives. It was the first MMORPG that spawned a black market economy in rare in-game items and currencies. But for all the negatives, EverQuest also highlighted the immersive nature of games and fantasy, cooperation, and roleplaying as a positive escape from reality. EverQuest Legends is a reminder of where MMOs started and how much fun they still can be.
EverQuest also became the template for online roleplaying games, the model that future games would imitate or, more importantly, evolve away from. Without EverQuest, there would be no World of Warcraft, Dark Age of Camelot, Final Fantasy Online, or literally hundreds of past and current MMORPGs. Of course, without Dungeons and Dragons, EverQuest wouldn’t have existed in the first place. Those early D&D MUDs started it all.
Which Brings Us to 2026
All this preamble is to introduce the fact that I recently spent some time with EverQuest Legends, which is a new server hosting an updated and more user-friendly version of the 1999 original. This is not a review, but some impressions, reflections and information about this game. There have been several attempts — some authorized, some not — to make the experience of playing EverQuest less painful for gamers accustomed to modern titles.
While those of us playing EverQuest in 1999 might have thought its 3D graphics were bleeding edge, they seem incredibly primitive now. The first thing to note about EverQuest Legends is that, HD 4K or not, those graphics can’t hide their age. This means that, if you’re looking for more than a few minutes of nostalgia, you’re going to need to be ok with flat textures, large expanses of nothing, and barely recognizable characters. In 1999, our brains filled in the details. Not sure that’s still possible.
All By Myself
Dated graphics aside, EverQuest Legends includes an exceptionally long list of quality-of-life changes and improvements. Big picture, difficulty scaling has been adjusted to make the game solo-friendly, and even groups are optimized at four (with 8-member raids). Those dreaded corpse runs are a thing of the past, and dying essentially just means respawning at a save point. Granted, some players might not think this is an improvement.
While players can only have one character, they choose secondary and tertiary classes as they level up. Multiclass characters are viable and powerful. Spellcasters no longer have to meditate for long minutes or hours to regenerate. Health and mana regain quicker, and coin no longer adds weight. Spell research time has been eliminated. Dungeons are largely instanced to avoid bottlenecks, and monsters and bosses respawn faster.
Back in 1999, EverQuest’s menus and UI were the model for unfriendliness, so EverQuest Legends gives lots of attention to letting players adjust, resize, and reconfigure both their inventory and ability slots, as well as many other aspects of the UI. I mean, it’s still kind of a cluttered mess compared to modern games. It’s still much better than it used to be. After all, EverQuest Legends is not a remake or remaster. Expecting more — like controller support — is unrealistic.
Feed the GOAT
If you’re an original EverQuest player just looking for a hit of nostalgia, EverQuest Legends helps smooth out the experience. It might entice you to stay awhile. If you just want to see what the old-timers played back in the day, EverQuest Legends will be instructive. EverQuest still offers a huge amount of depth and replayability alone and with others, if you can get past the graphics, finicky connections, primitive animations and convoluted — but improved! — interface.