Word: everquesters
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...goes in Everquest, the state of the art in multiplayer, online role-playing games. It's been clear for decades how enthralled gamers are by such adventures, in which they visit invented universes whose inhabitants create their own stories by exploring territory, making alliances, seeking treasure and so on. But the Net has advanced the form considerably since the halcyon days of Dungeons & Dragons, the original game played by dateless dweebs in rec rooms across America on Saturday nights. Today's fantasy worlds are designed by software gurus, are presented on the Web and swarm with tens of thousands...
...Everquest raises the bar again. Three years in the making at Sony's 989 Studios in San Diego, it's the role-playing market's first 3-D online world, a lush environment reminiscent of immersive shoot-'em-ups like Quake and Doom. The Everquest team, says 989 president Kelly Flock, took a chance by deciding to leap-frog the 2-D Ultima and create a game so graphics-rich it would require a 3-D-accelerated PC in order to play...
Smart move. Everquest launched in March and was an instant hit; after only two months, more than 100,000 people have purchased the CD-ROM, and dutifully pay an $8 or $9 monthly subscription rate. Each night 30,000 people fill the cities, deserts and forests that constitute the 19 Everquest zones...
...worried parents, there's violence in Everquest. But the game's best post-Columbine feature is its marginalization of slaughter. In sharp contrast to Ultima, in which veteran players often murder "newbies" just for the thrill of it, Everquest, says producer Brad McQuaid, lets users choose whether or not to be "player killers"; only those who do can kill--or be killed by--others. Thus far only 15% have opted for killer status...