Word: norrath
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...Lord of the Rings was just O.K. But somehow this game, EverQuest, was different. Soon Denise was playing 18 hours a week--and, paradoxically, spending more time with her family than ever. "The longest conversation in our house at dinner," she says, "is about what we've done in Norrath that...
...Norrath, for the uninitiated, is EverQuest's answer to Middle Earth. Players all over the world--each hunched over his or her computer screen--gather on the same 3-D map, connected via the Internet. At last count, the land of EverQuest had 433,445 inhabitants, with 12,000 new immigrants arriving every month. Its subscription fees have made the game a gold mine for its owner, Sony, and helped put a relatively obscure genre--the massively multiplayer game--on the map. This week at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, a select few VIPs will get an early...
...those who haven't played, it's hard to understand why so many would invest so much in a mere fantasy game. The starter software kit costs $40, as does each of three add-ons that let you explore different continents on Norrath (a fourth arrives in October). There's also a monthly fee of $12.95 for the online service. Yet hundreds of thousands regularly pay up--and not just teenage boys. The average age of EverQuest players is 31, and they include as many lawyers and homemakers as students and Silicon Valley geeks...
...them what they do in Norrath, and they will talk about slaying MOBs (for mobile objects, a slang term for Norrath's monsters), collecting plats (platinum pieces, the highest form of Norrath currency) and joining with other players to form guilds. It is that last part that's key. For EverQuest addiction is, at heart, a pleasantly social disease. "It's what players bring to the game that makes it what it is," says Will Wright, creator of the best-selling PC game The Sims, who plays EverQuest with his 15-year-old daughter and is hard at work...
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