New Issue of Game Studies: EverQuest Revisited

This article describes EverQuest as a fictive text, a computer game, and an online community and explains how these three distinct frameworks lead to different legal regulatory modalities. It concludes that the optimal legal regulation for virtual worlds like Norrath is a question that must be addressed by the political process…

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This articles discusses online gameworlds as a new form of engaging fictional universes, and how to analytically approach and describe the player’s experience of “worldness” with EverQuest as an illustrative example. It argues that such an analysis should incorporate the study of design, aesthetics, means of expression and sociality…

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This article addresses the interaction of players and designers in the creation of Norrathian geography. In the context of contemporary geographic theory, the authors examine the ways in which EverQuest players have worked both with and against the game’s delineation of meaningful places within the virtual world, arguing that the game’s virtual geography is best understood in the context of the real world geographies within which it is situated…

by Eric Hayot, Edward Wesp

Brad McQuaid worked as co-designer of EverQuest and development manager from the project’s inception until its launch. Kevin McPherson was one of the first EverQuest team members who primarily worked on the EverQuest client and writing the original background and setting for the Ruins of Kunark expansion…