EverQuest Online Adventures Retrospective
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...in the early 2000s, the EverQuest franchise was hot, with hundreds of thousands of players exploring Norrath on a daily basis. SOE, which had taken a leap of faith to make EQ in the first place, cast its eye on the hot PlayStation 2 console as a possible candidate to expand the franchise. However, it would prove to be much more difficult than launching a title on the PC.
Former Senior Producer Clint Worley said it was tough from the get-go: "Early on with the PlayStation 2, EQOA faced a lot of challenges. The whole online gaming with the PlayStation 2 console was an admirable attempt, but it was still ahead of its time." The biggest challenge is that nobody designed consoles in the late '90s and early 2000s with MMOs in mind. Players who wanted to get into EverQuest Online Adventures had a virtual obstacle course of purchases and actions to overcome.
Not only did interested gamers have to own a PS2, a copy of EQOA, and an 8 MB memory card, but they had to find and install a network adapter, which in 2003 wasn't easy to come by for everyone. If they wanted to talk with their fellow players with anything more complicated than the simple in-game chat macro system, a PS2 USB keyboard was a must.
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EQOA's sole expansion, Frontiers, debued later in 2003. Unlike developing expansions for PC MMOs, expanding -- or even patching -- content on the PS2 was incredibly difficult due to the lack of an internal harddrive. I mean, 8 MB is all well and good if you want to throw a couple of MP3s on it, but a full expansion? Have fun with that! A completely new DVD was required to access the new content and areas that was otherwise inaccessible for players.
Frontiers beefed the game up considerably, adding an additional race, class, and several quests, increasing the level cap from 50 to 60, and adding new areas to explore. Starting with Frontiers, players could further customize their characters with Class Masteries. Garner enough CMs, and you could go and purchase yourself a cool new ability or even a master class version of your standard class.
