Everquest Online Adventures

• Featured in the IGDA 2004 Online games white paper

The EQOA online presence was created to present the key attributes of the PS2 game with an online browser-based experience.

After spending some time researching the game and online community, two unique aspects of the title really stood out: the great sense of community that Everquest generates and the blend of skills and character types that must be used to compose successful parties in the game, in order to take on it's greatest challenges.

In order to represent the community aspect of the title, we wanted to create a microcosm of the larger experience - an online community that enabled players to play, create, share and compete with each other, centered around a simple, accessible mini-game.

One of the key goals of the the project was to widen the appeal of Everquest to non-core gamers, and so we explored genres that tend to be popular with casual players - more specifically to puzzle games. A puzzle game that relied on teamwork and making the use of the abilities of different elements seemed to be a perfect match and so the design was developed from this initial idea into a combinational-logic puzzle featuring three classes of character, each with its own set of simple rules. The game rules could therefore be easy to learn but could provide complex puzzles when combined.

Players were provided with a set of level design tools that allowed them to create and upload their own puzzles, as well as the ability to rate other people’s puzzles and keep track of their own success. Each player’s score was based on the percentage of all uploaded puzzles they had successfully completed, combined with the average rating of each of the puzzles that they had created. Balancing the scoring system to keep it fair and encourage repeat visits to the site was one of the biggest challenges.