The Indie Informer

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I was young, but well in love with gaming by the time EverQuest originally released in 1999 — though I’m unsure if my family owned a dedicated household computer at the time. Let that sentence sink in. As a result, it wouldn’t be until much later in life that the wild idea of MMORPGs would even enter my consciousness. When I did eventually try the now-legendary game, I didn’t get it at all. I wasn’t a computer gamer, to start, so the overwhelming crush of stats and windows and real-life people to contend with quickly chased me away.

As I told the developers of EverQuest Legends, I basically said, “I don’t get it, fuck this.” They laughed knowingly and responded unexpectedly, “Then you’re our target player!”

The upcoming reimagining is a collab between Daybreak, the IP’s long-time owners, and Game Jawn, a collection of leading members of the game’s emulator community. And their aim is simple: Lovingly rebuild EverQuest as it existed in 1999 while crafting an approachable experience for new players. That’s what EverQuest Legends hopes to be.

“EverQuest Legends is a passion project for me,” says David Youssefi, executive producer of EQ Legends at Daybreak Games. “I’ve dreamt of a solo/casual version of EQ for over 20 years. The opportunity to bring that dream to life in collaboration with a group of our biggest and most passionate fans is truly epic. We’ve put a lot of love and hard work into making a game that honors the legacy of EQ while forging new experiences for players of all stripes to enjoy. We hope old school fans and new adventurers alike will enjoy the magic and wonder of Norrath in EverQuest Legends!”

The first order of business to achieve that goal was to simplify, streamline, and modernize. Those three words can be terrifying to a long-lived game fandom, but meeting the team and seeing the painstaking love they have for the game, I’m confident nothing vital will land on the cutting room floor.

But before the team could even wrap their mind around that problem, they found themselves faced with an even greater hurdle. The code for the game, as it was in 1999, just didn’t exist. The world had been changed, updated, and rebuilt so many times over the years that keeping the original code intact wasn’t a priority. That’s where the specialized skill of our group of emulators comes in handy, as they already had the tools to bring those nostalgic tools back to life.

That background in hand, the team then happily jumped into a presentation of EverQuest Legends’ current gameplay to show off their hard work and demonstrate its friendlier design. The pre-built character for this hands-off demo is an Iksar warrior taking advantage of the game’s multiclass system to slide Necromancer into its second class slot. A third space opens up once your character’s first class reaches level ten, and from there on, the auto-shared experience between classes cuts off. Meaning if you want to pump up a class after that, you have to use its abilities the old-fashioned way.

First on the itinerary for our lizard-man Iksar, is a tour of the race’s spawning area. If anything can be said to be new in a game hoping to reconstruct a decades-old world, it’s this. Because the fan favorite reptiles were not introduced until The Ruins of Kunark expansion in 2000, they never actually existed in the 1999 release. So a starting hub was recontextualized, polished up, demade, and reinterpreted to fit the vintage setting.

Then, it was time for battle. This is where the streamlined UI really shines, as the fighting no longer requires scores of open menus and health bars now appear above characters’ heads. Inventory management also gets some quality of life upgrades, I notice, when the time for looting comes. Players can merge identical gear to create a stronger weapon, for example. And one early playtester took this to the extreme by merging giant snake fangs until they had a plus five weapon. Of course, this required them to essentially take on the role of Saint Patrick, clearing the immediate landscape of snakes. Also, if a player earns an item they don’t want with a power they do, they can transfer effects using the exaltation system with a simple click.

My last glimpse into the game’s modernization rode on the back of a muscular frog with a dashing hat. If you think the modern anthropomorphized amphibians look wild, prepare for the wonder of the 1999 Froglok. Place a striking feathered cap on top, and you’ve got an image that sticks with you. The developers intentionally led this unfortunate sacrificial lamb and its feisty pet mosquito to a fight they intended to lose. After our fashion icon died, the team showed me how the reimagined spawn system set the character just outside the battle, in a safe zone, to make it easier to jump back in. Also, while we were sadly slain, there’s no need to worry about a corpse run or regaining experience points.

EverQuest Legends seemed to me to be a large undertaking, but the developers are sailing through it. In fact, they have an ambitious launch target already set. The team hopes to release this blast from the past to new and old fans in July.