EverQuest Legends: A Journey Through Gaming Nostalgia

I wasn’t shocked when I received the call about my dad’s impending death, despite our long estrangement. He had battled addiction for years and ultimately ran out of time, just as he ran out of chances to mend our relationship. About 15 years after we last spoke, my aunt and uncle held the phone to his ear — 1,400 miles apart, with me in Connecticut and him in Nebraska — allowing me to say my goodbyes. I’ll never know if he truly understood my words, but as I watched the waves crash along the Long Island Sound, I cried and told him I loved him. I forgave him for things he likely never forgave himself. After hanging up, he passed away, and my thoughts drifted to EverQuest.

Dad gifted me EverQuest for my birthday in 2000, just as I was starting high school. He brought it home with a big smile. At the time, EverQuest was one of the pioneering massive multiplayer online roleplaying games, though the box simply labeled it as “fantasy.” Years earlier, we had explored Sierra Online adventures on MS-DOS, but EverQuest was a whole new world.

We were instantly hooked. My brother played a Wood-Elf Ranger, my dad took on the role of a High-Elf Wizard, and I chose to be a Human Magician. In my dad’s small one-bedroom apartment, powered by CompuServe dial-up, we had to share the game. If you’re familiar with MMOs, you know that sharing a single computer can be a tricky situation. Taking turns in an MMO is almost unimaginable today, akin to a bizarre challenge from a popular content creator. Yet, we made it work.

Our home was already set up to appreciate epic battles. Dad was a huge fan of Lord of the Rings. I vividly remember him taking us to see the second movie after we had all gone to see Titanic in theaters, as fantasy was a big enough deal to warrant a rare outing. He often shared lessons from cinematic battles, like the one from Braveheart: “First, learn to use this, then I’ll teach you to use this,” says William Wallace’s fictional uncle, tapping his head before wielding a broadsword. These moments gave him a way to express vulnerability, something I wish he had known was okay.

Thanks to Dad’s decision to buy one of the first MMORPGs, EverQuest became one of the most significant gifts I ever received. I ended up spending over 10,000 hours in EQ and its sequel, with most of that time not even spent playing the game itself. I forged friendships that transcended borders, connecting with people from diverse backgrounds around the globe. In EverQuest, you could be whoever you wanted, and it felt like a rare online space where everyone just wanted to be themselves.

These friendships kept me glued to the game, even at the expense of my school grades. Explaining this to my parents was tough; they couldn’t grasp why I would spend a month hunting a digital winged horse in South Karana just to collect a Pegasus Feather Cloak for an epic quest. Eventually, I did capture the legendary Quillmane, but only after weeks of befriending a higher-level Ranger who helped me track it down. We stayed in touch for a while.

Grades aside, I learned more from EQ than I did in many classrooms, including how to type over 120 words per minute out of necessity. You had to quickly alert your party when a mob was on the way to wipe everyone out. It was a great way to avoid taking a typing class.

So, I was thrilled to hear that the current owners of EverQuest, still going strong after 27 years, are rebooting the original. I’ve had my issues with the franchise since it was sold off, but something special is happening here. The new EverQuest Legends is backed by the developer of Project 1999, a fan project that revived the early experience through emulation and custom code for those who were there from the start. It’s not quite on the level of a major studio acquiring a popular modding team, but it’s still significant.

I had already played Project 1999 and found it to be one of the best digital preservation projects ever. It faithfully recreates the original game with some custom enhancements. But more importantly, as soon as you log into P99, you’re welcomed by players eager to share free gear and connect with someone who shares a similar background. It’s a place where like-minded individuals gather, and I’ve often joked that if I end up in a retirement home, I’d be reliving EverQuest.

Thanks to a closed beta code from the developers, I logged into EverQuest Legends last week. I have a list of complaints about Legends, mainly because I feel it doesn’t aim high enough. The “quality of life” improvements are noticeable only to those who have been hooked on the game since 1998; anyone else might think it’s an outdated relic and uninstall it immediately. After 24 hours of gameplay, I remembered why I kept returning for years.

Back in 2000, I dove into the adventure and surpassed the other players in the household. Dad, once a smart and ambitious former Marine Corps officer, set his sights low in EQ, and I’ll never understand why. At a time when the max level was 60, he settled for a level-12 existence, camping Orcs on the unofficially named “Orc hill” just outside the tree city of Kelethin in the Greater Faydark zone. While my brother and I explored nearby Crushbone Castle, the Orc stronghold, Dad was content to stay put as if the battle had never been won.

For the 90 minutes we allowed him to play without pestering him for our turn, he did his best on that hill, dual-wielding a beer and a cigarette in one hand and the keyboard in the other, channeling his demons to vanquish another world’s foes. Occasionally, a friendly passerby would interrupt him, forcing him to work on his keyboard skills, responding with single-finger typing long before voice chat became the norm.

Eventually, Dad hit the experience cap for slaying lower-level creatures, effectively freezing him in time within the game. Having studied philosophy instead of joining the armed forces (sorry, Dad), I recognize this as akin to The Myth of Sisyphus. Dad climbed Orc hill repeatedly, likely aware he wasn’t making any real progress. (Addiction, in its many forms, has a similar feel.) I like to think Sisyphus found some happiness on Orc hill, but I wonder if he truly did. I never saw him engage in the one thing that really mattered in EverQuest: making friends. While I can barely recall quest recipes, I’ll always remember the late nights spent talking to strangers who were willing to open up and share their hearts. I wonder if he ever snuck on late at night while I was asleep to do the same.

EverQuest Legends is similar to Project 1999 in that it’s built around a dedicated community of players who will keep returning for years to come. While this makes it a challenging endeavor to attract new players, it’s also endearing. In an era where major gaming companies struggle to make live service games work, EQL is a blessing for those who grew up with the concept at the right time. This place was real for you, and it still can be.

The biggest irony is that EverQuest Legends is designed to be more solitary than its predecessor. It offers powerful solo-playing options that allow players to progress through much of the game alone. Aside from the global chat channel, I’ve noticed that players seem less chatty overall, which is expected since you don’t need others as much as before. It’s a smart move for a dwindling player base, but it also suggests that the magic of the original may fade the more it’s revisited.

I’ve often thought that if I had unlimited resources, I’d buy the rights to EQ and reboot it myself — that’s how much this game means to me. But as I grow older, EverQuest Legends feels less like a chance to revive an old game and more like an opportunity to keep a cherished community alive. Until death do us part, but at least now without the hassle of retrieving your own corpse. There’s a quality of life improvement.

Even though I rarely thought about Dad in recent years, I always held onto the hope that if we ever reconnected, I could share with him the advancements in video games. The stunning graphics, immersive set pieces, and depth — now rivaling what we expect from great films. Just to see if there was a spark in his eye like the one I had. Maybe to see that grin once more.

Now, I just wish I could have shared his favorite place with him again. A small part of an old game where he would have felt right at home at level 12, guarding the tree city against the forces of Orc hill. It brought him joy. And now, it’s one of the last places I can visit to remember him.