In 1999, after UO, another game that set the tone for the development of online games came out, this is "Endless Mission". If you want to look back on the history of this game, it can be traced back to 10 years before its birth-in that year, three young people started their careers in the game industry, and when three people came together in the future, it gave birth to the EQ Development.
In 1989, John Smedley was an avid D&D fantasy game enthusiast. He joined ATG after graduating from university in 1989 to develop games for Apple's Apple II console. After developing a game, Smedley set up his own portal and established his own game company Knight Technologies to develop or transplant games for different developers. Later, he joined Sony as the studio director of 989 Studios under SISA, leading the team to develop sports games for Sony's most popular PlayStation series console.
Also in 1989, Brad McQuaid and Steve Clover established their own game company Micro-Genesis and started the first RPG "War Wizard" (War Wizard). ) Development. This is a shareware, which did not have any impact at the time. It just added programming experience for the two and provided some help for the two to enter the software development department of a nursery wholesale company... In the next few years , While the two work in the nursery wholesale company, while continuing their own game development work, which is the sequel of "Battle Wizard". This game completely changed the fate of the two.
Back to Smedley, in the two years before 1995, he had become an avid player of online games. Smedley was originally assigned to develop sports games at Sony, but after he became fascinated by online games, he also planned to make an online game—of course, his favorite D&D-themed RPG. Smedley applied to his superiors, but considering the online game environment at that time, SISA executives were not optimistic about the online game market.
The turning point occurred at the end of 1995. Kelly Flock enters SISA as the new leader of Smedley. With the idea of giving it a try, Smedley proposed to him the idea of developing an online game. In the end, the latter was infected by his enthusiasm and agreed to his plan. At this time, SISA did not have high expectations for this project, so the budget allocated to Flock was very limited, but anyway, Smedley's idea of developing online games can finally be realized.
At that time, SISA did not have employees developing online games, and it was difficult to dig out experienced talents from outsiders under a limited budget. Smedley began to look for talent among the developers of shareware. As a result, McQuade and Clever entered his field of vision at this time.
In early 1996, McQuaid received a call from Smedley on a rainy Saturday night, saying that he recognized the performance of "Battle Witcher 2" and hoped to invite them to develop a 3D online game together. Both McQuade and Clever were players of MUD games "Sojourn" and TorilMUD. They are basically familiar with the development principles of online games and have great enthusiasm for developing games. They are naturally willing to become professional developers. The two immediately left the nursery wholesale company and joined SISA in March 1996.
However, after joining Smedley’s team, the two McQueens discovered that they were the only two members; and this so-called online game project was in addition to the three goals set by Smedley (providing services based on the Internet, Supporting hundreds of people online and 3D engine games) is completely blank...
In terms of 3D engines, at the beginning of 1996, the DOOM engine of "Doom" was still popular on the market. Although the Build engine used in "Duke of Doom 3D" achieved effects such as jumping and 360-degree viewing, it was not 3D. The engine brings qualitative changes-the first true 3D engine that fully supports polygonal models, animations and particle effects will not appear until the release of Quake in June 1996. At this time, Smedley wanted to create a massively multiplayer interactive game with a 3D model and a 3D environment. It was a fantasy. From a commercial point of view, developing games with 3D engines was also a very risky thing at the time. At that time, only a few high-end graphics cards supported 3D acceleration, and the high requirements for computer configurations would discourage potential players. However, Smedley insisted on his goal during the development process. In the end, an important reason for the success of EQ is also the visual effects brought by 3D games.
After joining the team, McQuade and Clever started from scratch and immediately began to work within their own capabilities. Based on their previous rich experience in MUD and game development, the two completed an 80-page design document in a short period of time, including game mechanics, details of the online part, race and occupation, and a rough world setting (later Almost all the things in this design document are presented in EQ). Of course, no matter how great the two people are, they cannot make a large-scale 3D online game with their power alone. More people will join the project one after another. By the end of 1996, the EQ development team had a scale of 10 people.
Designing EQ's Nolas World was definitely a huge project at the time, and its final map area reached about 20 times that of the online game in the same period. In order to bring freshness to people, what the project team ultimately wants is an unprecedented fantasy world, rather than the reappearance of the old D&D. They designed the world of Nolas on the basis of D&D rules, and set up a variety of different characters according to their own preferences, such as the most famous and popular character in the game-the ruler of Freeport, the eternal overlord Lucan Delaire , Whose name comes from the knight they use when playing paper role-playing games.
Relying on D&D’s campaign and rule setting, Tolkien’s Middle-earth continent and the previous worldview settings of various MUDs, the development team put together the Noras continent piece by piece like a puzzle. Because EQ provides a brand new world, there is no past game as a reference, and no unwritten rules. The world of Nolas is full of various legends and customs, including traditional medieval fantasy stories and some ancient nationalities. legend. The Cazic Thule in the game comes from the legends of Maya and Aztec, and the capital of the human kingdom, Qeynos, is a completely interesting egg-the name is given by SONY+ EQ is made upside down.
Later, the controversial "Corpse Runs" design in EQ was also a design introduced by MUD at this stage. The world of EQ is very dangerous. If players act alone, they will often be killed by monsters. At this time, running a corpse is a very painful thing. After being resurrected at the resurrection point, the player is naked and must run to the corpse to retrieve his weapons and equipment, and will lose experience or even be demoted. If you die again in the process of running the corpse, the death penalty will continue-if the death occurs in some special place, it is even difficult for the player to retrieve his corpse. At this time, he can only "throw the corpse" into the wilderness. McQuade was questioned by some team members that it would hit novice players when introducing this system, but in the end he insisted on this setting. In his view, this is a setting that encourages players to help each other. Although it is a bit harsh, it allows players to establish interpersonal diplomacy with other players more quickly and integrate into the team.
After the EQ was officially launched, although the corpse running system was criticized by UO producer Raf Coster and others, it was still used by many subsequent online games as part of the death penalty. However, the planners have been unable to grasp the balance. For example, in "Star Wars-Galaxy", the cost of resurrection in place is less than running to retrieve the corpse, making this system meaningless. This situation was not improved until the advent of "World of Warcraft".
By the end of 1996, the EQ project team found that they were not the only team developing online RPGs. In September 1996, 3DO’s "Meridian 95" was put into operation, which was also a 3D graphics game (although it was only part of the 3D environment). ). The release of "Meridian 95" was tantamount to giving the EQ project team a heavy punch, but it also made the team members realize that their direction is right. After that, the team members did a meticulous research on "Meridian 95"-not as a competitor, but to learn the essence from it and find problems, and then provide guidance and help for the EQ project.
The development of things could not be smooth sailing. By 1997, a more serious problem appeared, this time in the engine. Unlike stand-alone games, online games cannot control the number of players in an area, and a large number of players may gather. At this time, the process of the game will be slowed down. The software rendering technology used by the EQ engine cannot solve this problem. Finally, Smedley invited an experienced member, John Buckley, who assisted the team in optimizing the character model and engine, and provided better support for the latest Voodoo and GeForce graphics cards. This problem.
Support for the number of people online is also a problem faced by the development team. The code of the online part is inherited from the online battle program of the tank shooting game "Tanarus" led by Smedley. On this basis, the development team expanded the number of online support from hundreds to thousands. However, this code is not friendly enough to support the TCP/IP protocol. In order to solve this problem, programmer Vince Harron wrote a UDP architecture to allow the game to run normally on the network.
After more than a year of development, EQ has begun to take shape, and SONY has also begun its external publicity work. At the 1997 E3 Game Show, SONY showed the public some of the projects in the EQ world, including Quinos City, Quinos Mountain, and Bleiboro Caves. This is an unprecedented visual experience of online games. Players are shocked by the graphic details and the depth of the game, and they are eagerly looking forward to the advent of this work, which gives the development team great strength.
Just a few months later, another exciting thing happened, that is the formal operation and great success of UO, which gave the development team greater confidence. At the same time, the problems that UO showed after operation, such as unlimited PvP, also gave the team some warnings, allowing EQ to firmly develop in the direction of PvE. In the opinion of EQ designers, if there is not enough game content for players to experience and only rely on PvP support, it is difficult to guarantee the long-term activity of players. Some players can only leave the game after losing interest in PvP. Therefore, PvE content It is the top priority of the game. During the player's level 1 to 50, there are countless items, areas and tasks waiting for the player to explore. Raid after the full level has become one of the biggest charms of the game.
However, EQ does not intend to eliminate the PvP system. The confrontation between players is also an important form of interaction. The designers introduced a heads-up system to help players resolve their disputes. In addition, what the EQ team learned from UO is the manufacturing system: Before UO was released in September 2007, the main gameplay of EQ was to kill various monsters and animals in the game, but the emergence of UO made them realize that they are keeping the core system normal. Under the premise, players should be provided with more entertainment options. Subsequently, the honor system and business skill system designed by Trost were included in the development plan, which enriched the functions of the final EQ.
Before the arrival of 1998, the number of EQ project teams increased to about 25, and EQ puzzles became more and more complete. In June 1998, the closed beta of the game began, first with friends and family, and then with more people.
The beta testing period is the most painful period for the development team. When a huge number of players flooded into the test server, the game world was completely destroyed. Players are looking everywhere for possible vulnerabilities in the game, creating all kinds of damage to the imperfect game system. Beta testing has exposed many problems, including server crashes, various bugs, some unbalanced settings and some code errors. The EQ development team In the remaining half a year, these problems were intensively repaired.
As 1999 approached, the development team finally recognized their project from the bottom of their hearts. After the evolution of three studios (SISA spun off 989 Studios and then became Verant Interactive), the project was finally completed. The rest is the stress test and officially launched on March 18, 1999.
At this time, almost all members of the development team knew that the game they developed would be a success. Before the game went live, countless players discussed this game on the Internet. Many players paid close attention to this game. The core players and media of all online games are eager to enter the game in advance and experience the magical world of Noras. In order for the game to go online, the members of the development team have worked hard. Many members have a daily workload of about 14 hours, and now they can finally take a break.
During the entire game development process, Smedley, McQuade, Clever and their team members did not consider too many commercial elements. They only cared about whether the game was fun and enjoyed the entire process of game development. Before the official launch, although Smedley and others expected the game to be successful, they did not expect such a huge success. They believed that the game could have 70,000 players and maintain a two-year life cycle. It was a success, but in the first hour of the game's launch, the number of players reached 10,000, and the server even went down. By the end of March, the number of players who landed on the continent of Nolas exceeded 75,000.
Unexpected this huge success, the bandwidth provider was seriously inadequate, the network in San Diego, where Verant was located, was almost paralyzed, and the game's servers were also down frequently, causing complaints from players. The development team spent several weeks identifying the problem and studying how to optimize the network bandwidth, and finally eased the situation 3 months after it went live. In order to compensate for players who cannot play normally, the development team has made a remedial measure to compensate users who have been online for one month of free game time, so that things get back on track. By September of that year, the game had sold 225,000 copies, which not only achieved great commercial success, but also formed a cultural phenomenon on the Internet that affected countless people.
Less than a year later, EQ's expansion pack "Ruins of Kunark" (Ruins of Kunark) came out, and the continent of Kunark appeared in front of players. After that, EQ was updated at the rate of one expansion in half a year (until it was changed to one a year after 2008), and the development of EQ2 also began to be launched until 2004. During this period, the two creators of McQuade and Clever left, Verant also experienced a merger with SOE, but the number of EQ players has been growing. By September 25, 2003, the number of registered players reached 450,000, making it the most influential online game in the same period.
After the success of EQ, SOE will hold a party for EQ players every year, which has become a grand stage for EQ players from all over the world to communicate. Every year, countless EQ players go on pilgrimage. On the occasion of the 10th anniversary of EQ in 2009, SOE also successfully applied to the San Diego City Government to designate March 16th as the legal "SOE Day", turning the EQ birth day into a legal holiday, setting a precedent.
On the 10th anniversary, when the game media IGN interviewed EQ creator McQuade, he told a story: After the EQ operation, he received a letter of thanks from a paralyzed child. The letter said He can't walk, but thanks to their game for allowing him to "run", this is the highest honor they have received. To this day, the world of EQ is still performing some touching stories every day, presumably this is the charm of an excellent MMORPG.