“My boss called me at 1 am”

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Developer Geoffrey “GZ” Zatkin was involved in the development of the original MMORPG Everquest 25 years ago. Looking back on the year 2000, he tells how different times were then compared to now and how he once triggered a shitstorm that got him a call from his boss.

Who is Geoffrey Zetkin?

  • Zatkin is one of the original developers of the legendary MMORPG Everquest, which became a small team in 1997. There was no template for the game, nothing to go by, it was experimental. Blizzard later took Everquest as a template to develop WoW.
  • Zatkin worked for Sony Online Entertainment for 6 years and was a “level designer and game designer” at the time – among other things, he was responsible for Everquest’s magic system, with over 850 spells (via LinkedIn).
  • After his time at Everquest, he pursued a variety of projects that were always related to MMOs and games.

    • With the new MMORPG Monsters & Memories, some developers from Everquest want to make an MMORPG “like before”:

    Monsters & Memories – Trailer for the MMORPG by the EverQuest makers is reminiscent of other times

    There was hardly any information about spells – just an Australian website

    This is what he says about his work: If you know MMORPGs today, you know that everything is styled and monitored. The developers of MMORPGs like New World, WoW or ESO are constantly evaluating data: players are transparent. There are also websites that list every developer post, evaluate every line of code and present all the information in a clear manner.

    It was different in the days of Everquest, as Zatkin explains in a conversation with PC Gamer:

  • If the developer wanted to know how people were actually playing his MMORPG, he had to log in with his GM account, cast a “super invisibility” spell, and then watch people play in-game
  • There was virtually no information on how spells work in Everquest itself. People just had to buy them and try them
  • The main source of information on Everquest was an Australian website, Caster’s Realm, which maintained a detailed list of the spells in the game: they apparently got the information by reading the test server’s patch notes. Apparently Zatkin didn’t like that at all.

    • Everquest celebrates its 20th birthday – why the MMORPG is so special

    On the test server all important spells of the classes nerfed – except for one

    This is what the developer says: Zatkin said he was joking with the fans and operators of the site peeking at patch notes:

    One year ago, around April 1st, I pushed a patch into beta where I nerfed every popular caster of every single class, except for the most important spell of a single class. I buffed him.

    The designer says he simply put the patch online at the time, without any further explanation. This was meant as a friendly reminder that the beta is for testing.

    Geoffrey Zatkin talks about his time as Magic Boss at Everquest.

    The Forums Are Burning – What Have You DONE?

    The reaction when the new changes in the Caster’s Realm beta were read out and then spread is probably anyone who’s ever played an MMORPG can imagine:

    That was the only time I ever got a call from my boss at 1am: Brad called me and said the forums are on fire, what have you DONE?

    This is a picture of Brad McQuaid, his boss at the time. The developer died in 2019: his MMORPG Pantheon is said to be a successor to Everquest.

    Everquest continues to have fantastic stories, largely because the online role-playing game was so different and so much “rawer” than the MMORPGs we know and play today.

    We reported on a special dragon on MeinMMO in May 2022:

    Guild awakens 22-year-old dragon in an MMORPG – upsets the entire server

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