Raiding like it’s 1999: Why Daybreak thinks new players will try a 27-year-old MMO

The Everquest franchise is one of the industry’s true survivors. Launched all the way back in 1999, it was the first MMORPG to enjoy widespread commercial success, and was the defining example of the form until the arrival of World of Warcraft in 2003. The original game and its sequel, both of which switched to free-to-play over ten years ago, retain a player base and continue to receive monthly updates. This year, they will be joined by a sibling: EverQuest Legends, described as an “excavation and preservation project” that seeks to recreate the original experience.

Developed by Game Jawn, a new indie studio formed by veterans of the Everquest emulation scene, and published by Daybreak Games, the newly reimagined version of the MMO will enter closed beta before its July launch. Daybreak executive producer David Youssefi openly admits it’s inspired by the successful resurrection of other vintage MMORGPS like Runescape Classic and World of Warcraft, which also captured generations of gamers in the early 2000s, alongside EverQuest.

“There’s a big nostalgia play,” says Youssefi. “For us, EverQuest is old enough that it’s about preservation, too. It’s really cool to see the original game – it hasn’t been around for 20 years. Even though EverQuest exists, the original EverQuest was basically wiped away, and so we’ve brought it back from the archives and hopefully breathed new life into it.”

GamesIndustry.biz caught up with Youssefi, Game Jawn’s project director and lead engineer Eda Spause, and senior engineer Sean Norton to discuss reviving the original magic of EverQuest for both longtime fans and new players.

Youssefi describes the return to EverQuest as a “passion project,” having advocated for a more casual version of the MMORPG for years. “I know there are a lot of EverQuest players who dropped off who would go back if they could just jump in and it’s an easier game,” he says.

To revive EverQuest, Youssefi sought to collaborate with the emulator community and engage developers with a deep understanding of its history, lore, and mechanics.

“We’ve had an understanding with Sean, and we have the same understanding with Eda, with respect to their fan servers,” says Youssefi. “We knew that they’re out there and that they love the game so much and they have so much talent and passion that they actually run and build these private servers.”

“The idea was that because they had the passion, the expertise and the talent to do these things, I bet they could be a great development team.”

Appealing to original and new players

But who is the exact market for EverQuest Legends? Youssefi explains that they’re aiming to appeal to two groups: those who played the original “but couldn’t keep up with it because it was such a hardcore game,” and new players who have heard of EverQuest but thought it was “too daunting.”

“We’re hoping the general MMO community and gaming community will also be interested. We’re trying to make the game approachable and easier to play with more quality of life [improvements] so that players can enjoy the EverQuest universe and stick with the game. We’re hoping to bring in lots of new players that way.”

That includes letting players take on EverQuest Legends in a small group or solo. Groups are limited to four players instead of six, and raids have eight players rather than 54.

“We’re trying to get EverQuest Legends to the point where it’s for anybody. It’s truly a solo experience.

“We’re trying to get EverQuest Legends to the point where it’s for anybody,” says Youssefi. “A game like World of Warcraft had lots of content, so you could play by yourself. But you couldn’t tackle the endgame content, get the best gear, or really develop your character to the utmost without a guild or other players. Whereas in this EverQuest Legends, you absolutely can. It’s truly a solo experience.”

Eda Spause agrees, adding that she believes “a lot of people have fallen off the MMO genre.”

“It’s very hard to make an MMO in the current year. Our team has the knowledge and experience to make games to the point where we feel we can pull this off. We can also not just appeal to the nostalgia factor, but also those who have never really had an interest or had an interest but couldn’t dedicate the time or the effort into it.”

Spouse continues: “EverQuest is different enough from World of Warcraft to stand out on its own in itself, but making a version that’s also approachable means it can also distinguish and diversify itself as a niche. Maybe even more than a niche in the current market, where there are games that don’t cover not just this audience base, but also the audience that has been lost for so long – those that are clamoring for something that respects their time and that they have a legacy and history with.”

Maintaining the legacy of EverQuest

Game Jawn is keeping the old-school graphics and mechanics of EverQuest in Legends, which could be a hurdle for players who expect modern graphical fidelity. But Youssefi says there is a market for these aspects.

“I think there are a lot of people who are attracted to old school graphics and old school gameplay. There’s a market out there, and I think that even younger players and newer gamers like this kind of experience. And for them, it’s not really the graphic fidelity that makes the game fun or immersive. It’s the game itself. And sometimes these graphics are even more immersive and even more fun.”

Spouse highlights that this old-school approach is accessible to players who don’t have high-end PCs, especially overseas. “We think that’s going to help its broader appeal – I do think there’s an untapped market for that.”

“As games got a little more graphically detailed, we started to lose a little bit of style,” she explains. “A lot of modern games look similar… we completely understand that this won’t be for everyone. We’re putting our heart into what makes this great to us, and we’re hoping that our passion, as well as our experience dealing with the genre as a whole, will help shine through.”

Maintaining what fans expect from EverQuest is a priority for the team, but there is a risk of it becoming more like EverQuest on training wheels, softening the difficulty and making it more approachable. Is EverQuest Legends still EverQuest enough?

Senior engineer Norton says people will be surprised. “Those that haven’t played the game in so long and come back to play this, there are going to be things that they see that they forgot even were a thing back then. There are things like spell effects that were lost forever that we were also able to re-implement.”

Game Jawn was granted access to the official EverQuest code, archive, and servers, which led the team to discover items that had seemingly been lost to time.

“As Eda and her team would go through the code, they would discover, ‘Oh, there’s maybe a call out to a spell effect, but there’s no spell effect. Where could that be?’ And so they would work with us, and we would dig through old assets, old CDs, trying to find either the code or the asset,” explains Youssefi.

“Back in the day, the games industry did not really keep a lot of things in source control”

“We did a lot of excavating,” adds Spause. “Back in the day, the games industry did not really keep a lot of things in source control – a lot of these older games, especially, were lost to time. Our team specialises in engineering, art design, and a little bit of reverse engineering, which was required to restore some of these, using older versions of the Mac client to do so.

“We wanted to make sure to do this because we felt the authenticity of the game was just as important from the nostalgic experience as it was to the player experience. Especially for new players, because we see this a lot in games like Roblox. Even among Gen Z and Gen Alpha, you see a lot of people drawn to these games inherently due to the virtue of the games looking this way.”

As Youssefi notes: “EverQuest Legends hasn’t changed so much that it’s lost its magic. If anything, it seems like it almost recaptured the magic for players.”

The longevity of EverQuest Legends

Because EverQuest Legends is a reimagining of an older game, does Daybreak anticipate the running costs are going to be lower, or is it just as expensive to run a retro service game?

Youssefi says it depends on the audience size but believes it “will be on par with the original EverQuest.”

“It also depends on the size of the audience, how many servers, how much bandwidth, and then the size of the development team, because we’ll be selling expansions and adding ongoing new content.”

There will be a live service aspect to EverQuest Legends, which uses a monthly subscription business model. It will not be free to play – players can purchase the base game, which includes a one-month subscription, followed by a recurring subscription, which follows the original EverQuest model.

“We’ve obviously got all of the normal costs, so it’d be roughly akin to all of our other games at Daybreak,” says Youssefi. “All we do is big MMOs, so we know how to do it.”

As for Daybreak’s success criteria for EverQuest Legends, Youssefi says they do not have a forecast for how many people they expect to reach for sustainability, but expect more data once the game launches into beta.

“This is a scrappy, opportunistic project. We don’t need to have a massive audience.”

“Even if the game only does modestly by most people’s expectations, it would still be a success. It would still be profitable, because this is a scrappy, opportunistic project. We don’t need to have a massive audience, but I don’t think that a massive audience is something that is inconceivable either.”

Youssefi says the longevity of EverQuest Legends does depend on the reception, and that they are “committed to at least a first expansion.” As for whether they will commit to the game for two years and see how it goes, that’s less certain.

“Based on the data we have right now, we think it will be successful enough to at least take it into the first expansion near the end of the year. And then after that, of course, we hope it continues on.”