Anniversary Edition

Posted by Stropp on March 10, 2009

Everquest was released, just short of ten years ago, on the 16th of March 1999. If you haven’t heard there’s been quite a bit of talk about it over the last month, and SOE are planning some tenth anniversary events to celebrate Everquest’s birthday in about six days time.

It’s pretty cool that Everquest has lasted this long, despite losing a lot of subscribers to its sequel Everquest 2, and of course to World of Warcraft. There’s not even a sign that the game is in decline, expansion packs are regularly released, and the developers make sure they keep the game up-to-date (even if some veteran players aren’t too happy about some of the changes.)

As an aside it’s a model I wish other developers and publishers would adopt. If Everquest can last ten years, surely games like Tabula Rasa and Auto Assault could as well.  Warhammer devs, plz take note!

But Everquest isn’t the only veteran MMORPG celebrating a tenth anniversary this year. Asheron’s Call is as well, having been released on November 2nd, 1999.

Now I haven’t been following Asheron’s Call that closely over the last couple of years, but I still have some fond memories of that game. It was my first MMORPG and is responsible for introducing me to MMO Gaming and therefore ultimately responsible for this blog.

I’m not really sure how healthy the game is, or if Turbine have been updating the story as regularly as they once did – the devs used to update the story with a patch every month, adding new content and lore, something they’ve also adopted for LotRO but not as regularly.

While EQ is drawing folks back in for the tenth anniversary events, I haven’t yet heard any announcements from Turbine for a similar celebration. It would be great to see something happen here.

Have you heard anything about the Asheron’s Call anniversary? If so, please let us know in the comments below.

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