RIP Brad McQuaid

Same here. I could never get used to the newer ones once they changed them.

It really was amazing how much they packed into EQ at release (pretty sure all of these were available at the beginning). Levitation, Swimming tied to skill for speed with enduring breath needed for extended stays underwater, jumping (yes even recent MMOs after had no jumping even!), crouching? to get through that little opening in Sol A!, invisibility to normal and undead, see invis, teleportation, lockpicking (although not really used til Kunark?).

I played this at release and remember it having tons of problems, but I was one of the lucky few that was able to play pretty much uninterrupted. Initial memories were of Leets and Eleets taunting you. I laughed my ass off! The weather and lightning storms and sky were amazing. Later on I would just run the random missions with my brute (large race, don’t remember the name) dual wielding 1 hand staves. The armor variations and chain stacking of implants to gain skill was always an intriguing system to me. I remember finally getting some cool flying craft eventually to fly to mission locations!
Lots of good memories.

My real good friend at work played AC with his son. We played UO a great deal together and while I moved on to EQ, he moved on to AC. We would always talk about our stories and adventures each week. He was my boss too, which made it convenient. AC sounded really cool, but I just didn’t have time to do both even though I did sub and made some characters there. After he had quite a bit of time invested, his talks of stacking buffs to become super powerful and taking on creatures like 50-100? levels above him always sounded neat.

My favorite part of AC was Old Man Murray’s beta log: http://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/727.html

An interview underway by a former EQ dev with other EQ creator, and another one coming up in a few days

https://www.reddit.com/r/everquest/comments/hw6kcb/upcoming_interviews_with_former_eq_designers/

Shawn Lord, also known as aVeryLovingRobot on Twitch, a former EQ designer, will be conducting interviews with other former EQ designers on his Twitch stream: Twitch

Doug Cronkhite (Elidroth) - Thursday, July 23rd 2020

  • Former EQ Game Designer, Systems Designer, and Asst. Lead (2007-15)
  • Game Designer, Vanguard

Kevin McPherson - Sunday, July 26th 2020

  • Former SOE Programmer & Designer on Kunark expansion (history, races, locations…)
  • Programmer: Vanguard, Planetside, Planetside Next, Planetside 2
  • Lead Programmer, Intrepid: Ashes of Creation

Both interviews are scheduled to start around 1pm EDT.

If you haven’t checked out any of Shawn’s streams yet, I highly recommend it. They are highly informative and cover a lot of great info about working on EQ and the early days of the game. He’s also very interactive with the chat and good about answering questions.

If you’d just like to catch up on the past 15 developer interviews he’s done, check them out here: Twitch

This is great thank you!

Seems like there should be a better thread for this than the one about Brad McQuaid’s death.

True, but honouring him by praising his game and his team isnt such a bad thing.

I don’t mean to be ghoulish in any way, but he died at 51. What was the cause of death?

It wasn’t made public.

Don’t know the cause. Quote by Elidroth from another forum: