Gameplay
Many of the elements in EverQuest have been drawn from text-based MUD (Multi-User Dungeon) games, particularly DikuMUDs, which in turn were inspired by traditional role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons. In EverQuest, players create a character (also known as an avatar, or colloquially as char or toon) by selecting one of 16 races in the game, which range from humans (basic human, Erudite, and barbarian), elves (high elves, wood elves, and dark elves), half-elves, dwarves, gnomes, halflings, trolls, and ogres of fantasy, to cat-people (Vah Shir), lizard-people (Iksar), frog-people (Froglok), and dragon-people (Drakkin). At creation, players select each character's adventuring occupation (such as a wizard, ranger, or cleric – called a class – see below for particulars), a patron deity, and starting city. Customization to the character facial appearance is available at creation (hair, hair color, face style, facial hair, facial hair color, eye color, etc.).
Players use their character to explore the fantasy world of Norrath, fight monsters and enemies for treasure and experience points, and master trade skills. As they progress, players advance in level, gaining power, prestige, spells, and abilities through actions such as defeating capable opponents, looting the remains of defeated enemies and completing quests (tasks and adventures given by non-player characters (NPCs).
EverQuest allows players to interact with other people through role-play, joining player guilds, and dueling other players (in restricted situations--EQ only allows Player versus Player (PVP) combat on the PvP-specific server, specified "arena" zones and through agreed upon dueling).
The game-world of EverQuest consists of nearly four hundred zones.
Multiple instances of the world exist on various servers. In the past, game server populations were visible during log-in, and showed peaks of more than 3000 players per server.
The design of EverQuest, like other Massively Multiplayer Online Games, makes it highly amenable to cooperative play, with each player having a specific role within a given group.
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