EverQuest

Brad McQuaid is an American video game designer who was the key designer of EverQuest, a highly successful massively multiplayer online role-playing game released in 1999. He later co-founded Sigil Games Online where he served as CEO and Executive Producer of Vanguard: Saga of Heroes until Sony Online Entertainment's acquisition of Sigil Games Online in May 2007. Brad McQuaid's start in the video game industry came in 1989 when he co-founded... MicroGenesis with Steve Clover. In their free time they created WarWizard, a shareware role-playing video game that they released in 1993. McQuaid and Clover then developed a WarWizard 2 demo in 1995, which caught the attention of John Smedley of Sony Interactive Studios America. Smedley hired McQuaid and Clover in 1996 to work on an online role-playing game, later named EverQuest. McQuaid started as the project's lead programmer but was made the producer and one of the lead designers. While EverQuest was being developed, Origin Systems launched Ultima Online in 1997 which became the top MMORPG. EverQuest became a huge hit and within months of its March 1999 launch it topped the subscription numbers held by Ultima Online.
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Sony Online Entertainment is a game development and game publishing division of Sony that is best known for creating massively multiplayer online games, including EverQuest, EverQuest II, The Matrix Online, PlanetSide, Star Wars Galaxies, Free Realms, and Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, DC Universe... Online and other smaller games in development. In 2008 Sony Online Entertainment’s game Everquest was honored at the 59th Annual Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards for advancing the art form of MMORPG games. In 2011, the service was brought offline after it was determined that its user accounts were compromised in attacks related to the ones that brought the PlayStation Network offline. Sony Online Entertainment's history can be seen as starting with Sony Interactive Studios America , an internal game development studio of Sony that formed around 1995. In 1996, John Smedley was put in charge of SISA's development of an online role-playing video game that would evolve into the MMORPG EverQuest.
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