EQ TV

Now, as much as I love drift racing I have not had much time to watch G4TV lately. I'm kidding, I don't know what drift racing is and I'm not sure what all those drift racing shows have to do with technology or gaming. If you remember this Tightening Up the Graphics on Level Three post you will know I do admit to watching X-Play.

Adam and Morgan do a pretty good job, although they need to review more games and cut back on the monkey throwing feces jokes just a tad. One show I rarely watch is Attack of the Show formerly ScreenSavers, if you remember the old Leo Laporte days. Since Kevin Rose (aka Sarah Lane's hacker boy toy) left to do his oh-so-dark-and-elite basement internet show about installing Linux in Teddy Ruxpin dolls it's gotten even worse. But occasionally, I turn in, hoping for a funny Brendan Moran segment. Okay, I just re-read that paragraph and I obviously watch way too much G4TV to know all that.

The point is, I did watch Thursday's episode of Attack of the Show, which taught people how to make animated gifs. Because if there's one thing the internet needs it's more people making animated gifs. I was fast-forwarding through the commercials when I saw a bunch of Everquest screens. Hmm. It turns out the show Icons is featuring Everquest. Of course I watch it.

Icons is a show about the "icons" of the gaming industry. To give you an idea of the target demographic, the poll they are currently running with the question "Who do you think is the most important figure in video game history?" has Miyamoto garnering 44% of the vote while Nolan Bushnell has 6%.

Now every other episode of Icons I have watched completely fawns over the subject matter. But, with SOE's luck, on this episode they decide to mix in a little "hard-hitting journalism" about Everquest addiction. That portion is very minor, though, and, on the whole, the show still had a quite positive spin. The theme of friendship is stressed throughout the show by the narrator and the SOE people and I think that is a valid theme. Smed comes off as a bit of a games nerd which is a good thing.

The show is only a half hour long, so they have to cram a lot in. They show the early history and discuss Ultima Online. One thing I found quite interesting is that Smed notes CyberStrike by Simutronics as something that inspired him to get interested in online games. I found that interesting because Simu was kind of left out of the MMORPG market for many years, although they did have much success with their text based MUD's. But now, they are going to be going directly up against EQ and EQII with Hero's Journey, which I previewed a while back. By the way, my first introduction to online gaming was on a BBS, but that's a story for another day.

I also had no idea that SOE released a tank combat MMO before EQ named Tanarus. They implied that it was intended to be kind of a tech demo to show the suits that they could do an online game but it turned out to be a pretty good game. What really shocked me is that I searched the SOE site and found that Tanarus is still going to this day. As you can see here, the forums are still hopping. I thought that was pretty neat.

The rest of the show covers the rise of EQ and shows a FanFaire. They don't really get into the expansions and they don't mention the secondary market.

The video segments of Everquest are pretty cool. If you played (or still play) I'm sure a lot of it will spark some nostalgia. And they do show a bit of Everquest II towards the end (focusing on the better graphics and the large amount of npc voiceovers) although they drop some negativity about the low subscriber numbers.

If you're looking to catch a repeat, here's a link to the official G4 Icons page for the show, rife as it is with banner ads and more EBGames links than actual content. On second thought, just look here for the times as Krones was kind enough to list them.

If any of you caught the Everquest Icons show, I'm curious to hear your reaction. And make sure to tune in to the Aggro Me show tomorrow as we're featuring our first ever post by a guest writer.