For homebodies who lack interest in camping, traveling, and traversing this mundane world, there is an online alternative – the world of gamers, with Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Games such as Skyrim and World of War Craft, which appeal to more than adolescent males, but can become so addicting and consuming that therapy groups have been developed to help players cope with leading a balanced life. One such online role-playing game, EverQuest, was glibly called “EverCrack” after a rash of businessman quit their jobs, and one player attended the game so obsessively he died from lack of nourishment.
Well EverQuest is back, and offers a difference from Skyrim and World of Warcraft in that the world itself can be damaged in battle, as players can knock out bridges to slow down pursuing enemies, or leave scars on the ground with their battles. Not that everything can be destroyed, or the players would turn the entire game into a gravel pit.
“We have a city called Qeynos, and if everything was destructible, it’d be a parking lot in no time because players would blow everything up,” said Dave Georgeson, EverQuest Next’s director of development. “So what we’ll do instead is we’ll have things that are player-destructible and monster-destructible and not destructible.”
For those addicted to such games, every innovation is felt as a marvel, an add of realism to a fantastic and hypnotic realm. Professionals who focus on their jobs all day might find such a game a relatively inexpensive alternative to actual travel and real world adventure.