# Sony Online Entertainment - House: Studio - Date: Founded 1997 - Canonical: https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/sony-online-entertainment/ > Verant Interactive built EverQuest, the dungeon-crawling online world players nicknamed EverCrack; as Sony Online Entertainment and then Daybreak, it has kept Norrath running for more than a quarter-century. **Why it matters:** EverQuest turned the text MUD into a 3D commercial world and defined the Western MMORPG before World of Warcraft; the studio that made it became the longest-lived custodian of early online fantasy, eventually running The Lord of the Rings Online and DDO too. ## Quick answers **What is Sony Online Entertainment?** Verant Interactive built EverQuest, the dungeon-crawling online world players nicknamed EverCrack; as Sony Online Entertainment and then Daybreak, it has kept Norrath running for more than a quarter-century. **When was Sony Online Entertainment founded?** Sony Online Entertainment was founded in 1997 and is based in San Diego, California. **Who founded Sony Online Entertainment?** Brad McQuaid. **What is Sony Online Entertainment known for?** EverQuest. **What happened to Sony Online Entertainment?** Sold by Sony to Columbus Nova in February 2015 and renamed Daybreak Game Company; owned since December 2020 by the Swedish group Enad Global 7. ## History The house that built Norrath has had three names. It began inside Sony's American game studio, Sony Interactive Studios America, later 989 Studios, where John Smedley started an online role-playing project in the mid-1990s and hired [Brad McQuaid](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/brad-mcquaid/) and Steve Clover to program it. Sony Online Entertainment was formally established in December 1997 to run Sony's online games. When 989 Studios refocused on PlayStation titles in 1998, Smedley, McQuaid and Russell Shanks took the online team, with 55 other former 989 employees, into a new studio, RedEye Interactive, soon renamed Verant Interactive, in San Diego. Verant's game was [*EverQuest*](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/everquest/), released on March 16, 1999. Its designers, McQuaid, Clover and Bill Trost, had played text [MUDs](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/mud/) such as Sojourn and TorilMUD, both built on the DikuMUD codebase, and *EverQuest* rendered that tradition, with its classes, levels, camps and corpse runs, in full 3D. It became the dominant subscription fantasy world in North America, peaking at around 550,000 active subscribers at the end of 2004. In June 2000 SOE acquired Verant outright, and the Verant name faded into Sony Online Entertainment. ## Notable work *EverQuest* was the [Dungeon crawl](https://www.lanternhall.org/lexicon/dungeon-crawl/) made social and endless. Its world was deliberately harsh: death cost [experience](https://www.lanternhall.org/lexicon/experience-points/), corpses had to be recovered, and the best [Loot & loot tables](https://www.lanternhall.org/lexicon/loot/) demanded large groups willing to wait at contested spawns. That design created the vocabulary of the genre, including the [The holy trinity](https://www.lanternhall.org/lexicon/holy-trinity/) of tank, healer and damage, [Aggro](https://www.lanternhall.org/lexicon/aggro/) management, [Grinding](https://www.lanternhall.org/lexicon/grinding/) and the high-end [Raid](https://www.lanternhall.org/lexicon/raid/). Players called it "EverCrack," and in 2001 the economist Edward Castronova calculated a per-capita gross national product for Norrath that rivaled real nations, the founding text of research into [Virtual Economies, Gold Farming & the GDP of Norrath](https://www.lanternhall.org/culture/virtual-economies/). SOE built outward from Norrath. It released *PlanetSide* and *Star Wars Galaxies* in 2003, *EverQuest II* in November 2004, and later *DC Universe Online*, while continuing to add expansions to the original game. McQuaid left SOE in 2002 to found Sigil Games, whose *Vanguard: Saga of Heroes* (2007) SOE published and later absorbed. ## Legacy On February 2, 2015, Sony sold the studio to the investment firm Columbus Nova, and it became Daybreak Game Company, free for the first time to publish beyond PlayStation. In December 2016 Daybreak also became the publisher of [Turbine](https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/turbine/)'s [*The Lord of the Rings Online*](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/the-lord-of-the-rings-online/) and *Dungeons & Dragons Online*, developed by the new studio Standing Stone Games. Enad Global 7, a Swedish group, bought Daybreak for $300 million in a deal completed on December 22, 2020; it now runs *EverQuest* through its Darkpaw Games studio and *DC Universe Online* through Dimensional Ink. More than 25 years after launch, *EverQuest* is still receiving new expansions, over thirty of them in all. Its designers' influence runs straight into [*World of Warcraft*](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/world-of-warcraft/), whose designers included veteran *EverQuest* raiders such as [Rob Pardo](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/rob-pardo/), and through it into every [MMORPGs](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/mmorpg/) since. Few fantasy worlds have been lived in so long, or by so many people who first learned there what a raid, a pull or a wipe meant. ## Facts - Verant's founders included [Brad McQuaid](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/brad-mcquaid/) and John Smedley, who credited text MUDs such as Sojourn and TorilMUD, both DikuMUDs, as EverQuest's inspiration. - [EverQuest](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/everquest/) launched on March 16, 1999, and reached a peak of about 550,000 active subscribers by the end of 2004. - Sony Online Entertainment acquired Verant Interactive in June 2000 and folded it into SOE. - The economist Edward Castronova's 2001 study of EverQuest's Norrath estimated a per-capita GNP rivaling real countries, founding the study of [Virtual Economies, Gold Farming & the GDP of Norrath](https://www.lanternhall.org/culture/virtual-economies/). - Sony sold SOE to the investment firm Columbus Nova on February 2, 2015, and it was renamed Daybreak Game Company. - Enad Global 7 agreed in December 2020 to buy Daybreak for $300 million, completing the deal on December 22. ## Sources and further reading - [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daybreak_Game_Company) - [EverQuest (Wikipedia)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EverQuest) - [Daybreak Game Company (official site)](https://www.daybreakgames.com) --- From The Lantern Hall (https://www.lanternhall.org/), a museum of fantasy literature and roleplaying games.