| rdfs:comment | - The Zones of EverQuest are fictional areas within the fantasy EverQuest universe, the setting of the video game EverQuest, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game. This setting includes the fictional world of Norrath and its associated locations which are divided into more than 400 "zones". Zones are areas that can be accessed by players, and are connected by "zone lines"; crossing a zone line is called "zoning" (a mechanic that was reduced in the sequel game, EverQuest II)) and can take anywhere from several seconds to several minutes, depending on the player's computer and connection. Zones are the smallest unit of seamless playable area in the game, and are stored on the player's hard drive. An area such as a city might be comprised of two or three smaller zones (a la Freeport)
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| abstract | - The Zones of EverQuest are fictional areas within the fantasy EverQuest universe, the setting of the video game EverQuest, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game. This setting includes the fictional world of Norrath and its associated locations which are divided into more than 400 "zones". Zones are areas that can be accessed by players, and are connected by "zone lines"; crossing a zone line is called "zoning" (a mechanic that was reduced in the sequel game, EverQuest II)) and can take anywhere from several seconds to several minutes, depending on the player's computer and connection. Zones are the smallest unit of seamless playable area in the game, and are stored on the player's hard drive. An area such as a city might be comprised of two or three smaller zones (a la Freeport), while a large zone might contain an entire small city and a vast forest (a la Greater Faydark). Zones represent a wide variety of geographical features that can be found in EverQuest, including plains, oceans, cities, deserts, and alternate planes of existence. To quote IEEE Spectrum author, David Kushner: "Once your character is complete, it's time to venture off into one of EverQuest's dozens of elaborately detailed virtual worlds, which contain whole continents to explore. Within the worlds, there are "burgs" to suit every kind of player—from hack-and-slash arenas where players take on other players to communal hubs for swashbuckling guilds." With the many expansions for EverQuest released over the years, there is a noticeable difference in the appearance of older zones and newer zones. Newer zones tend to have more advanced graphics and some advanced features such as interactive objects or scripted events with non-player characters. One feature introduced in Lost Dungeons of Norrath is "instanced zones" where a group of players can have an "instance" of the zone all to themselves, and a large number of instances can exist simultaneously. Because EverQuest is constantly being updated by downloadable patches and has currently seen fourteen expansions, categorizations of zones are likely to be out of date or incomplete.
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