Overview
In 1993, Brad McQuaid and Steve Clover were working regular IT jobs for a nursery when they began working on a game in their free time. After bringing Milo D. Cooper on board to do the graphics, that game would eventually become WarWizard for the Amiga. The game was an Ultima-style role-playing game with an innovative combat system. MicroGenesis released the game as shareware and ported the game to DOS in 1994. Sales totaled a meager $8000, but was enough to convince them to begin work on a sequel.
In 1995, they had enough of WarWizard 2 to put together a demo to present to potential publishers. After being turned down multiple times by companies like Epic Games, they decided to roll the dice and put their demo online for anyone to play in a last-ditch effort to find a publisher.
Several months later, the studio received a call from John Smedley, president of 989 Studios at Sony Computer Entertainment America. Smedley told them that they did not want to fund the completion of WarWizard 2. Rather, he wanted to hire them to help create a 3D, online, role-playing game. They took his offer, abandoned WarWizard 2, and went on to create one of the most influential games in history, EverQuest.
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