Essay revisits EverQuest as a family memory after a father’s death
The Verge’s TC Sottek tied the early MMO to memories of playing with his father, who bought him the game in 2000.
By James Whitfield · Staff Writer
2 min read
The Verge senior editor TC Sottek has written a personal account connecting EverQuest to his memories of his late father. The piece uses the early online role-playing game to show how a shared digital world became part of a family history marked by estrangement and loss.
Sottek wrote that he had been separated from his father for many years before learning that his father was dying. According to Sottek, his father had struggled with addiction for decades, and relatives helped arrange a final phone goodbye while Sottek was in Connecticut and his father was in Nebraska.
In the essay, Sottek said the call took place across a distance of 1,400 miles. He wrote that he could not know whether his father understood him, but he told him that he loved him and forgave him before his father died soon afterward.
The memory led Sottek back to EverQuest, the fantasy online game his father bought for him as a birthday present in 2000, when Sottek had just started high school. He described the game as a major change from the MS-DOS adventure games from Sierra Online that he and his father had played years earlier.
According to Sottek, EverQuest was among the first massively multiplayer online role-playing games, though the packaging at the time presented it chiefly as fantasy. The game launched a shared routine for Sottek, his father and his brother inside his father’s small one-bedroom apartment.
Sottek wrote that the family used CompuServe dial-up internet and had to take turns with the game. His brother played as a Wood-Elf Ranger, his father chose a High-Elf Wizard, and Sottek played a Human Magician.
The essay, published June 25, 2026, was filed in The Verge’s gaming and entertainment sections. The page identifies Sottek as a senior editor at the publication and notes that he has worked there since 2011.
The Verge article is partly a remembrance of a parent-child relationship and partly a look back at a formative era of online gaming. Based on the portion published publicly, Sottek presents EverQuest less as a game to review than as a place tied to family, distance and unfinished reconciliation.
This story draws on original reporting from The Verge.