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Maria Haskins

Maria Haskins is a Swedish-Canadian writer and reviewer of speculative fiction. She lives just outside Vancouver with a husband, two children, several birds, a snake, and a very large black dog. Her work has appeared in several publications, and is also available in her short story collections Wolves & Girls (2023), and Six Dreams About the Train (2021).

“Quite Deadly” – Death, Dying & EverQuest in 1999

Gaming /

On March 16, 1999, a Massively Multiplayer Online game (MMO for short) called EverQuest was released into the world. Like thousands of people around the globe, I logged into the fantasy world of Norrath on that day and did not leave for several years. It was a world shaped by the usual Tolkien and D&D inspired ingredients—quests, elves, dwarves, ogres, trolls, monsters, good and evil, adventure!—but while I’ve played a lot of computer games in my life, no other game before or since has claimed as large a chunk of my heart, soul, and time as EverQuest did.