In the land of Norrath in a zone called Sky, a brave group of forty adventurers are thirty-two Earth hours into a seventy-two-hour raid. They have cleared the fourth island of a hive of murderous giant wasps, each the size of three of our hearty band. They banter while their priests resurrect their fallen comrades. It’s late at night. Waiting for resurrection is slow. Flirtations and more abound:

Instead of an intimate whisper in Iceiallana’s ear, Sylvanar has detailed his actions over the loudspeaker, not only informing the raiding party he happens to be leading, but the entire guild, that his hand is on Iceiallana’s thigh and heading steadily North.

Misstells like Sylvanar’s can happen on EverQuest, one of many Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs). They are especially common during downtime, periods in which players can socialize while they wait for the server to do what it must. Players’ reactions to such misstells vary, as does the degree of open sex in each game. In World of Warcraft (WOW), for example, “role play” has degenerated into semi-naked avatars dancing in The Lion’s Head Inn, in Goldshire. Those of us who designed Ever, Jane: The Virtual World of Jane Austen wanted sex in our game to be a bit more discreet.

A Bit of Background

Ever, Jane is an MMORPG which is perhaps best described as a mashup of EverQuest and Jane Austen’s literary works. It was devised as a response to a shift in the MMORPG genre which, as a whole, had increasingly favored action and adventure, at the expense of periods of downtime that EverQuest provided. To me, an avid MMORPG player and lover of Jane Austen, it seemed like an ideal solution to the difficulty of finding good role play in MMORPGs. As a video game developer ready to branch out into my own studio after a wonderful career with Ubisoft, Sony Online Entertainment, and Linden Lab working on Second Life, I thought this would be a good first game. And Ever, Jane was born.