SONY ONLINE ENTERTAINMENT’S EVERQUEST® CELEBRATES ITS FIFTH YEAR AND OVER 2.5 MILLION UNITS SOLD WORLDWIDE
- North America’s Biggest Subscription-Based Online Game Is Five Years Old -

SAN DIEGO, CA – March 15, 2004 – Sony Online Entertainment Inc. (SOE), a worldwide leader in massively multiplayer online gaming, today begins celebrations in honor of the fifth year of EverQuest, North America’s biggest massively multiplayer online (MMO) game. Since its launch on March 16, 1999, EverQuest and its expansions have sold over 2.5 million copies worldwide and continues to be one of the gaming industry’s biggest and most influential titles. Translated into seven languages, with a global player base of more than 420,000 people, EverQuest is one of the largest and most dynamic online fantasy worlds ever created.

Fast facts about EverQuest
• Over 2.5 million copies of the game and its expansions have been sold in box or digitally downloaded since 1999.
• If stacked end to end, the total number of EverQuest boxes created would reach a height of more than 265 miles, which would stretch out of the Earth’s atmosphere and past the orbit of the International Space Station.
• EverQuest averages about 250,000 new subscribers every year. Currently, there are more than 420,000 people playing the game.
• At peak times, more than 100,000 people around the globe will be playing EverQuest simultaneously. Heaviest hours of operation for EverQuest are from 5PM Pacific Standard Time to 11PM PST, with the biggest days being Thursday and Sunday – traditionally, the biggest nights for prime-time television viewing.
• There are almost 12 million characters created by players within the game. Of these 12 million, more than 3 million have been played in the last six months.
• The oldest EQ player is 78 (part of three generations of a single family that play together from different states). The youngest is 9 (he plays with his mother and father).
• There are more than 1 million non-player characters populating the world of EverQuest, made up of nearly 400 unique types of creatures.
• Total play time for all current players in the game equals more than 184,000 years.

-- more --

• Only 17% of the characters played within EverQuest are human. 83% are comprised of the fourteen other fantasy races available in the game.
• EverQuest currently has more than 420,000 inhabitants, making the game’s population larger than 42 of America’s state capitals. Based on 2000 Census figures, EQ’s population is four times that of Berkeley, CA, Springfield, IL and Gary, IN; three times that of Pasadena, CA, Hartford, CT, Lansing, MI or Tallahassee, FL; twice the population of Orlando, FL, Des Moines, IA, Providence, RI or Richmond, VA; and roughly equal in population to Atlanta, GA, Kansas City, MO, Fresno, CA and Virginia Beach, VA.
• There are over 350 square miles of dungeons, mountains, plains, valleys, cities and forests to explore in the game.
• There are more than 40,000 unique items for players to discover, create or buy within the game. More than 3,000 of these items have never been discovered by players.
• There are almost 100,000 trees within the world of EverQuest.
• More than 1500 servers run the world of EverQuest, which is the equivalency of one of the world’s top 100 supercomputers. More than 18 miles of wire and cable connect all these boxes together.
• Over 10 quadrillion bytes of EverQuest data have left the SOE network in the past five years. That’s a ten, followed by 15 zeroes.

EverQuest allows players to create their own specialized characters by selecting from multiple races and classes, skills, physical appearances and names. With hundreds of perilous zones to discover and 7 enormous continents, the moon of Luclin and the extra-dimensional Planes of Power to explore, the fantasy world of Norrath allows players to embark on exciting journeys.