It’s hard to believe that it’s been five years since I first set foot in EverQuest Online Adventures on the PS2. My brother James and I recently commented on how we had fun with it despite its somewhat primitive graphics. My wife recalls me playing it and calls it “the running game” because you’d basically have to run everywhere as a low level character.

The game is still around in the form of its one expansion, Frontiers, which is still under development here. A tidbit near the end of the July 2008 issue of the Official PlayStation Magazine has me thinking we might see the EQOA franchise or its even better, long-lost hack-and-slash cousin Champions of Norrath again.

The issue has a five-star review of Metal Gear Solid 4, a review I won’t read at all to avoid spoilers, and on page 95 they simply say in an “Ask Kratos” blurb that there will be an EverQuest game on PS3. They don’t say if it’ll be an MMO or not, or if it will be a new Champions of Norrath game which, you’ll recall, first had a subtitle for its first chapter named “Realms of Everquest”.

I’d take either if the online portion were free, but a current-generation Champions game would fill a very important void in the PS3’s lineup. I consider it downright criminal that SOE didn’t buy Snowblind outright and get to work on a PS3 Champions game after Champions: Return To Arms was done, despite the one or two minor bugs it had with elemental effect stacking. Here’s hoping we got some high-definition hack-and-slash with even better online play than Champions: Return To Arms had.