There was a Everquest game released on the PS2 around 2003, with an expansion pack released later in the year. It was a pretty fun game, and I remember playing it for 4 years. The game looked like crap, but there was always something to do, and like most MMOs, it was pretty grindy.

Also, this game had one of the funnier commercials when it was released...

I guess no one else did, then.

Yeah I played the European version for quite some years. I remeber SOE completely ignored us and we only got 1 frickin update. I bought the NTSC version to be able to get to level 60. If my PAL PS3 could play US ps2 games I would probably play it again for the nostalgia. Too bad it's impossible.

The funny thing is that the game's servers are still running, 8 years after it was released.

The European servers have been closed quite a while ago, but yeah the US servers are still open. It's not a bad game at all, but the support has been horrible.

I had no ideea this game was also released on PS2.

I wanted to, but never got around to it.

I doubt it, but it did have a pretty decent-sized userbase before it went down the crapper probably two or so years after the expansion pack was released. The devs did try to keep new content coming, but there was only so much you could do with the game being on PS2. I still believe the servers for the game are still running, since people on the official forums still seem to be playing it (posts are from recently, like a couple of days ago).

I think the mega grind that was the Class Mastery system, coupled with a lack of metagame content drove players away from the game. I know when I quit, there were only a good 4-5 good raids for guilds and the like in the metagame, with some of them taking a good portion of the day to even get anything done. That was another of the game's problems, some of the quests were so horribly designed, since I swear the game went through staff quick.

Overall, it was a very fun game while it was popular, and I would love to see a similar game released on the PS3. There was a total of 6 servers when the game was released, but I think most people only migrate to one now. Also,  a lot of people right before I quit ended up having multiple accounts and using multiple characters at once, so it was slowly dying from that point on.

I never heard of a ps2 version and I played Everquest for 4 years.
I did play the excellent Champions of Norrath spin off. A genre that's severely lacking this gen.

How did it even work on the ps2? Could you connect a keyboard? Quests were all initiated by talking to NPCs by typing keywords, which made them that much harder to find.
Did the ps2 already have a headset? How did you communicate with each other?