Sony Online Entertainment will partner up with NCsoft to promote EverQuest in Korea and other Asian territories, including Taiwan and Hong Kong. NCsoft is known in the Asian market for the success of its MMORPG, Lineage: The Blood Plague, which is currently subscribed to by more than 4 million users.

Sony Online hopes to expand the online gaming community by making games, such as EverQuest, available to players worldwide. "NCsoft is the perfect partner given its knowledge of the Korean game market, its own success with Lineage, and its direct access to millions of gamers from day one," said Kelly Flock, president of SOE.

Sony Online is also working to implement in-game chat translation tools so players can effectively communicate across international language barriers. EverQuest was originally launched in February 1999 and currently boasts more than 400,000 users worldwide.