Not all players in Everquest are allowed to group with each other. A player's level sets him or her apart from other players of much higher or much lower level. A player then must learn to socially adapt to his or her peers (players around the same level) in order to gain levels by cooperatively complete quests and slay monsters. In Everquest, the world is divided into zones that suit the needs of different levels of players. For example, there are zones that have monsters who are powerful enough to give adequate experience to a level 15 player but would be impossible for a level 6 player to kill or futile for a level 30 player to kill as he wouldn’t acquire any "experience," points required to level up. In this way players have to keep their level up with their peers or else they will fall behind and end up away from their usual grouping partners. Although this can lead to highly addictive competitive playing to reach the highest level the fastest, it also teaches players a valuable social skill of adaptation to new people.

Other players usually look at a character's level even before they look at his or her name. In order for players to escape this sort of general categorization they often seek membership with various guilds, virtual societies that form within Everquest that unite players and expand the classification of characters by their level alone.