NEW WORLD: AETERNUM
Players discover supernatural secrets together across PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S, playing solo or using cross-platform play to team up with others.
Over the first 3 years of live development, we added an incredible amount and learned a lot. Feedback from players helped us streamline gameplay and improve, spending a year optimizing, polishing and readying Aeternum for this next phase. We added more endgame content including our first raid, the Hive of Gorgons, which is the culmination of our PvE experience, and a Free-For-All PvP zone the Cursed Mists, where adventurers can test their skills.
New World continued to grow, change, adapting thanks to player feedback, seasonal content, and expansive narratives. Since the game launched in September 2021, Aeternum now features more Expeditions, weapons, threats, zones, and game modes. There are also revamped main storyline quests and vast quality of life improvements.
My work included managing many different areas:
- Maintaining our onsite playtest lab and conducting whole studio playtests for all platforms.
- Producing Trials of Aeternum, our live promotional event for launch.
- Managing development of new creatures, most notably bosses for our first 10-player raid, Hive of Gorgons.
- Preparing out Social systems like chat, voice chat, friends management, and match-joining flow for console-readiness.
- The addition of our first new map, Coral Divide, for our popular game mode, Outpost Rush.
- Bringing dungeon bosses out into the Open World with Expeditions Unleashed events.
CONSOLE DEVELOPMENT
- I ran the playtest lab 7 days a week in the months leading up to Console launch, deploying builds to PS5 and XBox Devkits. I created guides on how to run the space in case of absence.
- Produced Social features like chat and voice chat in preparation on console launch, including console published compliance, coordinating with external vendors at Vivox to resolve issues, and prioritizing other bugs.
TRIALS OF AETERNUM
The launch of New World: Aeternum included three weeks of challenges spanning the shores to Shattered Mountain. We encouraged players to join forces with fellow PC, PlayStation 5, or Xbox Series X|S Adventurers and turn weekly achievements into highly coveted, exclusive rewards themed around the foundations of Aeternum. As players grew in power, they could track their team’s challenges, progress, and hard-earned spoils on the dedicated Trials of Aeternum page.
My task was coordinating between dev and publishing support including marketing and central to craft a rewarding experience for players to promote launch. I also coordinated with our Central Analytics teams to make sure the metrics we needed were clear. These would be essential to tracking progress as well as mass-granting rewards to the players according to challenge completion each week.
Beyond the basics of what items to award and which objectives to complete, we had to solve trickier problems like how to deal with potential bugs that might happen during the event.
I drafted a runbook for exact steps to follow and conducted rehearsals on PC and consoles during other full studio playtests. When bugs were found, we were able to prioritize and fix them for launch.
Had to pin down to a schedule. For our web development team. This team wasn't accustomed to worked with Project Management or schedule tracking so dove into learning about their process and coached them on breaking down the schedule into milestones for tracking. When this team fell behind, I was able to follow up with localization to mitigate those risks to delivery.
We also partnered with six legendary New World Creators to teach players our new series, Learn from the Legends. Players could learn more about combat, Expeditions, Player versus player (PvP) game modes, character progression, and Trade Skills.
My task for this event was gathering our internal leads and experts to give these creators the resources they needed for the best content possible, and coordinating this with our Marketing team in time for them to collaborate.
HIVE OF GORGONS
One of the most exciting new features of NW:A is our first-ever 10-player raid, the Hive of Gorgons. After defeating Medusa in Rise of the Angry Earth, the Gorgons have risen, and they’re raising an army of the Hercyne. Players assemble a powerful team to navigate epic battles.
Among endgame PvE content in New World: Aeternum, this raid is the pinnacle; a step above Mutators and more complex mechanics than the Sandwurm Trial. Our main goal was to layer together a lot of familiar mechanics, while raising the bar for both difficulty and rewards.
PvP Zone
The southwest reaches of Cutlass Keys became a lawless PvP zone, where the “Golden Greed” curse of La Esperanza’s treasure drives fortune-hunters to murderous madness. This new zone expansion strove to engage both PvP and PvE players fresh combat and a variety of new PvE quests.
In my role as AI and Creatures Producer I worked with our Codevelopers at Lost Boys Interactive to set an achievable goal with limited resources. Animation, Design, and VFX capacity was very limited with other higher priority features committed for console launch, so we simplified scope to three new variants of existing combatants for more than a dozen new open world enemies. This strategy focused on frugal visual changes that would still freshen up the zone.
CORAL DIVIDE
In this highly demanded and anticipated map update to our popular Outpost Rush game mode, players fight for control in a vibrant, ocean-themed arena designed to emphasize verticality, tactical flank routes, and intense center fort clashes.
Coral Divide takes Outpost Rush to a new level, introducing a fresh location filled with unique features and opportunities for epic battles. Driven by player feedback, I guided our collaboration between internal leads and our Codevelopers at Lost Boys Interactive through concept creation, building, testing, and iteration to bring this new battlefield to life.
My production included the development of the new feature as well as organizing our first ever preview weekend for Coral Divide, and the awesome rewards that would motivate players to participate and give feedback. The preview was an essential step in refining the map before its full release. This weekend is an opportunity to gather valuable player feedback, which will guide further adjustments and improvements.
With the first greyboxes from level design, I conducted a meeting between design, art, and our Creative Director to discuss our options for level direction.
For the preview weekend I coordinated with our rewards team to give players a highly valued item that would also keep the in-game economy stable.
I coordinated between dev and publishing support including marketing and central support. The preview weekend was heavily promoted, including support for participating influencers, so I fulfilled Marketings requests by lining up resources needed for promotions. This also included creating the in-game news modals with our UI team and coordinating with Localization to prepare for the event.
I wrote a runbook for how the event was to be conducted, including turning the map on and off for the duration of the event and analytics dashboard with info needed to drop the rewards to participants.
- We knew we wanted to have players on each platform competing amicably.
- Beyond the basics of what items to award and which objectives to complete, we had to solve trickier problems like how to deal with potential problems that might happen during yhe event.
Coordinated with Analytics teams to make sure the metrics we needed were clear.
I drafted a runbook for exact steps to follow and conducted rehearsals on PC and consoles during other full studio playtests. When bugs were found, we were able to prioritize and fix them for launch.
Had to pin down to a schedule. For our web development team. This team wasn't accustomed to worked with Project Management or schedule tracking so dove into learning about their process and coached them on breaking down the schedule into milestones for tracking. When this team fell behind, I was able to follow up with localization to mitigate those risks to delivery.
Before launch, I conducted final studio playtests including turning the event on and off and granting rewards to participating players, all while measuring server health for potential problems.
The initial preview weekend was a smash hit! With so many players jumping in, there was so much excitement that a lot of players just wanted the map turned on as-is. We opted for a bonus preview session, this time for a full week. While I rounded up feedback sentiments for the final polish.
EXPEDITIONS UNLEASHED
Players take on colossal threats during limited-time, open-world boss events. World Bosses are open-world, large-scale versions of iconic Expedition bosses. These timed events spawn across specific locations throughout Aeternum.
While these bosses retain their expedition roots, many of their attacks and mechanics have been rebalanced and redesigned to create dynamic, large-scale fights in an open-world environment. Scaled to threaten dozens of players at once, they needed thorough testing both for gameplay and perf & scale in the open world. My task was to schedule and conduct playtests, followed by triaging the emerging bugs.
While these bosses retain their expedition roots, many of their attacks and mechanics have been rebalanced and redesigned to create dynamic, large-scale fights in an open-world environment. Scaled to threaten dozens of players at once, they needed thorough testing both for gameplay and perf & scale in the open world. My task was to schedule and conduct playtests, followed by triaging the emerging bugs.