Game Design

 

• Design the layout of the new Outland Continent
• Distribute all gameplay templates
• Reassemble all areas
• Connect all areas
• Create the visual representation: The Worldmap
• Name all new areas

This was a massive task, as the whole world needs to stay in balance.
There can't be too much wood, or rock or low level areas.
Amusingly enough this balancing behemoth was slain by using excel.
I created an excel sheet that was able to create heat maps for me, showing me hot spots for different resources or gameplay elements.
This way I was able to playfully balance the entire map.

I was able to create a continent that became more valuable the closer you got to the center but still was rewarding enough around the edges.
This way we could make sure that big guilds would fight for center control while small guilds would move towards the outer rings.

This opened up many strategic options for our players, have the center but spent resources on keeping it? Or gathering vaster areas around the edges and win the economic game.

As soon as the map looked good to all designers and withstood several player feedback i was able to map all areas to new ids and could recreate the world piece by piece.

Worldmap

• Created a world map where each area has its own identity
• Only use existing meshes to create a vast variety but still be readable

One of the goals was to split the world into areas that could be easily recognized again.
Areas that belonged together would feature the same prefix: Wetgrave Bog, Wetgrave Marsh
Up until this point areas would have randomly chosen names
Additionally the prefix had to be represented on the worldmap.
So if something was called "Skylake" it would need to have a lake close by.