Overview

Nighthaven extends New World’s late-game with a forested, gothic horror zone designed for dangerous-but-readable routing, repeatable combat pockets, and narrative threads aligned to seasonal progression.

• Defined pillars, experiential goals, and encounter arcs for the zone
• Aligned pacing with endgame progression, loot rhythms, and seasonal integration
• Drove the zone from concept planning through shipped live content

Readability + Mood

Silhouettes, sightlines, and low-light readability tuned to support navigation and combat clarity.

Landmark Logic

Navigational anchors that double as systemic beats, reinforcing route choices and player intent.

Zone Pillars

Every route, landmark, and encounter cluster was evaluated against a compact set of pillars:

• Danse Macabre: gothic horror, celebration of the dark, societal collapse, corrupt politics
• Dreams & Nightmares: psychic instability, unreality, memory, trauma
• Bounty of the Hinterland: farmlands, forests, wildlife, agrarianism
• Dangerous Folklore: fairy tales, bedtime stories, monsters as cultural inheritance

Process

• Authored the Zone Design Document covering pillars, encounter flows, traversal, and narrative hooks
• Laid out quest spines, side routes, and discovery pockets that support replayable loops
• Integrated seasonal systems and live constraints into the physical layout and route logic
• Drove cross-discipline reviews to keep player experience coherent across combat, narrative, and UX
• Developed reusable content pipelines including POI archetypes and kit-based layout reuse

Contributions

• Led a team of 6 level designers across 90+ Points of Interest with weekly reviews and check-ins
• Co-created MSQ map flow with Quest and Server teams to unify narrative, exploration, and traffic routing
• Concepted and implemented Tarot Cards collectible system based on Ancient Glyphs
• Implemented Soul Trial: Lilith’s Dream in collaboration with multi-discipline partners
• Worked with Server team to produce traffic prediction maps optimizing world population flow
• Conceived Castle Dracula as the largest interior landmark, and the Clocktower landmark that tells server time
• Wrote marketing article to set tone: The Chronicle of Nighthaven

Gallery

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Outcomes

• Shipped Nighthaven as a high-density endgame destination with a distinct gothic horror identity
• Delivered route logic and landmarking that supports readable navigation under low-visibility conditions
• Integrated exploration loops (Tarot Cards) to reward curiosity and repeat visits
• Aligned MSQ pacing and zone routing with seasonal constraints and live cadence
• Recognized with major end-of-year awards from MMORPG.com’s 2025 editor’s choice awards