I created the Sandwurm for Brimstone Sands in 2022 as the next evolution of large scale, emergent world spectacle in New World.
The Ghost Ship’s Legacy
The design lineage began with the Ghost Ship, a rare randomized open world event I developed for New World’s launch in 2021. The Ghost Ship appeared intermittently along the waters of First Light, drifting silently through select locations and rewarding players simply for being in the right place at the right time. It proved that unscheduled spectacle could create powerful moments of surprise, even without explicit objectives or rewards.
For Brimstone Sands, we wanted to escalate that idea dramatically. The desert setting gave us the opportunity to replace a passive spectacle with a violent one. Instead of a ship gliding across the sea, we envisioned a massive Wurm erupting from beneath the sand, launching into the air, then crashing back down with devastating force. The goal was to create awe, danger, and a sense that the world itself was alive and hostile.
The Sandwurm was one of the most complex open world features I have worked on. It required close coordination across world art, concept art, modeling, animation, VFX, audio, engineering, narrative, and design. The randomized spawning behavior alone presented significant technical challenges. I led the strike team responsible for delivering the feature, owning the design, documentation, placement, iteration, and testing process end to end.
The Process
Development began long before the final creature existed. We blocked in the system using primitive geometry and placeholder animations. I implemented early versions using temporary VFX, audio, and timing so that we could validate scale, sightlines, spawn locations, and server behavior before the final asset was complete. As each discipline delivered their final work, I integrated it directly into the live implementation and iterated until the spectacle felt cohesive.
The Sandwurm was authored with two distinct event states.
The first was The Glimpse. This animation was intentionally restrained. Much like a shark fin cutting through water, only portions of the creature break the surface of the sand. The intent was to suggest scale and presence without fully revealing the monster, creating tension and uncertainty.
The second was The Breach. This was the full spectacle moment. Inspired by whale breaches, the Sandwurm erupts completely from the desert floor, hangs briefly in the air, and crashes back down with enormous force. This animation was designed to be visible from extreme distances and to stop players in their tracks.
Opening Scene
When players first navigate to Brimstone Sands, they will spot the Sandwurm as the opening scene. This is a special, instanced-only spectacle that runs on player clients. Every player gets to see their first Sandwurm in the same controlled circumstance.
This was crucial to introducing players to the zone while showing them something they’ve never seen before. A great beast rising from the sand like a serpent in the ocean. The dust, sand, and crashing sounds as it dives back into the earth.
Players responded to this moment with joy.
See the video below for the first instanced Sandwurm encounter.
Design Reinforcement and Iteration
To reinforce the danger and reward of witnessing the event, we layered additional systems onto the spectacle.
- Rare gatherables burst from the sand during the emergence, including a unique mining node that could yield Gypsum, Orichalcum, and Starmetal.
- We also added lethal damage volumes to the animations. Players standing too close would be killed outright.
The result was chaos, often captured in player videos. The Sandwurm frequently appeared during unrelated activities, sometimes wiping out entire groups mid combat. One of my favorite authored moments involved placing a Sandwurm spawn directly on top of a public Corrupted Portal event. The convergence of these systems created emergent situations that players still talk about. Despite the deaths and disruption, the dominant reaction was excitement. Players consistently described the experience as unforgettable.
Iteration on the Sandwurm was fast and occasionally destructive. During internal testing, we reduced the respawn timer to just a few seconds on a developer build. This caused dozens of Sandwurms to erupt across the desert simultaneously and quickly crashed the server. Even so, the most common feedback from developers was not frustration, but enthusiasm. It was repeatedly described as one of the most impressive moments they had seen in the game, even while it was breaking everything.
Impact and Outcome
The impact of the Sandwurm extended far beyond Brimstone Sands. It directly inspired the Sandwurm Elite Trial and became a central pillar of marketing for the expansion. The creature appeared prominently in trailers, promotional art, merchandise, and internal branding. Over time, the Sandwurm evolved into a recognizable mascot for New World.
What began as an effort to push immersive world design forward resulted in one of the most iconic creatures in the game. The Sandwurm demonstrated that open world spectacle does not need quest markers or scheduled encounters to be meaningful. Sometimes, simply witnessing something impossible is enough.