WildStar

WildStar was a massively multiplayer online RPG set on the fictional planet Nexus — a vibrant, science-fantasy world built by Carbine Studios and published by NCSOFT. It launched as a subscription game in 2014 before going free-to-play in 2015. The world was rich, the player base was passionate, and the design challenges were unlike anything I'd tackled before.

As content designers, my team shaped the storyline, character backstories, dialogue, and gameplay systems — including rules, scoring, and difficulty tuning. We also designed the game's UI: menus, settings, customizations, and interfaces that needed to react dynamically to environments and player exploration. It was design at the intersection of narrative, systems, and real-time interaction.

Online multiplayer was our most ambitious feature — and the hardest to ship. It touched every part of the stack and depended on factors outside our control: player hardware, network reliability, server load. Defining "done" for a live feature that's constantly evolving was a new kind of design challenge, one that required letting go of perfection and leaning into iteration.

The work didn't stop at launch. Our team shifted into maintenance, patches, and downloadable content — keeping the experience fresh while fixing what needed fixing. We ran a thorough post-mortem to capture what worked, what didn't, and what we'd carry forward. All design documents, assets, and code were archived for potential reuse in future projects. It was a masterclass in the full lifecycle of game design.