My Role on The Elder Scrolls Online
I joined the team at Zenimax Online Studios as an intern focused on The Elder Scrolls Online's (ESO) basepop. I eventually moved into Encounter Design under the tutelage of experienced encounter designers. After getting a taste of implementing some simple quests, I was promoted to a full-time Content Designer, primarily responsible for writing and implementing quests. Overall, for the MMO installment of The Elder Scrolls, my duties included:
-
Utilizing in-house tools to implement content
-
Filling out the world with critters and people
-
Owning entire objective areas and staging them with enemies
-
Telling stories narratively and through the environment
-
Hooking up key systems like breadcrumb navigation
-
Working with many disciplines to deliver the final product
-
Drafting design pitches to present to leadership for new content
-
Refining the flow of quests through objective areas
-
Ensuring content fit with the overall tone and story of the Zone
-
Making sure quests worked for grouped players
-
Providing players interesting choices and interactions in quests
Basepop
My work as an intern with basepop encompassed going through wilderness areas, objective zones, and cities to place creatures and people to make the world feel alive. I had to stay within entity limits, which meant getting creative at times by placing things and giving them movement in ways that made a space feel more occupied than it was.
Old Gate
Old Gate was one of my favorite locations to work on. Narratively, it was the introduction to the Rivenspire zone, occupied by soldiers who had just suffered a defeat. I had fun staging NPCs and placing interactable soldiers to help sell the narrative setting. Near the entrance, I also placed Adusa-Daro, a named character for the zone, whose lines changed based on which quests the player had completed.
Encounter Design
The Encounter Design of ESO had a very clear style guide. After learning many of the tools while working on Basepop, I had the opportunity to do encounter design for many locations, mostly across the Daggerfall Covenant zones. Encounter Design was mostly about pacing encounters around expected and optional flow and staging them in ways that helped sell the location's setting. I worked on areas involving drunk bandits, active cultists, militaristic skeletons, and many more settings.
Quest & Content Design
As a content designer, I worked on quests and related narrative content and systems. Sometimes this involved reviewing existing quests and fixing bugs or updating them to meet new standards without changing the story or gameplay. Other times, I wrote a new story and designed the gameplay for an area, considering the zone and context. I have always enjoyed creating content that provides a tailored experience that still feels responsive and flexible to players.
Quarantine Serk
Quarantine Serk is the first objective area of Deshaan. I was asked to design the quest area with the goal of setting up the story and tone for the entire zone. I enjoyed creating a story and zone full of characters, with consideration for the local culture, and working through the challenge of telling a story that had to hit certain beats and deliver information that'd carry through the rest of the zone.
Adusa-daro Assassin Hunting
Adusa-daro is a character I created to go with the story of Rivenspire. Across multiple quests and pieces of side content, I shaped her personality through dialogue, flavor text, animations, and behavior. Adusa-Daro heads the Assassin Hunting quest line in the Rivenspire zone. I mapped out the various quests to tell a story that complemented but was separate from the main zone story and featured different narrative beats and gameplay.
Other Quests
I worked on many other quests during my time at Zenimax Online Studios. Some were other objective zones; others were minor quests, theater quests, or minor quests found in places such as delves.
-
Moira's Hope
-
Hinault Farm
-
Various Delve Quests
-
Saltwalker Militia Camp
-
Sep's Spine
-
The Crown of Shornhelm
Live Team
I was a member of the Live Team just after ESO shipped. My duties on the Live Team were to help track down prioritized bugs, address them, and ensure the public relations team had enough information to communicate updates to the community. I was on the Live Team primarily because I excelled at tracking down, understanding, and fixing bugs. I had strong technical skills with the game engine.
Craglorn
I was moved over to the team working on Craglorn, a new Zone for ESO, to help harden and polish the content. While I was working with established dungeons, objective areas, and stories, I was responsible for using my technical skills to harden and improve the functionality. Craglorn was intended to be a larger group zone full of more difficult content, so I was also challenged to play at a higher skill level than usual.