For the first content update for Janthir Wilds the team was tasked with creating a new raid. This raid has three bosses, each being owned and designed by three respective designers. I was to design everything else, this meant the connective tissue for the raid to function.

I had just made two new titanspawn for this same update and most of the initial work for the raid bosses had been done. With an extremely small window to make this new raid, I built out a lot of the base under the direction of a designer, who was designated as my lead for the project. This designer was was the most familiar with the process of creating a raid for the game. I collaborated with this project lead to ensure we had tight knit communication throughout the process and made sure to voice any immediate needs / blockers.

Since a lot of this implementation work in the engine was brand new to me, such as setting up NPCs and dialogue, I also reached out to members of the design team who were more familiar for some training. This became a rapid cross disciplinary training project which needed to hit feature complete in two weeks, but I was able to lean into my rapid prototyping background to get it done in time.

With the direction of my project lead, I was able to get the most needed components in and have the raid working within a short time frame. These components included, the minibosses, the event sequencing, the npc logic, progress tracking systems/scripts, the enemies across the map, level specific interactions, and more. I then playtested and iterated, then polished over and over again for the remaining weeks. Many of the systems were bug tested a lot for a massive amount of possible edge cases.

Due to the ability for players to choose between two bosses to fight first, this introduced a lot of design and implementation complexity, which also then created testing complexity. This was also a test of my skill in polishing and repeatedly testing my own work before QA could get a build. I learned a lot about what kinds of things to test for and what to prohibit players from doing.

Overall this project was demanding but I learned a lot about how to ensure a fun raiding experience and also how to utilize enemies in quests / miniboss fights.