An indie MMORPG

World Seed is an indie MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) built entirely in javascript, HTML and CSS. Kim, who I worked with, had started building the game about one year earlier and released the beta version of the game about six month before I got involved in the project. The game was fairly new and everything was built by adding new expansions. A problem with just adding new features is that they don't always go so well together with the earlier ones. Therefore I had quite a lot to look at in terms of UX and UI.

I began with getting to know the game and tried to identify some of the more obvious shortcomings and figuring out a good way to solve them. We were more or less only two people working on the project. And could make a new design and release it in a very short timeframe. The game has some really dedicated players and followers who came with fast feedback on the changes we made. After the feedback we could iterate and continue working towards a better game. This meant that we could work at a really fast pace and have a really fun time working with it.

In the next phase of the project I began to conduct user tests to identify some more and bigger flaws that could be improved. I started with user tests with new players who had never played the game before. We had a hypothesis that new players could be intimated and confused in the beginning of the game. I recorded the screen when the players did certain steps and tasks and then finished with an interview. By examining the data from the new players we could see if our hypothesis was correct and then tweak the game to make it more accessible for all players.

There was also some UI work that had to be done. First of all there was a new element in the form of lightning that was going to be introduced in the game. This element needed a new icon, and the old icons for the different elements were in need of an upgrade. And after a few iterations of different designs we were really satisfied with them, they were also very appreciated by the community. We continued with the different pieces of gear that the user can use in the game. The gear can be enchanted by the direntent elements. But so far there was no visual difference on the icons, instead you needed to read the description. I designed new icons for the enchanted gear, different colours that matched the icons of the different elements. These were the two biggest alterations in the UI but we also did some minor ones to get a lighter and more modern feel of the game