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WHISPERS IN THE DARK - PROJECT LEADER
Community Writing Campaign
"A cult, once thought dead, crawls back from their hidden places, eager to resume their dark designs for Azeroth. Their victory is all but assured, provided the focus of the world remains upon the demon invasion in the Broken Isles and not upon lands thought to be at peace. In their lairs, they whisper of only one thing- Ny’alotha, the sleeping city. They see it in their mind’s eye every waking hour, and each night, they dream of it. They are so close now, so very close to carrying out their plan... "
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Whispers in the Dark was a community writing campaign on World of Warcraft's Emerald Dream server designed as a follow-up to 2016's Shadows in the Sun. This campaign built on what the team learned about large event hosting after the prior project we worked on together, and we designed many elements to address flaws noted in the previous project.
I worked alongside a small team of four to host this campaign. I was the project lead, responsible for managing the team as a whole, as well as the lead writer for the majority of the quest documents we provided. We had a multidisciplinary team involving other writers, a graphics artist, and an outreach coordinator to help us work with the guild leaders within the campaign.
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One of the major flaws in Shadows in the Sun revolved around a lack of choice- once stories were started, they were unable to change them through the rest of the campaign. I introduced the Quest System for the first time, using a template created by our graphic artist to make cards for each mission. Guilds were able to select which one they wished to embark upon and then be given a document containing all the information and notes necessary to run 1-3 events related to their chosen quest. Using collaborative Google Docs, we wove each guild's experiences into the larger narrative of the campaign to affect things from week to week.
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Emerald Dream had a number of Twitter users at the time, with the platform acting as a space for people to network outside of the game. Additionally, many users were talented writers and posted stories to the server forums. In order to take advantage of this, we created a hashtag for Twitter users to post their photos and experiences from this campaign. Additionally, we encouraged participants that were particularly inspired by the events of this campaign to write stories based on their experiences! These pushes helped spread awareness of the campaign on Emerald Dream, as well as more heavily invest members into the stakes and story.
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Links:
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#TwilightCampaign Twitter Gallery
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Personal Portmortem
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PROJECT & PERSONAL HIGHLIGHTS
QUEST SYSTEM
This campaign first introduced the Quest System, which allowed guilds and groups the chance to forge their own story across the month-long campaign. Each one hooked into the overall narrative and gave each group a sense of impact on the campaign's outcome. Whispers in the dark had 59 unique quests, which culminated in a shared finale!
170+ PARTICIPANTS
Over the course of a month, participants on both the Alliance and Horde factions came together to battle the evil Twilight Cult! They were spread across 23 involved guilds. Many of these participants inhabited shared town spaces chosen for the campaign, progressing personal stories outside of the scheduled events.
QUEST WRITING
I wrote 45 quest documents for this project within a span of about 1.5 months. These documents were meant to offer enough content for individual event hosts to create anywhere from 1-3 storyline events out of. One of the most interesting aspects of this writing was reading back the descriptions of how the events went, and using that information to inform future events and alter them based off of it.
80+ PERSON EVENTS
I was the dungeon master for two 80-person finale events where my group faced down a terrible Lovecraftian monster! Working in tandem with my co-dm, we provided an immersive and gripping experience to bring all of the story threads together. Across both factions, characters of all stripes joined forces to defeat an evil cult and the primordial horror that they summoned.