New World Guide

Built and maintained the leading third-party companion platform for Amazon's MMO "New World" — more complete and faster than the official wiki. Consistently top Google rankings across all game-related queries. 24 repositories across the organization.

Scale

• 100k+ unique users/hour at peak during game launches
• 100–150k monthly active users steady traffic
• 16,000+ items, 5,000+ creatures, thousands of recipes indexed across 9 languages

Data Pipeline

Reverse-engineered undocumented game data formats with no official documentation — binary PAK archives (Oodle decompression via FFI), proprietary datasheet format, CryEngine 3D models, nested loot table structures. Continuously adapted the pipeline as the game updated.

Designed a TypeScript ETL system with 11 converters for 28+ data types. Key challenges: recursive multi-level loot table/bucket resolution with tag-based conditional filtering, probability calculations across nested weighted pools, perk scaling formulas with gear-score-dependent attribute math.

Built asset extraction: PAK file parser, CGF→Collada→glTF 3D model conversion, DDS→PNG texture processing, rarity-based icon compositing.

Website Features

• Item detail pages with 15+ conditional tabs, gear score slider with real-time stat recalculation, recursive crafting chain viewer, loot probability trees, and iframe-based tooltip system
• Interactive character builder: per-slot gear score control, weighted perk probability display, ability tree dependencies, 3D model preview (React Three Fiber), community build sharing
• Expedition/mutation system (10 difficulty tiers), creature database with per-level scaling, trade skills optimizer for 17 professions
• Community features: rich text comments with @mentions and Discord webhooks, image gallery with moderation, articles via Strapi CMS + Editor.js

Infrastructure

Handled 100k+ unique users/hour on a dedicated Hetzner server: 20 Next.js instances with load distribution, mostly static/cached responses. Eliminated database reads for page serving — replaced MongoDB/PostgreSQL with pre-generated JSON files for speed, blue-green zero-downtime deployment.

Full SEO: hundreds of thousands of static pages, 9 locale-specific domains, JSON-LD, dynamic OG images, chunked sitemaps. Twitch extension: game-aware stream overlay with broadcaster config.