Albion Online News

Queen, the next major content update for Albion Online, will bring wide-ranging changes to the world of Albion. Foremost among these is a complete redesign of the Outlands continent. Along with new game systems like Hideouts and Open-World Territory Conquests, this redesigned continent will bring new sandbox possibilities to high-level play in Albion.

In our most recent Dev Talk, Game Director Robin Henkys and Level Designer Dominik Müller discuss the what, the how, and the why of the reworked Outlands:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ONquGyh6jc
No time to watch the video, or prefer a written summary? Read on for all the details:

In our last Dev Talk, we discussed the massive improvements coming with the Queen update. Today we’re going to go more in-depth with the key change: the new Outlands map.

With Albion’s next major update, we're going to change the shape of Albion’s gameworld for good: we’re bringing in an all new Outland map which will revolutionize high-level gameplay and deliver the foundation for Guild Hideouts, as well as the new Open-World Territory Conquests.



Before we get into how awesome the new map is, we’ll first cover what happens when the old Outlands go away. Many of you are probably wondering what will happen to your stuff and how this process will go down. We don’t know the exact timing of this change yet, but we will announce it at least a month in advance, ideally a month and a half. We’d love to do it earlier, but with the complexity of this change we just can’t be sure of the timing until we’re pretty much ready to go.

• When the time of the world change is announced, you’ll have to start thinking about evacuating your belongings from the Outlands.
• We’re planning to automatically evacuate any items you have in personal banks and guild vaults in territories or siege camps - players will have access to these items in the Royal cities.
• However, any buildings and contents of furniture chests will be lost if you do not evacuate them by the time of the change.
• We’re also trying to find a way to evacuate laborers and Marketplace contents, but we’re not sure if and how these will work yet - the exact rules will be announced with the final announcement of the world change timing.

Apart from items, we’re of course evacuating players as well: any players remaining in the Outlands at the time of the change will find themselves in a city on the Royal Continent and will be able to use the Outland portals to travel to the new Outlands.

Now we’ve got that out of the way, let's talk about the big change itself: the new Outland map.

Our designer Dominik Müller has been busy the last couple of months planning the details of this change. I asked him to show you what he's been working on, what you can expect from Albion’s new Outlands, and why this is such a big deal.


When we created the old Outlands, we had a very symmetrical and clean, and therefore very balanced map in mind. It was defined by repetition: "next to this T5 area there must be a T6 area, and therefore a castle.”

The new Outlands will be far more complex, as we are breaking many of our current conventions. We want to change the way players see the world, and move away from repeating patterns. The world has become a lot more varied: now you can find T8 areas next to T5 areas, or a mountain area surrounded by steppe, or your castle far away from the center of the Outlands.

Yet you can still learn and understand the map, as there remain clearly visible and tangible rules: for example, the closer I am to the center of the map, Avalon, the higher the density of high-tier areas and the greater the possibility for high-value activities. But of course, the higher the value of an area is, the harder it will be to defend.

What exactly does this do for us? Well, first, it literally reshuffles the board, as big contestants become more vulnerable with greater power creating a constant flux, while there will be smaller skirmishes around more achievable areas thus creating a map interesting for everyone.

As you can imagine, there are many things to consider:

• How deep in the Outlands do I want to live?
• Do I have access to all the resources I need?
• Do I have access to a good farming spot?
• Do I have sufficient access to farms to produce food?
• Can I make an impact on the season from here?
• How well-protected am I here?
• Who are my neighbors? Will there be conflicts - or the chance for an alliance?

For those without a guild or a Hideout, there will also be three new Outlands "cities". These are essentially small towns (similar to the "starter" towns), consisting of a Marketplace and a Bank. They are located in the middle zones, between the portals at the edges of the continent and the high-tier areas at the center, and offer safe spots to trade and regear.

With Caerleon's portal breaking down, the Royal cities will also rise in importance, as their portals are now the only way to reach the new Outlands. They will use a triple portal system, which should allow for safer entry into the black zones, while also allowing the portal areas to remain a feasible hunting ground.


We also took this chance to greatly increase the number of different prime times for zones. There are now seven prime times in total, and I'm happy to announce that these will include viable times for our Asian and Australian players. Prime times will occur at 0:00, 3:00, 5:00, 12:00, 15:00, 18:00, and 21:00 UTC. The number of areas in a given prime time directly relates to our player numbers during these times, ensuring that content will be distributed as fairly as possible between players.

This redesigned continent will have a ton of opportunities for conflict and new stories, and will allow players of different levels and with different interests to lead all sorts of lives all over the Outlands. I can't wait for this map to be filled with life, and see what you guys will do with it. 

We're very excited about the new Outlands map, and are very much looking forward to seeing the new strategies and gameplay styles which will arise from it. We are also very interested in hearing your feedback on the new Outlands, so please share your thoughts with us via our forums.

We’ll keep you updated on the progress of building the new Outlands in upcoming Dev Talks, but that's all for today. Stay tuned for more videos on the next major update!

This referral season, we have something special for you: for just one referral, you can get your very own mount skin! The Occult Cougar skin gives your Swiftclaw base mount a dark and deadly look as you stalk through the wilds of Albion - and once you've unlocked it, it can be used by all characters on your account forever!

On top of that, you can earn huge amounts of Fame for your third and fifth referrals: three referrals scores you a T7 Pile of Tomes, worth a whopping 100,000 Fame, and five referrals gets you a T8 Pile of Tomes, granting a colossal 200,000 Fame. And as always, your first-ever referral grants a T8 Pile of Tomes in addition to the Occult Cougar skin!

The current referral season lasts until maintenance on December 1, so you've got until then to refer your friends and claim your rewards. (Note that the Occult Cougar skin requires a Swiftclaw as a base mount.)

• Send your referral link, which you can find here, to a friend. (You must be logged into your account on the website to view this page.)
  
• Your friend registers an account and starts playing Albion Online (preferably along with you!).
  
• The first time your friend purchases at least 30 days of Premium, they will trigger a reward for you.
  
• On top of that, for your very first referral ever, you'll receive a T8 Recruiter's Pile of Tomes, worth a whopping 200,000 Fame.
  

Fall has come to the world of Albion - and the Harvest Challenge is back! For the entire month of October, earn Challenge Points to collect limited-time rewards. This time around, on top of your very own Spectral Bat mount, you can get an all-new avatar border and Halloween-themed costume items:

THE BAT IS BACK: This month's Challenge offers all players another chance to claim the amazing Spectral Bat. In addition to its spooky spectral looks, this winged menace comes with a powerful Blink spell that allows you to jump to a target location in the blink of an eye. (Note: like all mounts, the Spectral Bat cannot fly over obstacles or gaps.)

NEW AVATAR BORDER: This month you can also unlock the all-new 2019 Harvest Challenge avatar border featuring a pair of eerie, grinning skeletons. This non-tradable permanently unlocks this spooky avatar border for one character, allowing you to show it off all year round!

SEASONAL SPECIALS: All month long, reach weekly goals to unlock Harvest Challenge Chests. In addition to valuable rewards like Adventurer's Tomes, Silver, resources, and other loot, you'll also have a chance to unlock spooky vanity items like Pumpkin Heads and Skeleton Costumes.

As always, you can earn Challenge Points by gathering, fishing, farming, and killing monsters. Points count simultaneously toward a daily bonus, a weekly unlockable chest, and the monthly mount and avatar ring reward. So log in, head out into the open world, gather points, and claim these rewards while they last!

Prior to working at SBI, what was your background in music and audio?

I studied Sound Design and Music Composition at the Film University in Potsdam while working as an audio engineer recording bands and all sorts of audio content in the beginning. By the time I finished my master’s degree I was already working full-time in game audio.

Before joining SBI I have been freelancing as a composer and sound designer focussing on games for 4 years and collaborated with several Indie or mobile studios. The games ranged from simulators and apps to tower defense games like Happy Tuesday’s Hero Defense: Haunted Island - but none of them was an MMO, so entering SBI was a new and interesting challenge.

What was some of the earliest audio work you did on Albion Online? How has your process changed since then?

When I joined Sandbox in early 2017, a lot of the heavy lifting regarding the sound and music had already been done. Albions audio design vision always had two opposing goals: getting the best sound possible while also having it work smoothly on different systems including mobile devices. I spend the first months fixing audio bugs, getting an overview of which parts of the game’s sound were not on par with the rest, and reworking them.

As we have been bringing in new content with every update, I’ve also been in charge of the audio for everything new. One of my first creations was the sound design and the voices for the Morgana Torturer - who I still enjoy encountering because he brought a fresh facet to the Morgana ranks. While reworking the audio of individual mobs is a fairly small and easy task that brings more variation and narrative to the game (and which is still ongoing, because some of our mobs deserve some more love from my side), my responsibilities and the size of the tasks I tackled grew bigger and bigger over the last two years. The first huge rework I did was a complete redesign and extension of all the physical weapons auto-attack and impact sounds.



Back when we launched the game, we used a more general set of attack and impact sounds for all physical weapons. There were differences between weapon classes, like the bows having a different attack and impact than the melee weapons, but one could not hear a progression going from an Adept Weapon to an Elder Weapon – even though the size of the weapon almost doubled visually – and there was no big difference in sound whether a weapon cuts, pierces, or punches.

I wanted to give players a better feel of how heavy, fast or elegant their weapons are and enrich the fights with a greater variety of sounds. The new system has specific attack sounds tailored to the handling and damage of each weapon, as well as different sounds depending on their size, with uncommon weapons like the Grovekeeper having their own sound sets. Also there are now different types of impacts (blunt, pierce, cut, arrow and bolt) and different levels for each, and the timings of the sounds have been tailored to the animations – which was a system rework on its own.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tOFlcqEq2Y
There are a lot of other things that have been reworked since then, but there are also a lot of areas that still can and will be improved.

What is your general approach to audio design, and what specific steps do you take to make the game's sound feel more immersive?

Sound and music are the most powerful tools to convey emotions, which are crucial for immersion - so I look at every element and analyze what it really is about and how audio can help emphasize that.

Albion has a distinct style and story world and balances conveying the significance of every action with its own sense of humor. The audio supports this emotional range and helps to create a world that feels plausible and real, rich and interesting, and also reflects whether something is important or funny. Thus it can range from graveness to absurdity and has to be crafted deliberately.

An example of one end of this range and the power audio has is Conquerors Hall. I loved the idea to have an actual place where people have “physical” proof of their glorious deeds instead of a plain leaderboard. Its sole purpose is to honor the players’ achievements and thus the audio is solemn and all about creating a sense of awe. While the visuals are already impressive and beautiful, the sound helped to give it a feel of solitude but also a lightness, so it won’t seem like a graveyard. Without the music, it did not feel important though. So I also wrote a short piece of music to create a feeling of reverence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYHRp0wJgBQ
Audio is usually supposed to go hand in hand with the visual design and animations used for certain characters, but it can also contrast or enhance the story world. You can go and ride into war on a powerful and elegant warhorse - or choose to mount a pig for whatever action you are up to - and while the horse needs to sound elegant and strong, the pig just sounds ridiculous (and cute). With the city NPCs, we took the chance to add more narration and character to Albion by adding voice-overs. We had lengthy discussions about each character, what they should say and with which attitude. I am very happy about how peculiar each of them turned out. We have the same discussions about every new mob and every rework on the existing mobs - to add narrative depth and variety to the story world. We are constantly working on enhancing those to make the game’s sound more immersive.

Because each player forges their own destiny in Albion, it is also important that every action they take feels like it matters. The audio supports that by adding “oomph” to their actions (with the degree of intensity linked to the severity of the action) to give the players a feeling of power and growth. Crafting, gathering or fighting all need to sound bold and satisfying, and when in combat, the weapon sounds should tell you its characteristics and intensities. E-spells are the most powerful, so they have to sound accordingly mighty compared to a Q-spell.

Do you have a favorite character, creature, or spell audio in the game?

Definitely! Of the City NPCs, I particularly love the Tanner and his mix of moroseness and offhand bad jokes. Being a tanner in a middle-age fantasy setting must be quite a challenge for the nose! But he is more than just a grumpy old dude and I always have to smile whenever I hear him cursing the flies, whilst walking past him.



Another creature I really like is the ram mount. It was one of the first mounts with an enhanced sound set including its own speedboost and movement voice. The ram does not really like to be mounted, and as goats sound ridiculous when they scream… that’s what the ram does when it starts running.

You've also written music for some of the game's trailers and videos. Can you walk us through that process?

For the last 4 updates, I was responsible for the whole audio of the trailers, including the music. The update trailers have a certain workflow that is different from other videos we create, as we have a limited time span for their production between the content lock and the update release. This constraint defines our process. First, we decide on an overall concept and “story” for the trailer. Then I usually create different versions of music edits as temp tracks to align our vision regarding the mood and attitude we want to convey. This helps to establish a language and make sure that we all work toward the same tone.

As most of our trailers feature a voice, I often record a layout voice to get a rough feel for timings and so we can iterate on the text and timings too. When we have a proof of concept I either record our “Voice of Albion” Shaun in my studio or hire remote voice actors when we need different roles/characters to get the voice-overs done.

As soon as we have the final voices and settled for a temp version of the music, Our video editor starts recording video material and I start writing the music. I use the temp tracks we chose as a reference for speed, mood, and climax but always try not to get too close to them and make the trailer sound unique. Therefore I start with a similar tempo and then compose the key elements like rhythm, harmony, and melodies with the goals in mind that we set for the different sections of the trailer. Because of the musical style of Albion the instrumentation for the trailers is mostly orchestral yet digitally produced due to time restraints.



When I have a first rough-mixed version I send it over to the team and they iterate changes they want. As soon as the only change requests left are mixing issues, our editor starts to edit the video material to the music. We usually have a few iterations of the music, as well as the video edits. When the video is finished it lands on my table again, to create the sound design for the visuals and make a final mix of all audio layers.

While some voiceover actors work remotely, Shaun Lawton (profiled in a recent article) lives and works in Berlin. What is it like working with Shaun in the recording studio?

Shaun is a very kind and reliable person, which makes it a pleasure to work with him. As soon as you place a microphone in front of him he instantly delivers the warm and disarming narrator voice that shaped our trailers. We can then very quickly focus on nuances regarding the emotions within the stories and dynamics and speed. He has a distinct narrative style that transports a feeling of magic that I never heard in any other voice before - which makes my job as the engineer and director in that situation pretty easy.

Anything else to add?

When you play Albion, you will encounter several situations where you can hear my voice or those of my close friends. I also try to hide at least one of them in each trailer and so far I've succeeded. Want to be immortalized in a game? Keep your audio friends close!

Stay tuned for more Dev Spotlights in the coming weeks.