Although there were still five days until the closed beta ended, although players were still having a grand old time in the vast region between Transia and the Blackflame Pass, and although the organizations under Lord Qin were working at full tilt to select 150 suitable members for their "infiltration enterprise"...
None of that changed the fact that Murphy, a "core member" of the development team, had already started preparing planned updates to the game content of the True Otherworld.
He'd gone to Old Flywheel to redesign the second-generation player interface in order to optimize the UI and improve the players' gaming experience.
He'd gone to the gods to schmooze for "altar upgrades" so the players wouldn't get beaten too badly after the Black Calamity broke out, and could enjoy themselves a little more.
Even after completing those two tasks, Murphy's dog of a job as a game planner was still nowhere near finished.
He first had to arrange all the new NPCs introduced during this period properly, preferably writing each of them a short introduction and planning out their future quest chains.
The Blood Dread Pirates would definitely lead into the Misty Sea storyline. The Mummy Girl was connected to the "unlocking quest" for the Land of Origin and the Sanghai Empire, and was also responsible for establishing the shaman class system and strengthening the death-force system. Old Flywheel would certainly be the one to upgrade manufacturing engineering and kick off the Chardo Port quests.
Those three were top priority.
One step down was Julia the Goatkin, who could tie into the Abyssal City of Vydia and Baphomet's Nightmare Cult. She could introduce the next stage's "major gameplay feature": the "roguelike" exploration mode in Baphomet's Great Labyrinth.
The Goatkin hexer system Julia brought with her could also help address