Disclaimer: this is not an official guide to Wynn's history that is 100% accurate. It is simply a side project made by me, and there may be some inaccuracies present. If you find any mistakes, please tell me in the comments.
Wynncraft has been around for over seven years, and it has blossomed from a niche Minecraft community into a server with over a million unique players. So much has changed since this ambitious project first launched, and I am here to show you just how much this place has grown.Welcome to the Wynnic Archives, a massive guide dedicated to showcasing Wynncraft's past, present, and evolution. If you ever wanted to know what Wynncraft was like long ago, this thread is for you.
Needless to say, this thread is utterly massive, and is split into 3 separate posts. For your convenience, I have also included a table of contents.
❋ Table of Contents
POST 1:
- Timeline of Wynncraft - A simple timeline of all major events that have occurred on the server.
- How to Read This Thread - Self-Explanatory
- The Basic History of Wynncraft: The Early Years - A more detailed look at Wynncraft’s launch and it’s first few major updates.
- The Basic History of Wynncraft: The Gavel Era - A more detailed look at the year leading up to Gavel, and the aftermath of its release.
POST 2:
- The Basic History of Wynncraft: The Revamp Era - A more detailed look at the major updates that occurred after Gavel was released.
- The Basic History of Wynncraft: The Era of Professions - A more detailed look at the major updates in 2019 and onwards.
POST 3 (if you've read my previous thread, check out this section first!):
- Fun Facts About Wynncraft's History - Miscellaneous and mostly entertaining info about Wynncraft's past.
- Standout Forum Threads - Some of most notable threads on the forums history, compiled in one spoiler.
- What Was the Pre-Gavel Item System Like? - Wynn's original item system was so different from what it is today that it deserves its own section
- A History of Dungeons - Dungeons have changed a lot since Wynncraft first was made public.
- How Mobs Changed Over Time - The history of mobs in Wynncraft, and how they've become better over the years.
- The Evolution of Quests - How Wynncraft quests have gotten more advanced over time.
- The Games That Inspired Wynncraft - A look at all the games that have inspired Wynncraft.
- The History of Wynncraft's Community - How the community changed over time. My personal favorite part of this project.
- Credits and Sources
❋ Timeline of Wynncraft
[4/30/13] - Wynncraft Publicly Launches.
[6/29/13] - Pet Update/1.5 Released, which adds more endgame content, pets, and swarms.
[7/6/13] - Wynncraft posts its first trailer on Youtube.
[9/13/13] - The Quest Update/1.9 is released, which added quests and skill points.
[10/30/13] - The Ocean Update/1.10 is released, which added much more content.Forum Host Switches to Xenforo. - [11/25/13]
The Wynncraft Wiki is created. - [12/2/13]
The Spell Update/1.10 is released to public, which revamped all spells. - [1/24/14]
1.11.1 Released, which added the door to Gavel. - [3/5/14]
The Wynncraft Build Team starts publicly recruiting players. - [4/5/14]
[5/2/14] - The Wynncraft GM Team starts publicly recruiting players.
[7/14/14] - Beta testing for the Mob Update/1.12 begins.
[8/1/14] - 1.12 released to the public. Mojang updates and starts enforcing Minecraft's EULA.
[8/12/14] - /fixquests is added to the game.
[9/10/14] - Wynncraft's forums receive many new sections, such as the Planning Parlor.Gavel Week occurs, bringing us livestreams and many teasers. - [10/18/14]
A minigame called Wizard Fortress is introduced (I'm not making this up). - [10/31/14]
The Wynnter Update/1.13 is released, which added guilds. - [12/22/14]
Relics are finally implemented. - [1/20/15]
The WynnExcavation questline concludes. - [6/2/15]
[9/3/15] - The Gavel hype trailer is shown.
[9/7/15] - All forum threads got wiped.
[12/21/15] - The Gavel Update/1.14 is released, which adds... take a guess.
[1/1/16] - Veteran player Sovreigner becomes the first level 100 player.
[1/13/16] - Admins Crunkle and HiMyNameIsAJ leave Wynncraft.Raw Spell Damage gets nerfed, since it was technically bugged beforehand. - [3/25/16]
GM Tantibus teases Corkus under the guise of an April Fools joke. - [4/1/16]
Moderator Broettinger becomes the first level 101 player. - [4/1/16]
The Class Builds section is added to the forums. - [8/3/16]
Pretzule becomes Wynncraft's community manager. - [8/20/16]
[8/28/16] - The Gameplay Update/1.14.1 is released, which fixes issues and adds content.
[9/20/16] - Mojang updates their EULA once again.
[10/27/16] - The Hallowynn Update/1.14.2 is released, which adds crates and the HERO rank.
[11/20/16] - Grian livestreams the CT's work on the Corkus update.
[12/17/16] - The (other) Wynnter Update/1.15 is released, which adds a temporary event.The Wynncraft Discord server is created. - [12/24/16]
The Corkus Update/1.16 is released, which adds... Corkus. - [4/7/17]
Grian teases the 1.17 update. - [6/27/17]
Wynncraft sets a world record for the largest Minecraft MMORPG - [7/4/17]
Former admin jpresent begins his bugfixing spree - [11/24/17][11/30/17] - The way IDs are rounded gets changed, affecting every build.
[12/15/17] - The Dungeons and Discoveries Update/1.17 is released.
[7/13/18] - Event Manager Pepo attempts a complex ARG event called "The Factions".
[9/2/18] - Road to Dern is revealed to NOT be the next update.
[12/5/18] - Beta testing for 1.18 begins.The Economy Update/1.18 is released to the public, which added professions. - [1/15/19]
Wynncraft releases a new (and updated!) trailer. - [3/25/19]
Grian shows said trailer on Hermitcraft, causing a popularity surge for Wynn. - [4/2/19]
The Hardcore, Ironman, and Craftsman gamemodes are added in 1.18.1. - [6/7/19]
1.19 is revealed to be the Silent Expanse Update. - [10/27/19]
[11/11/19] Beta Testing for 1.19 begins.
[12/8/19] The Silent Expanse update is released to the public.❋ How to Read This Thread
((Name of thing that happened))
((Detailed Description. Dates are in bold and color, as of September 20th¹))
- Maybe a list, depending on the topic.
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((Name of other thing that happened))
((Stuff))
¹ - ((Link to Source))
❋ The Basic History of Wynncraft: The Early Years
The History of CM
CM is an abbreviation for CraftedMovie, a former minecraft server and inactive youtube channel. We owe a lot to CM, because without it, there would be no Wynncraft.
The first CraftedMovie video was posted in 2011, and you can recognize Salted, a founder and administrator in Wynncraft, as one of the actors in it.
The CraftedMovie would go on to create many skits and videos, with a very notable one being the Misadventure on the Sea trilogy, which included a villainous mooshroom man named Peppered. You may also see a guy with a Link skin in several of CM's video thumbnails: that is actually Grian, before he switched over to a plain red shirt.
Craftedmovie also had a survival server by the name of... CraftedMovie, and as far as I remember, you had to be whitelisted to join. This led to a smaller, but more tight-knit, community. I was never on CraftedMovie myself, but there is a thread with screenshots of the server here. From what I can tell, the place had a rather vibrant community, worthy of its own history thread written by someone far more knowledgeable than me.
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The Creation of Wynncraft
One day, Salted got the idea to make a full-on MMORPG in Wynncraft. This was an incredibly ambitious idea, and one that he managed to rope Grian, and the developers Jumla and Crunkle, into doing. He also got two web developers by the names of Tama63 and HiMyNameIsAJ to help him. They're both currently retired from Wynncraft work, and they also both had pig-themed skins, which is kinda odd.
The people I've listed so far weren't enough to make an entire MMORPG on their own, however. They needed help. So they enlisted the people of CraftedMovie to build an overworld and a few dungeons for them. Some builders even got towns named after them: Nemract for instance is named after a guy named Cartmenezzz. Salted himself has actually compiled the birth of Wynncraft in this now-archived thread, and I highly recommend you give it a look. I was shocked to find some very familiar faces in the chat.
While the builders worked, Crunkle and Jumla coded, and gradually, Wynn's basic features were created. From very early on, the same trade system used today was made, which goes to show that some things never really do change.
Wynn's old map was very simple, both in terms of what you could explore, and the builds themselves. There were only 3 dungeons and five cities. Beta testing began in March, hence why some players have March 2013 as their join date in the stats page. The official release happened on April 30th, 2013. Unless you were active in CM's community, you probably didn't even know Wynncraft was a thing. A video about the server wasn't even posted on CM's youtube channel. The number of players on the server at first had to have been low, but that didn't matter. Wynncraft was one of the most ambitious experiments in Minecraft, and testing was about to begin.
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Wynncraft's Launch
2013 Wynncraft had minimal content in comparison to 2020 Wynncraft. Banks, Soulpoints, spells, and trading were the only real features around at the time. Even Identifying wasn't added until May 28th. There were only 5 cities (Ragni, Detlas, Nemract, Almuj, and Nesaak), and a few smaller towns like Maltic. Those smaller towns were essentially useless, as there were no quests, no spawnpoints outside of cities, and no special potato merchants. They were cool things to discover though. Content consisted of killing mobs for XP and emeralds, and every now and then a mob would drop an item that was stronger than your current gear.
There were only four classes available when Wynncraft launched: Warrior, Archer, Mage, and the donator-only Assassin. Wynncraft needed funding through donations to survive, so the perks for donating were pretty good. In addition to a 4th class (and a 4th class slot!), you got double XP, and supposedly, access to the donator-exclusive areas of the Desert and Nesaak Tundra. That last feature is unconfirmed, but I remember people saying that at first, level 30+ areas were indeed locked off to non-donators. There was also a VIP town, but I don't know if it was added upon release, or a later update in the first few months. There wasn't even anything in the town first, aside from some cool cyan Adventurer's Armor you could buy.
The max level at first was 70, but reaching it was basically impossible since content ended at level 40 and the strongest items were level 45ish. Getting chain armor back in the day was a legitimate achievement due to the unbearable grind.
In the end, the most iconic part of old Wynn had to be the constant lag spikes. Those persisted for a really long time, but despite this many players stuck with this small minecraft server.
I'll finish this section by showing a picture of the tiny lobby, which only had 3 portals and some parkour.
Wynncraft's first ever lobby~ - ~ - ~ - ~
The First Updates
One of the best parts of 2013 Wynn was its frequent updates. In the beginning we mostly got bugfixes and QoL changes, but on May 16th, we got the brand-new Zombie Dungeon, and the Pigball arena. The zombie dungeon was located under a colossal tree (which is now removed), and required you to fight hordes of zombies, and eventually the dreaded Charon himself. You can probably guess which modern day dungeon replaced the Zombie Dungeon. Pigball was a fun minigame that was essentially soccer with a pig. And then just two weeks, later the Silverfish Dungeon was added, and it would be the last dungeon added for over a year. Like I said above, identifying was finally added to the game, and that iconic hut on the Emerald Trail cam along with it.
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The Pet Update
A month after the Silverfish Dungeon was added, Wynncraft got its biggest update yet. It launched on June 29th under the title "The Pet Update". This was due to the fact that pets were added to the online store, but the update contained so much more than that.
Early Wynncraft pets were very different from today's pets, but also similar in a few ways. You would purchase each one individually from the online store, and you would be able to summon it whenever you wanted. As armorstands didn't even exist in Minecraft at the time, each pet was just a vanilla minecraft mob. To compensate for their average appearance, every pet would be able to attack enemies.
When people think of old Wynncraft, the Pet Update is probably what they think of. This was the update that revamped the lobby, and increased the number of servers from 3 to 18. It was iconic for having these giant statues, and plenty of "odd" easter eggs that may get me demoted if I list them. All in all, it was pretty impressive, and proved that Wynncraft was trying to grow beyond some tiny CM spinoff.
Apart from pets, swarms and dueling were the other big new features. We all know what dueling is, but some newer players may not know what swarms are, as they no longer exist in the game. Basically, a horde of zombies would invade a city, and tons of players would fight them off. Everyone participating the swarm would get XP, and lot of it. Being a party would also increase the amount of XP gained, and according to some rumor, standing very close to other players would increase your XP reward even more. This meant that during the final moments of a swarm, tons of players would be screaming "GET TO THE BANK" in chat. Good times.
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Wynncraft's First Trailer
While Wynncraft was growing in content, it didn’t have a massive playerbase yet. That all changed when CraftedMovie released an official trailer on July 6th:
Today, this trailer is antiquated. But at the time, it depicted Wynncraft perfectly, and it was a great way for new players to discover the server. If you ask someone from 2013 how they found Wynncraft, they’ll probably say that they saw this video. The server got many new players thanks to this, allowing it to reach the average player counts it has today!
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Legends of the Past
It took a while, but finally a player had managed to reach level 70, the max level at the time. They were an assassin by the name of Wortho27. This was a momentous achievement, and for a while you could find a NPC named Worthington in the jungle, presumably named after him.
Abandonedbank, Acer78, and EgyptianSDS were the first players to get the other three classes to level 70, but then the community started thinking bigger. What if someone got ALL FOUR classes to level 70? Seems insane, right? But a player named samabizzle actually did it, and will be remembered as the first player to fully level up all their classes.
But samabizzle didn't stop there. He found a glitch that allowed him to level up past level 70, so he continued grinding until he got a class to level 71. Doing so required the same amount of XP as it took to go from level 1 to 70, so this was a momentous achievement. At one point his level 71 glitch was patched and he was sent back to level 70, but his achievement will forever be a part of Wynncraft's history. Nowadays, there's always one bonus level (such as level 106 today), which requires the same amount of XP as all previous levels to be reached. That bonus level is very likely to be based on samabizzle's achievement!
The Quest Update
By the end of summer, all of Wynncraft was waiting for the next and biggest update yet: 1.9. It seemed huge with its addition of a new town (Troms), and several long-awaited systems (Skill Points and Quests)
1.9 finally released on September 13th to a very rocky start. Servers were down for most of the day, and the lag was more unbearable than usual. There were probably tons of bugs too with all the quests. In the end though, 1.9 ended up being pretty successful, and its primary features have continued to play a huge role in the server.
The new quests did have a notable problem: there weren't enough of them. XP was so hard to get at the time, and the community was probably expecting quests to save them from a torturous grind. But in the end, 1.9 only added 5 quests in the level 35-70 level range.
But while there weren't many high-level quests, we got two endgame grinding spots so level 70 could be more realistically reached. The first was a cave filled with Dead Miners outside Troms, and it actually still exists today. The other spot was a room in the Temple of the Legends where level 70 silverfish called Trained Corrupteds spawned at an absurd rate. Also added in 1.9 was a set level 67-70 endgame legendary armors and weapons.
The subjective "best" quest that was added was probably Temple of the Legends, which ended with a battle against the level 100 Corrupter of Worlds. The old CoW was very hard to fight, and could be compared to Legendary Island difficulty wise. It took a team of six to finally beat this foe and gain access to the titular temple. Jungle Fever was also a standout quest, since at the time, navigating the emerald labyrinth was one of the game's greatest challenges.
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The Ocean Update
After an update that added revolutionary features, the Wynncraft team decided to focus on a content-based update. To do this, the ocean was expanded dramatically. Back when Wynn first started out there were only two islands on the ocean, but 1.10 raised that number to fourteen!
Many new quests and items were added, along with a level cap raise to 75 and a new superboss: Bob’s Reincarnation. Like the Corrupter of Worlds, Bob was first defeated by a team of players, but over time people learned to solo him. If you beat both of Wynn's superbosses, you could now obtain Bob's Mythic Weapons, the ultimate endgame weapons at the time.
1.10 also added Horses, Gold Coins (currency for cosmetics that you would buy for IRL money) and a PvP arena called the Nether. Level 75 Players would go there and fight each other for glory… and a spot on the new online leaderboards!
One of the islands added in the Ocean Update (from Glitch496)~ - ~ - ~ - ~
Forum and Website Updates
With the Wynncraft server getting improvements, the web developers decided it would be a good time to update the website as well. A leaderboard for the new Nether PVP was added, replacing the previous total level leaderboards, and a lot of the artwork was changed too. This marked our first time seeing the iconic eye in Wynn’s logo.
The forums got an overhaul too in November; where it switched over from the Vanilla host to Xenforo, a new host that has served us well for nearly six years! It was quickly filled with many threads from the old forum, as well as some cool new ones, such as Grian’s legend of Bob lore.
The Forums, circa mid 2014. R.I.P the original light theme.On November 2nd, the Wynncraft Wiki was also created. Just like today, it was run by the community. If I recall correctly, there were plans for a special "Wiki Cap" item to be given to players who contributed a lot to the wiki, but I do not think this item exists ingame.
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Merry Craftsmas!
Holiday quests have always been a tradition in Wynncraft, and they've been around since December 9th, where a quest simply titled "Craftsmas Quest" was temporarily added to the game. The quest was an extremely basic fetch quest, but it did have a limited-edition reward in the form of Santa's Pants.¹
Also included in the first Craftsmas update was a special snowman pet. There is 0 way to obtain it today (you can't even buy it with gold coins through the /gc command), so owning one is the mark of a Wynncraft veteran.
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The Spell Update
Prior to 1.11, all updates had added new things rather than revamping outdated stuff. That changed when 2014 kicked off with a large update, which would change every spell in the game completely. Before this update, a lot of them kinda sucked. Bash and Meteor were basically the same thing. Arrow Shield didn’t exist, instead there was some weird spell called Stone Shield. Ice Snake didn't exist either, but a similar spell called Ice Barrier did (it was basically a faster meteor that froze enemies). Smoke Bomb was laggy as hell. Uppercut wouldn't launch mobs into the air 90% of the time, and when it actually did work, the mob would be flung all the way to the sky level. Thankfully, they all got replaced with the spells we take for granted today.
1.11 also added scrolls (both the teleportation type and skill reset type). Interestingly enough, this was also the first ever update where VIPs would get the opportunity to beta test. Said testing went on for about a week, with many balance changes made to spells. And even still, some issues slipped through, such as Multihit doing 2000% of your weapon’s damage, which wasn’t fixed until Gavel.
On January 24th, the update was released along with the new Nether. What made it new exactly? Your stats didn’t count. Every player had 100 Health and 4 Spells, and it was a fast-paced fight to death. Now, even people without the endgame gear could participate, and as long as you had all four spells upgraded you could put up a good fight. A few days later Gold Coins were added as a reward for performing well in a five-minute match. The Nether ended up being a great competitive post-game activity... until Gavel came and made stats matter again, causing the Nether's audience to change into one of only a few players with top-tier builds.
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Lag Spikes and Gavel Hype
Unfortunately, something was happening to Wynncraft shortly after 1.11 released. Lag spikes were at an all-time high. The staff had to close down nine of the eighteen servers that you could join. It turns out that Jumla would have quickly fixed this, but he had a power outage at his home.
On March 5th the lag finally got fixed, and we were also treated to the 1.11.1 update. It brought a revamped Nesaak Forest, which became the best build in the game at the time. Two quests were also released. The first one was Beneath the depths, a level 60 quest that finally bridged the massive quest gap between The Passage and ToL. The other quest was The House of Twain, Wynn’s biggest puzzle-based quest so far. It was added not long after Grian posted a lore thread about the Twain family (which can now be read in the Lusuco discovery). Unfortunately the quest didn’t add much in terms of additional lore.
Missions were also added to the game, and they were the precursor to today’s Daily Objectives. They were notorious for being very imbalanced, and you would often be given absurd tasks like “kill 24 Witherheads” or “Duel 3 players”, all for a paltry amount of XP. They were removed sometime in 2016.
Oh wait, this update added one extra thing to the game. A large door at the opposite end of the ocean, and the age of Gavel hype had begun.
The old door to Gavel (From Glitch496)A month later, Grian posted the Gavel Hype Train thread, where he talked about all the content that would come to Gavel, like grind spots.² Sadly the thread kind of died out after a while, but it was a good source of hype for a while. Judging by the thread, the Gavel update may have been much more ambitious. It talks about stuff such as dungeon revamps (1.12), and the guild hall (1.13), both of which were released before Gavel in the end.
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The Arrival of Youtubers... and Squiggles the Squid
At this point in time, Wynn had a decent amount of players, but not a ton. That all changed when famous minecraft youtuber Inthelittlewood decided to do a video on Wynncraft. Their video soon cascaded and more youtubers started making Wynncraft videos. Soon enough, Wynn had thousands of players online at once. The number of available servers went all the way up to 36 to accommodate the new players.
The surge of new members was met with mixed reviews from the existing playerbase, many of whom considered the newcomers to be “cringy” and “noobish”. Others believed it was our duty to help them out. The playerbase has since died down in numbers, but I’m sure many of the people who joined in late March are still here today.
Turns out these newcomers joined at an interesting time. On April 1st, Wynn had its first ever April fools joke, which involved a squid named Squiggles following you around everywhere. Not everyone was too pleased about Squiggles, and it certainly must have confused all the new players. He was removed the next day for anyone wondering, but the memory of him lives on.
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Join the Content Team Today!
In early April, Grain finally opened up build team applications to the public. This was unexpected, and many players applied in an attempt to join the build team. Some wanted to help out the server. Others wanted to see what the next update was. One thing’s for certain; very few people got accepted. The build team applications got a lot of attention, but not as much as the GM applications that were posted a month later.
At the time, there were only two Gamemasters: Salted and Dakotafiles. Nearly everyone had no clue what a Gamemaster did until today, but hearing “you get to make quests” was all people needed to hear in order to apply. The application was a lot smaller at the time, and instead of coming up with your own quest the plotline had to revolve around a troll losing his socks. Getting accepted to the GM team was very hard; by July 2014 only 5 people had been added to the team.
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Other Events From Early 2014
Wynncraft had gone a few months without a big update, but that didn’t mean nothing was going on. On April 16th, the Wynncraft OST was made public, so you could listen to Wynn’s melodies on the go!
But what about ingame stuff? Well… Salted had something insane planned: a double XP weekend. This was the first time (I think?) that Wynncraft had done one of these. But this DXP weekend was very special, because it gave QUADRUPLE XP players with VIP.³ This was never done again, and its just as busted as it sounds.
New Admins & 1.12 Teasers
For almost all of Wynn’s first year, the server and its website had been run by the same six admins. However, as Wynn grew more admins started appearing.
The first newcomer was a coder guy named @rmb938 , who wore iconic 3D Glasses. He arrived sometime in April and did a lot of server related stuff. You know how the amount of available servers depends on the amount of players online? We can thank rmb938 for that feature, which was pushed out at the end of April along with a cool new lobby.
Another admin arrived in June, named @MrTwiggy. He had no forum activity aside from making an introduction, and I’m not exactly sure what he did.
And then there's the @King of Ragni , who still has his tag. Oh wait, it isn't quite time to talk about him yet...
At this point in 2014, Wynn was entering its largest update drought yet. Wynncraft was working on something, and whatever it was, it had to be huge. We got our first teaser for 1.12 sometime in either May or June. It showed a revamped Detlas wall, and we quickly figured out that update would revolve around a remade Wynncraft map. Seems like pretty simple stuff, right?
And then out of nowhere, the King of Ragni posted a thread featuring lore for the upcoming update.⁴ While the thread was very cryptic, it seemed pretty dire lore-wise. A little bit later another build teaser was posted, but the Wynn-logo was a bit corrupted. What on earth is going on? This string of teasers continued for a month or so, and many theories were made about what would happen.
Eventually, these teasers concluded and an announcement thread was made for the next update. Shortly afterwards, VIP-exculsive beta testing began on July 14th. I’ll talk about what that update included in a bit, for now I need to talk about something more serious in the game’s history.
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The EULA
An interesting thing about Wynncraft is that it’s inside Minecraft. It’s basically a video game of it’s own, yet it uses another game to contain it. And that means it must obey all rules set for server creators in Minecraft.
So when the EULA's rules on server monetization were changed, the entire community was filled with dread. Buying ingame currencies and letting people pay for advantages would be against the rules, and that would affect stuff like double XP and pets that could fight.⁵ If things such as these were removed, would anyone bother supporting the server? For a few days the community discussed this topic, until Grian responded by saying that everything would be okay.
And in the end, everything was okay. On August 1st, the day the EULA changes went into effect, the store was completely changed. Pets were now purchased through Gold Coins, which would no longer be rewarded in Nether matches. All of VIP’s features were made to be cosmetic, and bombs and the VIP+ rank were added. I’ll get into more detail about the store changes’ effect on the game when I talk about 1.12.
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The Mob Update
At long last, 1.12 was here, and it was one of those updates that changed everything. Not only had 99% of the map been redone, but so had the mob system. Mobs could cast one spell each now, and be any sort of block or entity. Sure, that isn’t much compared to today’s mob system, but it was cool at the time. Other features included more quests above level 60, the new mesa area + Rymek, and more lore and secrets.
Gameplay was changed a bit too due to the EULA changes. VIPs no longer had any permanent double XP to rely on, and had to search for servers with the new Double XP Bombs if they wanted an XP boost. At the time quests were affected by XP modifiers, so it wasn’t uncommon for people to wait for an XP bomb before turning in quests. Furthermore, donators now had more classes to grind via the new reskins. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this yet, but class slots didn’t exist yet. You only had a limited amount of classes: non-donators had one assassin, archer, mage, and warrior. That was one of the reasons to buy a rank at the time (it still is a reason today); so you could play on more classes.
The Mesa was one of the new areas added in 1.12 (From Glitch496)~ - ~ - ~ - ~
Post-1.12 Updates
With 1.12’s successful release Wynncraft was on a roll, and for a while they continued to release cool updates. The first one came on August 12th, and it added the /fixquest command. It’s hard to believe that it didn’t always exist and that people had to suffer without their quest items. But after a popular petition for a way to return quest items made by well-known member Fibunny, we finally got a way to get back the corrupted potatoes that we ate.
Two weeks later, they released a proper update in the form of 1.12.1. It added a revamped Zombie dungeon and revamped swarms, two updated features that weren’t present in 1.12’s original launch. I have to say, these new swarms were a massive improvement. There was now a most kills scoreboard, and a way for mobs to actually win the fight. Once again, this was likely partially inspired by one of Fibunny’s popular suggestion threads.
Much later, on October 27th, Wynncraft got its first ever Hallowynn update, notable for adding the quest “Macabre Masquerade”. If you did the quest during Halloween season in 2014, you would get an exclusive pumpkin mask.
The final update I’ll mention is forums related. On September 10th, Tama added many new sections to the forums, such as the “Planning Parlor” and “Other Games”. Yet perhaps the most important feature added was the “New Profile Posts” on the main forums page. Finally, the forums had a better chance of seeing your cool profile post!
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Gavel Week
On October 11th the forums got an unexpected announcement. Grian posted a thread saying that Gavel was 50% done (which turned out to not be the case), and that there would be a week-long event to celebrate it. The event was called Gavel Week, and it would feature streams from Grian about the progress of gavel, in-game community events, and pictures of Gavel posted on the forums.⁶
These pictures of Gavel were pretty vague. They mostly showed some terrain and that was it, although the final picture was an awesome render of Llevigar. In-game events were a lot more successful, with the winners earning a cosmetic helmet called the Seeker’s Aid. The main highlight though were Grian’s gavel streams. They showcased tons of cool stuff, but you were forbidden to leak anything from them. Butince the event is long gone, I feel like I am allowed to say this about them though: many of the streams featured the staff building mysterious castles in some snowy region. What could those builds possibly be for?
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Wizard Fortress
Those builds turned out to be for a Wynncraft minigame named Wizard Fortress.
Yes, I said minigame. You aren’t hallucinating.
I don’t think anyone expected this. After all, Wynn was a MMORPG server, not a minigame server! And so on Halloween, people were putting off their quests and grinding to play Wynn’s first and only minigame. Wizard Fortress, hereby abbreviated as WF, was pretty simple. There are red and blue teams that are both trying to earn points by capturing each other’s flag. The team with the most points at the end of each game wins. Players would collect wands with unique and special abilities throughout a large yet fun map and try to defend or capture said flags.
Did I mention that this was a minigame server on a MMORPG yet? Compared to what Wynn currently had, WF seemed so outlandish. Sure, the Nether wasn’t exactly connected to the main game, but at least it was based around your normal Wynn stats and had a place in Wynn’s lore. WF on the other hand was just there. It had nothing to do with your existing levels or the existing lore.
Some people started to worry that Wynn would eventually end up as a minigame server, but Grian told those people not to worry. And in the end, WF just… died out. With no rewards for playing, there wasn’t much incentive to dedicate time to this minigame. About a year later, it was removed and there are no plans for it to return.
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The Wynnter Update
After an uneventful November, the King of Ragni returned to the forums to tease the next update. That update was 1.13, which finally added guilds. Guilds were a really popular suggestion on the forums, comparable to today's housing.
Guilds may have been the main feature, but the update also added the Dernel Jungle, the Ice Canyons, and many late-game quests including The Tower of Ascension. Minidungeons were another addition, although they didn’t have much replayability. The whole point of 1.13 was to add more end-game content, and it was successful in that regard, mainly due to guilds.
Another feature, and a very unexpected one, was Armor Skins (which aren’t in the game anymore). Out of all the features added to Wynn, this may have been the most controversial one apart from guilds; Armor Skins visually replaced actual armor and would instead change your Minecraft skin to be an armored individual. They had plenty of issues though; for instance, you were automatically re-logged every time your armor changed. They've been turned on and off several times throughout history, but as of today they've been disabled for years.
“1.13” also added Relics, but they were released a bit later than the rest of the update.
Various Armor Skins (From JuicedBananas)~ - ~ - ~ - ~
Relics
On January 20th, Relics were finally added to the game. Technically, their builds had existed since 1.13 came out, but they just didn’t give you any items. Since they were removed in the later Dungeon’s & Discoveries update, let me explain what they are to newer players first.
There were two types of Relics: Shrines and Secret Relics. The shrines were found in somewhat easy to find locations, and they gave powders to anyone who discovered them (which could be done an infinite amount of times on a cooldown). Secret Relics on the other hand were extremely well hidden. If you managed to work out where to find them you would be given an exclusive item as your reward.
When relics were released a new rule was added: any posts explaining the location of the Secret Relics would be removed. The intent of this rule was to make finding those relics a challenge. However, some people had figured out the relic locations before the rule was added, so maybe it wasn’t that much of a challenge after all.
Relics were eventually removed in 1.17.
¹ - https://wynncraft.gamepedia.com/Craftmas_Quest
² - https://web.archive.org/web/2014100...craft.com/threads/the-gavel-hype-train.16099/
³ - https://web.archive.org/web/2014071...s/double-xp-weekend-quadruple-for-vips.31902/
⁴ - https://web.archive.org/web/2014062...raft.com/threads/to-the-heroes-of-wynn.35460/
⁵ - https://web.archive.org/web/20140625110540/https://mojang.com/2014/06/lets-talk-server-monetisation/
⁶ - https://web.archive.org/web/2014101...nnouncing-gavel-week-18th-25th-october.60437/❋ The Basic History of Wynncraft - The Gavel Era
Gavel Hype Grows
We are now entering the time period where not much happens aside from the wait for Gavel. The community was hyped for this new update, and to retain this hype, the admins posted numerous teasers. Although many of them have been lost to time, I’ll try to explain what they were:
Let’s start with Salted’s teasers about the new item system. Every now and then he would post minor stuff, like an elemental symbol or a new ID. As time passed he revealed more and more about the system, eventually concluding with a post that flat-out explained the elements and what they did. I’m pretty happy that he posted those, as they helped a lot of players understand what would be a new system.
Then there were Grian’s videos. He planned on posting a video about Gavel every month, but only four were ever created. Here’s a list of them:
- [January] Aldorei Valley Build Timelapse
- [March] An Iron Heart Pt. 2 Walkthrough
- [April] Lore Teaser (with Outdated Lore)
- [June] Gavel Q&A
All other videos can be found on Wynn's twitter
The Wynncraft Twitter had plenty of teasers too, such as the first glimpse at the texture pack and airship feature:
Last but not least, there was the bizarre Wynnic teaser. If you’ve done all of the Plains Discoveries, you should know that Wynncraft has its own language called Wynnic, created by artist LoveLusting. The language originated in a teaser posted in the summer of 2015, which featured a picture of Bak’al’s face (no one had any clue who Bak’al was at the time), with Wynnic text above them. I don’t know how people managed to translate the Wynnic symbols into letters of the alphabet, but once we managed to do so we were able to translate plenty of other teasers posted at later dates in Wynn’s history.
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The Wait For Gavel
Update 1.13.1 was released in June, and it included the conclusion to the WynnExcavation questline and added Thieving Rodents. Thieving Rodents was a low-leveled quest that required you to kill a boss called the Giant Rat. That boss became a meme in the community due to how powerful it was for its level. It was removed in 2017 and replaced with “Poisoning the Pest”. On the other hand, the last two Wynn-Excavation quests were extremely well-received. The final Wynn-excavation quest granted you a token that can be traded for a Royal Amulet. In the quest's last piece of dialogue, the king said that a merchant from Gavel would be arriving this summer who you could give the token to.
And that was the biggest problem with Gavel hype. The staff kept giving promises as to when it came out and it just got delayed, which led to the community becoming more and more irritated. There simply wasn’t much to do in game anymore. Guilds were slowly beginning to have more and more issues, and many players had gotten every class to Level 75. The only unique and entertaining thing to do at the time was to participate in these lobby events HiMyNameIsAJ hosted, but those didn’t have much to do with Wynn’s gameplay.
The Herb Cave, which was previously a popular grinding spot, got nerfed in 1.13.1. It's actually still a popular grind spot as of 2019. (From JuicedBananas)~ - ~ - ~ - ~
The Gavel Trailer
With Summer ending and Gavel still not out yet, the admins needed to preserve hype. To do this, they released a pretty cool trailer.
It’s more of a teaser when you compare it to stuff like the 1.18 video and Grian’s Gavel videos, but it looks amazing! That worm boss! Those cutscenes! Is that a dragon?
Unfortunately, most of the things from the trailer didn’t make it into the game. There is no worm boss that can tunnel into the ground, and no mob has mechanics remotely like it. In today’s lore, the corruption war shows no sign of ceasing. Ragnar was never added to the game as an NPC, and Bak’al was added to the game 2 years after the trailer was released. Judging by this trailer and other teasers, Gavel was originally going to have much more stuff that never made it into the game.
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The Forum Wipe of September 7th
As mentioned at the top of this thread, 9/7 was when all threads were wiped from the forums, but what exactly happened that day. I have no idea, and I don’t know if I ever will, but I’ll explain what the community saw that day.
Some point during the day, an Admin named Admintest1 appeared on the forums. They had a million posts, likes, and points. After they joined ALL threads on the forums slowly disappeared, the forums then went down for a bit, and then they came back, with Admintest1 gone. To this day they are one of Wynn’s greatest mysteries.
Admintest1. Note that Tantibus has more posts pre-9/7 than he does now.When the forums came back up Grian made a news post. He said that every thread was gone, but we could still rebuild the forums. Besides, with Gavel coming out it wasn’t a bad idea to have a fresh start. What Grian did not say, however, was how every thread got deleted. And after a joke posted by Salted, everyone started to make memes about Jumla being the cause of 9/7, thanks to him spilling his coffee on the server.
The forums may have reset, but did the culture there really change? I’m not sure if it did, but there were some rule changes: on September 29th, it was announced that players were not allowed to cheat the 10-character limit. This was likely a way to curb low-effort content.
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Gavel Hype, Continued
After the trailer dropped, hype needed to be preserved still. So the admins continued with teasers and streams, showing us stuff like new Quality of Life features and NPCs such as The Guardian of the Forest. At the same time, Salted started to recruit people to make item models and provide artwork for the ingame paintings. Between all this in the trailer, it became apparent how massive of an undertaking Gavel was.
In late November, Grian announced that beta testing would begin, and that certain people would be chosen to visit the villagers' province in advance.¹ This was it. Gavel would finally come this year. This time around, testers would be hand-picked, although you could win the chance to beta test in some Twitter contests.
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Countdown to Gavel
The end of the long wait for Gavel began with a tweet saying that the map was done. For the first time ever, we got clarification that a part of Gavel was finished. A few days later, pictures of creatures and areas from Gavel were posted on the Wynncraft twitter, with the words “X days” above each picture. It seemed like Wynncraft was counting down to something...
Later, Salted did an AMA on the forums, where he answered several Gavel-related questions among other stuff.²
After a long wait, Gavel was finally here. To explain this new update, the admins hosted a special Gavel stream that was shown to the public when it was done. It showcased all of Gavel‘s features like its cool builds and quests, and all the changes to mechanics that would be in the update. Gavel’s lore was vaguely revealed too. And that texture pack! It was finally shown to the public and was well-received. At the end of the stream there was an awards ceremony for the Content Team, where all the active members on the team got an award for their work.
A render of the content team members that worked on Gavel.Gavel was officially released on December 21st.
Gavel's Release
Gavel was the biggest update Wynn had so far; with double the amount of content, a graphics overhaul, and a complete redo of the item system. The classes were also changed too, I guess. Assassin's 2000% damage multihits were patched, and the addition of extra health made healing with Mages and potions actually viable. The tables had turned in Wynncraft, and many people thought Mage was good while Assassin was garbage. It didn't help that some spells didn't even function in the first few days of Gavel.
Not a lot of people cared about items in the first week though; there was so much to explore! Update 1.14 added fifty quests, some of which, like Memory Paranoia, became instant hits within the community. There were countless locations to explore, and players searched every nook and cranny to discover what was hidden. Despite there being countless bugs, plenty of people still enjoyed the update even with its flaws.
And for people who liked exploration and quests, there was something that combined the two: ???. When that quest was released with Gavel it was very different from what it is today. To complete it you needed to drop three different meteor shards in a hopper outside a giant white meteor, and then you needed to solve a puzzle. The reward was just Altum Spacium and XP, although there was some additional lore regarding Sohso that you could find after the quest. You were not allowed to discuss the original ??? quest in public. Any minor references to it would be deleted, and spoiling a part of the quest would be a bannable offense.
One of Gavel's quests involves searching for a Volt Goat. (From Glitch496)~ - ~ - ~ - ~
The Race to Level 101
Another thing that was added in Gavel was a raised level cap. At long last, the level cap became roughly what it is today, although no one knew about level 101 yet. But still, with such a large increase in the max level, several players immediately embarked on a journey to reach it first.
Leveling up when Gavel was released was the most hellish thing you could imagine. The highest leveled quest was the level 90 Fantastic Voyage, and the highest leveled dungeon was the level 63 Jungle Minidungeon that gave next to no XP. There was no Glowbulb or Demon Cave either, so how did players level up?
It turns out that they just needed a little help from Salted, who blessed the server on Christmas day with a Double XP WEEK. Quests were affected by XP back then, so by use of Triple XP players could get into the level 90 range pretty quickly. For the last few levels people would help players with The Qira Hive quest, and then party up with players to gain some of their XP earned from turning in said quest. That turned out to be a very helpful exploit, but it got removed in the end. Alternatively, you could grind Freezing Heights or the Thanos Vaults (a grinding spot severely nerfed a few weeks after Gavel released).
On January 1st, former Moderator Sovereigner (aka J6Unlimited/Zuikaku_) reached level 100 as Assassin. With the help of a ton of XP bonus he was able to sacrifice sleep in exchange for going down in history. A few other level 100s arrived shortly after. (Their forum names are as follows: TheDollarBill, DodoBird, Kokaga, SeanThomas2, Gartato, and Hanky)
Afterwards, almost no one tried to get level 100 for a few months. With the double XP week over, there was no way anyone could put in enough effort.
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The Secrets of Gavel
??? wasn’t the only mysterious thing added to Gavel, there were plenty of other secrets to uncover and post on the forums. Many lore threads were made to decipher all the mysteries related to lore and quests, and multiple threads popped up relating to hidden places and easter eggs. There were also two major “secret hunts”, which I’ll detail here.
The first major secret to be found was @Lotem ’s Clock Puzzle. It started when many members of the community found clocks in the various cities and towns of Gavel. There were eight clocks total, but no one knew what to do with them until player MarkedForDeath found a hidden arena in the Pre-Light Forest. There, in exchange for your clocks, you could battle eight bosses in exchange for a Golden Clock. A few patches later, a hidden Clock Merchant was added which would trade you armor and accessories in exchange for the golden clock. AlexisPlay made a thread to compile this journey in case you want to solve it yourself.
After the clock mystery was solved, the exploration-based part of the community shifted their focus to Gale. Gale is one of the bosses in the Qira Hive quest, and has always been mysterious due to not being one of Qira’s creations. The lore of the wand “Ohms’ Wish” had additional lore about Gale; it mentioned that she had a grave somewhere. With Selvut283’s encouragement, the community went on a massive hunt for Gale’s Tomb, which is chronicled here.
People searched everywhere for Gale’s Tomb but found nothing. It turned out that it wasn’t accessible originally, and a patch had to be made to let people find it. A player/former CT member named Averine decided to search through the Qira Hive after the patch and found it.³ But the mystery wasn’t over yet. It appeared that there were hoppers under Gale’s grave, and people started throwing items (by items, I mean crazy stuff like Gale's Force) into it to reveal something. Players also found the entrance to Ohms’ laboratory, but there was nothing inside except a hallway and useless button. To this day Gale’s grave and Ohms’ lab remain an unfinished mystery.
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Mythics
I don’t know who found the first mythic. But at some point in the first week of Gavel, people became aware that there was now another tier of items that were rarer and stronger than Legendaries. At the time, mythic weapons were the only type of mythics to exist, and not all of them were in the game yet. There were still a ton of mythics though, and it took awhile for the community to find them all.
Mythics quickly became some of the most expensive items in the game, being priced higher than most cosmetic items had been in the past. This might have been due to LE inflation though, since Gavel's original quest rewards led to players getting rich quickly.
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Class Builds
Thanks to a brand new item system designed with innovation in mind, players were able to make a whatever builds they wanted. Early on, common builds included walkspeed archers, mages with 15/4s mana regen, and super slow melee warriors. If you had a mythic you could probably use that too, although they were very rare at the time. Many builds utilized lifesteal early on, because it bug caused it to unintentionally trigger upon dealing spell damage or inflicting poison damage, but that was fixed eventually.
Soon after, builds utilizing raw spell damage and or +tier became very popular, and the reason for this was because both those IDs were bugged. Any raw spell damage would be added onto your base damage when casting a spell, allowing you to deal absurd damage. Just about every decent spell build contained Third Eye and Memento, because those were items with high spell damage and mana regen. Your weapon didn’t matter either as long as it was fast. Ethereal and Cerid’s Dynamo became popular wands due to this bug because they were Very/Super Fast, and Pure was simply one of the best weapons in the game. Depressing weapons were legitimately viable if you had enough raw spell damage. This bug was finally fixed in March to the complaints of many, because lots of people will abuse anything to gain an advantage.
Despite this, the server’s meta was not saved. For one, increasing your attack speed through IDs didn’t only affect melee damage at the time, but it also affected spell damage too. I think this was also bugged, but it didn’t get fixed for a long time. Another notorious build from back in the day was the Cactus build, because it was a nightmare to play against in PvP (IDs and skill points mattered in the Nether after Gavel), and it gave you the ability to AFK grind.
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The Ancients Depart
On January 13th the community was met with sad news. Two of Wynn’s original admins; Crunkle and HiMyNameIsAJ, were departing. Crunkle had put a lot of coding work into Wynn, and HiMyNameIsAJ was known for frequently interacting with the community, so players were sad to see them go. For the first time in Wynn’s history, some of the server’s original founders had departed, although the contributions will not be forgotten. Tama also left many months later.
However, as you can probably see if you check the list of staff today, one of these admins came back...
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The Origins of Corkus
Sometime in March, Grian posted a thread saying that Wynncraft has decided to incorporate a suggestion from the community into the game. Everyone was excited, because the General Suggestions section on the forums was full of good ideas that seemed to be ignored by the admins. Could Item Locks or Skill Point Perks finally be added? But in the end, the suggestion incorporated into the game turned out to be Corkus.
Corkus was originally a suggestion by MrCoffeeTime. It was a very simple suggestion for a massive new location, which consisted of the areas Relos, Legendary Island, and the Corkus Mainland. For whatever reason, Wynn’s content team loved the suggestion and would joke about it multiple times.
On April Fools Day, Gamemaster Tantibus posted a fake Corkus Changelog in the news section of the forum.⁴ While the post had some lies (such as swearing being bannable), it ended up teasing some aspects of Corkus. Most people didn’t take the news thread seriously, despite Tanti’s efforts to convince everyone otherwise. None of us believed him until the Gameplay Update, where Corkus became an actual part of the lore.
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Level 101
On what was coincidentally April Fools day, (now former) Moderator Broettigner posted a thread about him reaching level 101. And according to Wynn’s API, he was that level. So how did he reach it? Turns out that at level 100 all his quests got reset due to a bug, so he did them all over again with Triple XP and XP bonus gear to reach level 101.
Not only did a player accomplish something this extraordinary, but with the max-level finally achieved, the staff decided to reveal the XP requirements for each level. This is something we take for granted each day, but during the early years, we were in the dark about this stuff.
Could level 101 be reached without having your quests reset? A player by the name of Motoki1 decided to try. He spent a ton of time grinding in the Tower of Ascension, which was the best endgame grinding spot at the time before 1.14.1. A month or so later he did it, and became the first (known) legitimate level 101.
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Where's the Next Update?
Gavel did not include a lot of the features that were planned to be included, such as powders and a main storyline. The admins reassured us that these would come in a follow-up update though. In fact, Salted said in January that powders would be returning to Wynn (old powders were removed 1.14) in about 1-2 weeks.⁵ That obviously didn’t happen. Flash forward half a year and none of those things were here yet. Needless to say, the community was starting to get a bit frustrated.
A reason for this was because the Gavel update had some clear problems. There was no real content after level 90. Cactus builds were running rampant in the Nether. And worst of all, there was a bug that would delete your items upon logging in, at random. This bug was due to your items with skill point requirements not registering that your character has skill points invested, so those items would be sent into your inventory, or get thrown on the ground if you didn’t have enough space. It was eventually fixed after a few months but many players had already been affected.
Despite all these bugs, Salted and the content team repeatedly reassured us that Wynncraft would have a bright feature, and he slowly started posting teasers of the next update. But I think the community had grown cynical after the long wait for Gavel, and the hype from teasers wasn’t what it used to be.
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Zentrela
Let me get basic definitions out of the way: Zentrela was another Minecraft MMORPG that emerged in the summer of 2016. Wynncraft has never been the only Minecraft MMORPG: other servers like Dungeonrealms and Mythros had been made known to the community at this point. But Zentrela seemed different, and some people wondered if it could compete with Wynncraft. A common opinion on the forums was that even though the server was starting out, in a year or so it could be a strong competitor to Wynncraft. Interestingly enough, Misaka, the owner of Zentrela, actually visited our forum to clarify some info about their server.⁶
In the past, Wynncraft had viewed other Minecraft MMORPGs as rivals, but Zentrela seemed different. Plenty of Wynncrafters were actually playing on there, and the reason for this was simple: Wynncraft had not been updated in a very long time. In fact, I believe that public opinion of Wynncraft, at least on the forums and shoutbox communities, was starting to decline…
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Community Changes
Gonna make this section brief, since there was a lot of forum drama around this time that I would rather not dig up. Basically, parts of the community thought there were some big issues going on related to the demotion of certain moderators, and other forum members believed the community was rapidly going downhill. This all culminated in a large community rant thread. It ended up deleted, but not before people in the community started to realize that they needed to bring about change.
These events also led to Grian posting a thread which cleared some stuff up, such as the roles of the moderators. Around the same time, Pretzule became Wynncraft's first ever community manager! He acted as a link between the admins and community, and hosted numerous entertaining events for the community, with the first one being an hide-and-seek event in early August.
Around this time, the forums also got the Feedback and Class Builds sections, which have both been pretty important to the community. With all this happening, and a highly-anticipated update being released soon, it appeared that Wynncraft may be entering a golden age.
¹ - https://forums.wynncraft.com/threads/just-around-the-corner.94912/
² - https://forums.wynncraft.com/thread...e-game-design-shenanigans-in-wynncraft.96760/
³ - https://forums.wynncraft.com/threads/the-search-is-over-gales-tomb-found.112428/
⁴ - https://forums.wynncraft.com/threads/announcing-1-15-the-corkus-update.119823/
⁵ - https://forums.wynncraft.com/threads/when-is-the-follow-up-update-coming-out.105131/#post-1137050
⁶ - https://forums.wynncraft.com/threads/opinions-of-zentrela.137205/
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