My issue with 2.0 Aldorei's Secret Part 2 + Extra Thoughts

Hello!

Most people probably do not know who I am, but I've done a decent amount of stuff as part of Wynn's small lore community (Wynntheory plug etc.) and have been playing the game for a fairly long time now. Before I go into mald mode, I want to bring up that there are plenty of great things in the 2.0 update, such as the new builds, gameplay changes, the ability tree, and a lot more. Wynn has come a really long way, and its great to see such huge fixes being made to these areas of the game. That said, I am not here to talk about any of these things, because frankly I'm not qualified to do that, since I spend most of my time with Wynn's lore, and this is where I feel the reworks haven't exactly been as beneficial.

(Notice: By the end of this post, I begin to talk about my feelings towards the direction Wynn's story as a whole has been going, and probably sound pretty mad at times. I want to make it clear here that I do not want to sound like I'm directing my feelings at the people who make Wynncraft, as that simply isn't the case. My issues are with the story, not the people building it)

After 1.20, Aldorei's secret part 1 was remade, however part 2 was kept as it was. For those who forgot, old Aldorei's secret part 2 (ASP2 for short) was a fairly large lore dump, which discussed the elves relationship with the light, however it was clearly out of date, since it relied on the old storyline of Villagers being greedy being the cause of the decay. Wynn has since at least 1.20 been trying to get rid of this storyline and rework the way players should view the light and dark, so it was natural that ASP2 would be getting a rework in the future.

The new version of ASP2, focuses on the player and their stock companion (as far as I could tell the companion does not show up in part 1, instead just showing up at the entrance to Aldorei and asking the player to help them), as the two attempt to learn why Elves in the Aldorei Valley are immortal. They first go around and ask a bunch of different people for information, then go visit an underground burial site where elves over 1000 years ago were buried. Once done with this the player and their companion head to the elven elders, who deny that anything happened 1000 years ago, so they then have to flee the elder's room, and decide to go talk to this one outcast elder named Elder Birch after getting a tip from some records in Cinfras. The two head to the lost elder and are aided by another elder whose name is Elder Alder. Eventually the outcast elder comes back, and the elders decide to show the player their secrets via a fancy cutscene under the village.

What this cutscene discusses is how the main elder, who is legit called Elder Prometheus had a vision of the light, which included images of the Forest Guardian, and because of this, they tell everyone that they should kill the forest guardian, so that they can make a portal to the Realm of Light from its corpse. Everyone agrees that this is a good idea, except Lari, who appears and tells them all to stop. They of course ignore Lari, and go ahead anyway with the tree slaughtering, after which they create the portal to the Realm of Light. As soon as the portal is done however, the cutscene shows the opening of the Nether Portal, and the Portal to Dern open, and then says that the elves were the reason for these portals opening / reopening. After this they allow the player to ask further questions, which can be found here:

Aldorei's Secret Part II - Official Wynncraft Wiki (fandom.com)

One added note here is that in this post questioning, they mention that they also caused Dern to be able to reach Gavel, which I'll bring up later.

So, with all of this said there are two key reasons why I think this quest is flawed, 1: it feels unrelated to part 1 of its questline, and the much more major reason 2: its impacts on Wynncraft's lore as a whole.

When it comes to the format of this quest, the first major thing I noticed was its almost complete lack of connections to part 1. At the very beginning of ASP2, we meet our new companion, which on its own is not an issue, however since this is the second part of a questline, it makes things feel a bit disjointed. To make matters worse, Korben, a character introduced near the end of part 1, actually has a fair number of similarities to ASP2's partner character, in that both had something relating to their parents as their reason for showing up. Despite this fact, parts 1 and 2 of Aldorei's Secret veer in very different directions, with part 1 focusing on how the elves are strict about what their people can and can't do and how that led Korben and their father to be put in danger, while part 2 is about a thousand-year-old conspiracy and the War of the Realms origins in the realm. It really feels like with a few minor changes these threads could have been woven together, but as of when I played these two quests on the beta, they really just don't feel connected at all. In fact, part 1 still gives you the two items used for the old version of ASP2, which are now just made to be sold to a merchant in the town. Little things like that make ASP2 just feel very strange, and this unlike my later points is something I assume will be solved at some point. It's worth noting that the dialogue itself is a work in progress, which is why I avoided touching on it specifically.

Above was my issue with the questline, however I have a lot more issues with how ASP2 affects Wynncraft's overarching lore. In effect what this quest says is that everything related to the war of the realms is now caused by the elves making the RoL portal, which at least to me is just really unfortunate. As a group, Wynncraft's elves were always incredibly boring to me, as unlike Wynn's more creative groups, such as the Dogun, Avos, Gerts, and even the other Greenskins, Elves just felt bland. The main reason I have for this is simply due to how heavily their storytelling relies on people's preexisting understanding of what elves are, and what they act like, with only minor attempts at subverting these expectations. Like the Dwarves, they are very much just a generic fantasy race insert, and when that is combined with their very minor appearances throughout the game's story, they just never felt interesting at all. Lari was the only elf to get any real time to shine, but as ASP2 reveals, they do not represent the majority of Elves, thus not really building up feelings towards the elves, but rather just Lari herself. It is also worth pointing out that Lari has gotten a fair amount of hate from a lot of people (definitely including me), for their own story, which certain does not aid the rest of the elves.

I bring up the bland nature of the elves here, because ASP2 does seem to be attempting to change this view of the Elves both by making them have a far larger effect on the world's lore, and by trying to subvert the player's expectations as to what Elves are like. Elves are traditionally depicted as immortal (or at least living a long time), so the idea of breaking this belief in ASP2 on paper is a good idea. The trouble is that by the end of the quest this clever subversion kind of just gets overshadowed by the lore dump was made to set up.

In part 1, the entire focus of the quest is put on the elves, and how they act, but ASP2 kind of throws this out the window in favor of being a War of the Realms lore dump. It is true that about 3/4ths of the quest make use of the immortality plotline, however by the end of the quest the elves are basically dumped in favor of more War of the Realms world building, thus meaning that what players will remember from the quest isn't the elves and their story, but the War of the Realms story. Frankly this is exactly what happened to me after the quest, as the bombshells dropped in relation to the War of the Realms made me completely forget about the quest's main plotline of elven immortality. Because of the way this quest is set up, and the general lack of other elven stuff besides Lari, elves really come off as forgettable and boring, which is unfortunate because they are now the most important group in the game.

Due to the Elves now being the sole cause of the Portals opening across the realm, they inadvertently demolished the lore of the Wynn province, taking away one of its most crucial peices. For a very long time, the established idea was that the miners in Wynn's search for emeralds led to them unearthing the long-buried portal, and the eventual release of the Corruption which still terrorizes Wynn. The key thing here is that the people of Wynn were the cause of Wynn's problem, which makes every interaction the player has in relation to the people of wynn fighting the Corruption feel stronger. Because of their own ancestors actions, they were doomed to 900 years of strife against the Corruption, and only when Bob, a hero trained across the Wynn province came along were they saved. They caused the problem with their desires, they suffered because of their actions for years, and eventually it was their own people's work that allowed them to finally turn the tide.

However, all of that is thrown out the window with ASP2, as now the people of wynn are no longer the cause of anything. Their greed was not a flaw, but instead they were just unlucky, to have been digging at the wrong time. Now, the elves are the cause of Wynn's Corruption, a group which was separated by a supposedly impassable ocean whose people had never even set foot in the region. This is just bad storytelling, there's really no way around it here. Even if the elves were the most interesting group ever, it wouldn't change the fact that the corruption is not their story. In addition to this, the story of the Wynn province's corruption is the starting point to which all players are introduced to the game, thus meaning that they all should be well acquainted with it, so by telling them 78 levels in that "by the way it wasn't even the people of Wynn's fault, anyways moving on to Dern" it really cheapens everything shown before. Perhaps this cheapening of the Corruption War was somewhat intentional, as a way to force players to focus on the War of the Realms plotline, what with this level range basically being the end of Wynn province content, however that isn't justification for just how much this ruins the original (and honestly current) heart of Wynncraft's lore, all in service of a group which far less players will have any sort of connection to or care about.

There are plenty of other issues I have with the War of the Realms part of this quest, the next biggest of which being how it simply wraps things up too nicely. Its always nice to bring a bunch of plot points together, however a long standing issue Wynncraft has had from a logic perspective is just how much happens at 0 AP. It is true that this change to the elves does allow them to use the term 0 AP, since they did open a portal in that year (please please tell me this wasn't why this was done I'd die), however this definately goes a bit too far. To mark off points I can think of for what the elves actions caused, the biggest things are 1: RoL Portal, 2: Nether Portal, 3: Dern Portal Reopens, 4: Dern can invade Gavel, 5: The Colosi going insane, 6: The begining of the Corruption War, 7: Lari getting chosen by Orphion, and 8: Ahms Shattering. I wouldn't be suprised if I missed something, though there are an absurd number of minor things, like Fruma closing its doors to wynn due to the Corruption, which branch off this single event. It is frankly just too much from this single plot point, and maybe if it had been something introduced early on in the game it could have worked better, but we are now at level 78, so introducing the most important event in world history now is just kind of insane.

Of course, in much the same way the story of the Wynn province's story was hurt by this change, many of the other plot points which stemmed from ASP2's reveal also were made generally worse. For instance, the explanation of why Orphion choose Lari isn't because they were the best available person the elves had, but instead just someone who had disagreed with the established leaders. On paper again, this sounds like a good idea, as it helps explain one of the biggest criticisms people have had with Lair (that being their incompetence and almost child-like reasoning over thousands of years). Now at least, it makes sense why Lari is so bad at everything, because they were just some random person Orphion saw listen to them one time. Unfortunately, the cons this answer definitely outweighs the pros, since this actually shifts the stupidity onto the side of Orphion, who is an all-powerful force of Light. Now instead of Lari being dumb, Orphion was an idiot to have chosen Lari, a person whose deciding factor in being chosen was not listening to authority. In fact, all of Lari's failing over the years can now be shown in a different light (pun), as Orphion refusing to work with their single troop on the field makes them seem really dumb. They waitted 1000 years after already losing to the Darkness to finally pick a random soldier from another province? Before, when viewing things from the perspective of Lari being incompetent, at least one could argue that they were still just a mortal (also how are they alive if they lived outside Aldorei for 1000 years, the immortality only worked for those in the region), but now we have an all-powerful, all-knowing GOD being the stupid one. How can Orphion be so strong if they are so incompetent? Dern chooses the most dangerous person in Wynn, a literal corrupted / immortal soldier, and Orphion picks a random elf who disobeyed their last leader... It just feels a bit odd.

Another issue spawned from this quest is the death of the original Forest Guardian, and how they happened to get a new one. Once again, on paper this change does provide some good world building, as it explains why there is a giant stump around the RoL portal, however like previous points it of course creates a lot more issues than it fixes. For starters, we now need to ask the question of where the new Forest Guardian came from, how they managed to fall asleep after their last incarnation was brutally murdered, how this very powerful tree could have been beaten so thoroughly by the Elves, and how they were willing to let the elves go without punishment after what they did. As far as I know none of these points are addressed, but maybe there was something added or reworked to address these things, considering a lot of them could have been solved by a single discovery (if one of the new ones does this, let me know below, it would be very helpful). That said I still don't get the Forest Tree's logic for continuing to stay right next to the same people who'd just murdered their predecessor, and more importantly them deciding to fall asleep when someone else might just come along and turn them into firewood. Also, the way Lari talks about this tree, and the way the new one acts makes them seem extremely powerful, yet they were clearly beaten by a bunch of elves without light magic. This means that the Forest Guardian must be much weaker when it comes to power scaling and are definitely weaker than Lari and the Player. If it hadn't been for Lari defending the forest all these years, they'd definitely have just died on the spot, which again just makes it so strange when they talk to Lari (who is now canonically OLDER than them), as though they are the child. Sure, Lari is definitely stupid, but considering the actions of Orphion and what happened to the last Forest Guardian to encounter an elf, can they really put themselves on such a high pedestal?

Beyind this point I'd like to address my overall dislike for where Wynn has been going when it comes to story. For a long time now, it has been clear that Wynncraft has been trying to make up for the state of original Gavel, and how it advanced the game's story beyond the wynn province. I believe it is not an uncommon opinion that original gavel was not perfect, and when it came to story was often just a trainwreck. Quests like EotS were simply awful, and in general a lot of things just didn't feel polished on release. Because of this, Wynn has made a clear effort to clean things up across the board, and while I cannot say for certain it seems like people have generally liked the changes they've made to gameplay, builds, quest events, and items. All of these gameplay elements are at the forefront of what players will spend their time with, and thus have a clear effort being made to perfect them being the highest priority. And for those of you who care about these things the most, congratulations! From a gameplay and visual standpoint Wynn has come very far, and I'm glad that people can enjoy the ways its improved.

That said, as someone whose main focus is on Wynn's story, I believe things have taken a very different turn. Despite the flaws with earlier lore, despite how awful it could sometimes be, there was potential in it. Had someone gone in without just looking at the bad, a large quantity of what was made was actually quite good. Even EotS, an awful quest in all ways, held some interesting qualities, and the biggest of these is simple: nostalgia. Despite how bad a lot of Gavel was, for a lot of people that was where they began to play Wynncraft. Having spent years learning its stories, and exploring its every secret, there will always be something special about the mystery their once was to things. Wynn wasn't always so keen on feeding players information, and a lot of things required one to think, and explore. I have fond memories of one of my earliest real theories, when I made the claim that the meteors in ??? quest were the same as the crystals in Wynn Excavation. I have fond memories of exploring Wynn and random caves with lore within them, not secret discoveries one could find on a checklist. The world felt like an adventure, like an uncut gem waiting to be perfected.

But things are different now, as Wynn has finally made that effort to clean up their past, and clean they have. So much of what made Wynn, its secrets, its stories, its untapped lore, was just tossed aside like junk. Where once there were secrets like the dwarven prison, the Raksden cultists and their Lycanthropic boss underneath Pre-Light Forest, the buried castle under CotL, the Graveyard of 1000 Years, and even the sky islands dogun, now there are clearly marked "secret" discoveries, and simplistic caves designed for loot runner's convenience. Where once there were flawed, but ultimately redeemable plotlines there now stand their replacements, which often fail to improve the stories of their predecessors. Is the gameplay better? Of course, it is.

But is the story better?

No.

Despite all the bells and whistles, so little has really been improved, and instead, it seems like so much of what I once loved has just been steamrolled to bring in the next shiny new replacements, without any concern for what came before. As someone who's spent so long exploring this game's world, it really feels like every update the game just wants to one up what came before, basically just fishing for the shock of "bet you didn't see that coming!" I hated Lari when they first came out because they were a deeply flawed character with illogical motivations and a lack of connection to the world built around them, yet this was the same problems levied against what they replaced all those years ago. And now, like clockwork it seems the very same has happened to Aldorei's Secret Part 2, a quest which had potential to be improved, rewritten into an even worse position than what came before.

But at least it has selectable dialogue. At least it has updated builds. At least the gameplay is perfectly good...

Even if the story seems to just slip away behind it all, ready to be rewritten and burned again one day should hatred for it grow too great. It just hurts me to see.

I could probably keep ranting on for a while about my gripes with how things have been going for the story, with Qira and especially Skien's treatment (or lack thereof for the latter) being particularly painful. But I've gotten off track enough here.

Enjoy the game, enjoy the quest, hell enjoy the story if you disagree with me. But I really am tired of the way things have been going.

 

I think I've gotten what you mean, I don't directly disagree but here's my take summarized. I think having the story told in your face this way isn't as interesting and feels way too forced, but I also think having lore randomly placed about is too vague and disconnected. Once again like plenty of things there is a balance, we're straying past the line and should take a step back. Also side note I didn't really know what you mean about newer caves, are they too convenient? Older caves were also convenient, but were just as linear and more boring. Unless I'm taking this in wrong I think newer caves are more interesting as they offer different challenges and some are also less linear. Finding them is just as interesting if not more, as they have more uniqueness and interest in their builds and challenges. Secret discoveries are fine, they aren't marked down or easy to find like quests, but they provide important info. I don't know much about older things you could find but doing some small task when you find it for the information is still as "explorable" or whatever but isn't as vague. Again, maybe I'm looking at the wrong stuff but having that kind of lore in random builds that could just as easily be a random build they decided to do isn't as good. As I stated, there's a balance. New lore could be more vague and less forced, but it also should be decently distinct so we can form a story without that much confusion.

 

Also, this just throws away (from player's focus) the plotline the player has been canonically made for and which should be central to them. We are just a Ragni soldier, after all. I guess you could take it as that we follow WotR story to find a way to fix Corruption, idk.

To be fair, the "new versions" have been out for like what, two years let say, compared to the rest before. I think there are at least some, we just have not found them yet. Though, I really miss the sky island dogun and (though I haven't been around at that time) I would like to see the graveyard back, though perhaps with a bit of rework (or our rework :) ).

"War of the Realms rework" rework when?

I think they mean stuff like this, things that provided lore without being even hinted at. Granted, most of the ones in the link are bad (except the Graveyard), but that is just an example. As Blastbasher mentions, there used to be a dogun in Sky Islands in a small cave and if you talked to them they would tell you that they escaped the war. Or a hidden (and now abandoned) prison at the entrance to Molten Heights (actually, this one is still there, the entrance is just blocked)

 

I agree with your sentiment about ASP2, the quest was just kind of... eh. And it having no connection to part 1 whatsoever is definitely one of its biggest flaws.

 

Ah I see, I think having small lore related builds hasn't gone away. They still exist, and they are in newer builds as well. And again, I don't see how loot caves relate or change this, and secrets don't really either. As I've said, secret discoveries are kinda the same? They're scattered about and don't really have anything hinting towards them, just they require a small puzzle and you'll usually see a mini cutscene or a area with interactables which show the story or lore being presented. It's not as in your face as the quests and are still the "Oh hey what is this, this is neat." sorta thing. Having more npcs around would be nice, which is also sorta being done. They usually exist for quests though, but can be talked to separately from that.

 

As someone who joined Wynncraft in December of 2013, I disagree that the quest's story and Wynncraft's story as a whole has gotten worse. The old quest wasn't anything interesting and just reiterated that the villagers are greedy and greed is bad. They didn't even show or explain how their greed directly caused the Decay. And the twist of that the Sol Embassy may not be who they seem was instead a convoluted test that didn't really teach us anything new about the elves. At least in the new version, the Elders are actually hiding something and we learn something significant about the Elves (i.e. why they're immortal). Plus it makes sense now why the Nether Portal and the Decay happened when they did.

I don't really see why it's so detrimental that the Elves are now connected to the broader story. One of the major faults of Wynncraft's older story was that a lot of quests were disconnected and didn't build off of each other or have major recurring characters that participate in the story. In the old quest, they hinted that the Nether Portal opening was connected to the Decay, so it's not like this is completely new. Nor is the rest of Wynn cheapened; just because a conflict wasn't caused by a particular character or group, doesn't mean that the conflict itself is boring or bad. It's like saying the story of War of the Worlds is cheapened because humanity didn't cause the invasion. Greed isn't really emphasized as a fault of Wynn like it is in Gavel too.

I also really don't get what you have against Secret Discoveries either. They're fairly hidden and unless you read the wiki, you can easily miss most of them. That's why they encourage exploration and puzzle solving, and why they're one of my favorite parts of the game. Nor are they mutually exclusive with those other secrets that you mentioned. Like those other secrets, there is still a boatload of theorizing you can do with them, such as Bob's mother being the boss of the Decrepit Sewers dungeon. While the Graveyard of 1000 years would've been cool, that's the thing; it was unfinished. And every game has content that gets scrapped or cut for many, many reasons, and the Graveyard of 1000 years was no different. Secret discoveries shouldn't be a fault for that, especially given how much lore and content they gave back and they aren't even any in the Jungle or Great Bridge.

Overall, you shouldn't let nostalgia hold you back from enjoying the new content. The CT has really come a long way from 2013, and we should all be happy for that. Obviously new content is not flawless, and it will never be. But to say that Wynncraft as a whole is worse off story-off wise is wrong from the fact that half the story was missing. And what about other quests then? The Tower of Amnesia was just a fetch quest for teleportation scrolls. What crucial lore and story did Recover the Past replace from it? That's not even mentioning other quests such as the revamped Hollow Sirene or Misadventure on the Sea, which a lot of people enjoyed.

 

I have to agree with much of this. Indeed, it does sometimes feel that each update to the lore is just an attempt to use the shock factor, becoming cliche in itself by trying not to be cliche.

The War of the Realms is not intrinsically connected to humanity, though. Their point was that a war in a whole other province in which a whole other people participate shouldn't have been caused by some elf people all the way in Gavel, who had zero contact with humans at all.

The thing is though, the RoL and Aldorei questlines are deeply tied to the overarching stories of several regions in Gavel. For smaller quests with less lore significance, they, of course, don't have to have as much lore significance. Also, Recover the Past definitely did give new lore, namely that about Fruma, the player's homeland.

 

My point is that humans don’t necessarily need to be the cause of the war bc it’s still a story about adversity and struggle. Humans don’t need to “deserve” to be punished in order for their struggle to be interesting. And by making the Elves responsible, it adds depth to them and shows that no one is perfect and how miscommunication and pride can cause so much suffering. That’s a lot more interesting imo than just talking about how bad greed is. In many stories in general, the protagonist(s) had nothing to do with the cause of the conflict, so it’s not like it’s a prerequisite for good story telling.

That’s what I’m trying to point out; that these improvements such as Recover the Past add up and make the overall story a lot better. While RoL and Aldorei’s Secret Part I & II are significant, they only make up a small fraction of the 100+ quests in the game. And I thought that since you mentioned other secrets that weren’t tied to either RoL or Aldorei’s Secret such as the Graveyard of 1000 Years and the Underground Castle, I thought it was fair to use Recover the Past as a counter example.

And even then, RoL wasn’t even finished for years. Some parts of RoL just consisted of random fetching across Cinfras so you could get another quest helmet. I’d also like to add they added other cool lore and secrets such as the Pirate Castle by the Fruma Gate that aren’t Secret Discoveries. So I really don’t get why you keep saying Wynncraft’s story is worse than b4.

 

doesnt this absolutely destroy the current WOTR timeline of orphan vs dern guy

 

no

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(you dont have the full picture)

 

ct explaining why the lore doesnt make sense "it will make sense in later updates"

 

But dern isn't even out yet. Its a reasonable claim.