My thoughts on the new update

To say y'all cooked would be an understatement of the century. The best way I'd describe Wynncraft is that everything pre-Spellbound feels like a Minecraft server with lots of plugins, Spellbound feels like a game in alpha that lays the groundwork for the future while still using recycled free models, and Rekindled World feels like the beta that starts really turning the game into an actual video game.
But let's get into it.

Entities:
So to start off, I've always had a problem with Wynncraft not really embracing the idea of it being its own game. For too long it's reused most of its models from Minecraft and marketed itself exclusively as "Hey have you ever wanted to do cool stuff in Minecraft? Here's Wynncraft, this cool Minecraft server!" and it's always been rather frustrating as there would definitely be a much bigger playerbase if they actually marketed it as its own MMO instead of just "the Minecraft MMO".

The problem is (or rather, was) that Wynncraft isn't Minecraft. List any single mechanic in Minecraft and it will be completely removed, replaced, or reworked from the ground up in Wynncraft. Even something as basic-level as your health bar or the ability to sprint is completely different in Wynncraft. They are completely different games other than having the same models so Wynncraft marketing itself as just a cool Minecraft server always felt disingenuous.

But now, seeing this trailer and the footage from the website, I cannot express enough how excited I am for Wynncraft to truly recognize its own potential as its own fully-fledged MMO game. I mean, if you showed the footage from the website to anyone who doesn't know about Wynncraft, they would think it looks more similar to Terraria or Hytale than it does to Minecraft. And that's a good thing. I cannot wait for this update to come out so I can see just how many entities have new models because the ones I've seen so far are just beautiful, along with their animations. And their attacks (along with those of bosses) look much better and have actual animations now. Not to mention brand new AI for the mobs. In the website and in their "New Enemies" short you can see a robot guy move kinda shuffling forward in big steps as per his walk cycle, and has an arm cannon that shoots a projectile that explodes.


Menus and UI:
Aside from the entities looking amazing, I'm a big fan of the new "modernized" UIs, a term they've presumably used to describe it being de-Minecraftified, and you guys know how much I love when Wynncraft makes itself distinct from Minecraft. Now, I know some people aren't as excited about the new UI but I definitely think it fits Wynncraft. There's room for improvement of course, I'm not particularly fond of how small your actual health/mana numbers are (and the fact that they use a more pixelated font compared to the normal Wynn font), but otherwise I'm a huge fan of the aesthetic. It's not just your HUD either, the pause menu is good, the blacksmith is great, and the bank is awesome.


Music:
Although I was a little skeptical of the music at first because I thought it sounded a little to "childish", I gotta say that after all the music teasers we've gotten for the soundtrack, I've definitely changed my tune (no pun intended). Textillated is definitely doing very well with these tracks and I've liked his tracks since I heard Suspended Serenity, but with the new sound font I am particularly loving Journey. Though I do admit that I dislike certain aspects of his music such as the heavy trumpets in several tracks. Regardless, I think all of his music thus far is really good but the real star here is Corpe.

Now, I don't exactly know what the whole situation is but it seems that Corpe for a very long time has had a problem with Wynncraft's old sound font and felt the soundtrack was being held back by it, something I can understand given my own stances that Wynn should distance itself from Minecraft. His music outside Wynncraft is genuinely really good from what I've listened to. I recently heard Against All Odds while researching this and now I listen to it regularly when I'm out on a walk, so now that he isn't held back by those strange restrictions I can smell the possibilities because his new tracks above all others are so good that you could probably say they're from an actual game's soundtrack and nobody would question it.

I really love the way Earthquake briefly starts out with the original sound font before quickly escalating into the "real" boss track, and while I've always loved Staring into the Abyss even in the old sound font, it has quickly spiraled from "hey this is catchy and I like it" to quickly becoming a personal favorite track of mine even among other great soundtracks.
I don't know if they're getting updated in 2.1, but my favorite current tracks are Remnants of the Past, War-Weary Reverie, and Warrior Adventure and I would love to hear updated versions of those tracks with the new sound font.


Raids and Bosses:
I've publicly expressed my problems with Raids a while back and the main problem I had is that mobs in the Raids felt way too powerful at the level you actually unlock the Raids and too weak later on. In the Raids section of the update website, it says that mobs in Raids will now "scale to each party member's own level" and while it's worded a bit vaguely with only one sentence to describe it, it sounds like it means that how easy it is to kill them (and presumably how easy it is for them to kill you) no longer depends solely on how high your level is, which sounds like a complex fix to every problem I had with mob damage.
And those bosses... I always had a problem with raid bosses (and other bosses in general) in Wynncraft being weird and clunky to fight... they just felt like you were hitting something that runs at you while it repeats a very robotic walking animation (that plays even while not walking, I might add) and then occasionally uses mostly recycled spells from the rest of the game with very few good mechanics.
I have never once publicly expressed my dislike for boss fights simply because I never imagined it was possible to improve them in any conceivable way due to the limitations of Wynncraft as a Minecraft server... but after seeing what little gameplay we got from the update, hot damn! And not just raids, all bosses look better now. I'm very curious how Canyon Colossus works; whether his sword is an actual hitbox, or if it just makes a hitbox on the map, or if the Colossus itself during his attacks is just one big hitbox, I just can't really rule out anything when it comes to Wynncraft.


World:
I never had a problem with the world of Wynncraft but the improvements definitely make it better. Everything looks better overall, and here's hoping that Corrupted dungeons no longer look like my plate after I ate some delicious spaghetti. The builds I've seen are awesome, world events look actually cool now and "Major" world events are an amazing idea. World events in general add more reasons to explore through the world even after you've already explored it, so here's hoping they give good rewards.
One thing I'm concerned with, however, is that you no longer need to do quests for most dungeons. The quests provided important story context for the dungeons and I'm worried that context will no longer exist for new players to enjoy. On the other hand, I wonder if every single dungeon now has a "story" version for that exact purpose like Galleon's Graveyard and (I think) Infested Pit do. I am excited for improvements on other lower level quests in general though.


Conclusion:
It might be too early to say, but right now this update is looking to be a very easy 10/10, and I might even consider it the best update Wynncraft has ever had, though I'm on the fence on whether it's better than Spellbound or not.
I am going to be very restless for more news on the update from now on, and I'm excited for the future of this game.
Note that I will be updating this post over time as more spoilers are revealed.
But anyways, what do you guys think?

 

It is not out yet but looks like it could be the best update yet.

 

It feels like this update goes hand in hand with 2.0.
2.0 upgraded the player and allowed us to customise and have massive freedom in how we play and interact with the world. This update is the reverse, it upgrades and customises the world and changes how the world interacts with us

 

I strongly dislike how it was marketed as the biggest update ever when it clearly is not. I wish we had new quests (not just revamps of quests that don't need revamps or whatever) and I'm quite sad they aren't actually adding new functionality to the nether, or new areas outside of quest areas. The lack of new quests and areas to explore makes it hard for me to get excited about it or feel as if this is something that will get me playing more.

The things they are adding do seem cool and I hope we can have a fairly clean and quick hero beta. While they're redoing mobs, they should certainly tick the general difficulty up because rarely does Wynn combat present a real challenge... also you aren't really punished for dying anymore so difficult combat challenges won't cause the same issues they did before. Re-done mobs/bosses, world events and the weekly boss will help breathe life into the world which is always helpful. They've done a pretty good job of that in recent updates. I hope that in future updates we can get more ways to customise our weapons beyond just powders. We have good player and stat customisation with spell trees, tomes and aspects. Speaking of aspects, they look cool and the ones we've seen appear like they add spell and ability customisation, which is better than stat customisation. The fact that there don't appear to be rigid restrictions on which ones you can use (like w/tomes) is a good thing and will allow for more actual creativity in builds, depending on what the user likes, rather than just following metas.

New UIs look pretty nice but they do have to be careful to not overdo them.

The lack of actually new quests/areas makes me hesitate to get very excited though. We've had very few actually new quests in recent updates and since Gavel the areas we've gotten that come to mind are Corkus in 2017, Silent Expanse, and revamped Realm of Light. All very high quality areas but I've just gotten bored of them and the fact that we were told the next update would be Fruma in Nov. 2022 and we're probably not getting Fruma until mid 2025 at earliest takes much of the shine off it for me. I think very often the community overreacts to trailers and other things designed to create hype, and fails to look at things with a critical enough eye.

Out of Rekindled, the Lootrun update, and Spellbound, Rekindled will probably be the best as long as they balance it right. Spell trees from Spellbound were a great addition but have been very poorly balanced. If they balance the redesigned bosses, world events and aspects correctly it'll be a well-above average update.

 

Salted did state that they were saving the quests for Fruma, so it seems fairly likely that the Fruma update is gonna cone with a large amount of quests to make up for the lack of quests with Rekindled

 

It quite literally is. Even if it's not the largest in terms of content added, it is the largest for the server. The amount of tools and crazy behind the scenes stuff that go into this update is ridiculous, and even if it isn't apparent from a player perspective, 2.1 actually is the largest update in Wynncraft thusfar.

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The Nether hasn't been canon for half a decade. The area beyond the Corruption Portal is The Realm of War.

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Anyways, as we said in the trailer, there's stuff we haven't revealed yet that we're going to continue to tease, so stay tuned.

 

I'm glad this is the case, it's just never been officially stated to my knowledge so it's good that you're saying it. It goes hand in hand with Wynncraft doing away with the Minecraft features and becoming its own game

 

I agree there's definitely a lot of cool behind the scenes stuff going on in this update but the average player is judging the size of an update only by the amount of content added. Excited to hear more of what is to come though, hopefully it helps address some of my negative feelings.

 

There’s always Fruma to look forward to at least. You’d be surprised how a year can fly by.

 

I think it looks great, super excited for whats to come! Especially the world events I think could add so much spice and liveliness to the world. I do wish the Ocean got some more attention, however. Ive been doing another replay of the game recently, and while there are old and kinda crusty quests and builds a little bit all over the place, it sure does feel like the Ocean comes out the worst overall. Some are great, like Misadventure on the Sea, but others like Zhight Island and Ice Nations really are showing their age in terms of either build design or quest design. But eh, cant imagine the CT isnt aware of this, so maybe an Ocean update in the future.

 

I have updated this post to accommodate for new information. This will happen again as we get more information on the update.

 

Technically the content added ammounts to the entire game, because if most/all enemies were reworked and given brand new models and AIs, a playthrough from lvl 0-105 will be and feel COMPLETELY different
The scale of this rework is so insane that all the reworked stuff can be considered new content now

 

I'm not sure about the new UIs though. I do like the new 'wynntils-y' hotbar but the blacksmith UI feels off. I'm not one of the people who will scream for hours about the content book or lootrun graphics, but the blacksmith UI just feels really weird and sort of ... plastic-y. Also, not the hugest fan of Silverbull sort of just showing up at raids. (Feels like breaking immersion even if it technically isn't, but it definitely is a promotion for the subscription.) I wish that it was sort of like something to do with the raid, and not some corporate autocracy bs. (Also, I'm not the biggest fan of 'block' bosses turning into modeled ones. For instance, TCC & The Eye)

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However, traveling through the Wynncraft world can feel devoid of life and things to do. I'm glad they're adding world events beyond the one-time class stuff. (Burning tent, pirate thingy in the southwest near Fruma, the unified gnome are all extremely underwhelming. Sort of like easter eggs.) ALSO THEY REMOVED SOUL POINTS YIPPEE THIS UPDATE IS THE GREATEST THING TO HAVE EVER HAPPENED I DON'T CARE IF I HATE THE BLACKSMITH UI THIS IS AWESOME YES FINALLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

I agree, I've been listening to the new NotG songs nearly nonstop for the past 2 days. :D

 

Pretty much my thoughts exactly (except I will yap for hours about the lootrun guis). I agree that the Silverbull company being shoehorned into raids was kinda weird. Like, imagine you just finished The Breaking Point, and then you finally open the gate to the Colossus and walk in… and then there’s a silverbull dude chilling in there waiting for you. And in TNA? The Silverbull company doesn’t even canonically know of the Silent Expanse, so why is there a normal guy there? At the very least the skins could be changed to make the raid keeper in SE look not human. I think that’s something that a CT wanted to do. The Silverbull lootruns were fine, but all of the raids hold significance in the lore, which makes the silverbull people as raid keepers feel extra weird. Maybe the Silverbull people could just be removed as raid keepers and the original ones came back. Maybe the TCC raid keeper could be a dogun or something since it used to be a normal guy too? Idk lol. But it would be nice if the new gambits were more remote and the Silverbull company wouldn’t actually go anywhere near the raid lol.

 

I don’t know how it’s going to work for raids but I hope it’s like you discover the raid and report to them to begin raiding. I doubt it though

 

Not every model was changed but all the stats were iirc

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Oh yeah that’s a great idea. A CT also mentioned that they wanted some sort of “story” mode for a raid that you can do solo. Maybe you’d have to do the story mode first before you can report to silverbull and start doing the real raiding.

 

Most rooms are just not soloable at all, so it wouldn't really even be a "solo raid", it's just be a completely different piece of content puppeting around the idea of being a "solo raid".

 

that just sounds like a dungeon

 

Unlike lootrunning, where you cannot lootrun at all if you dont go and sign up to silverbull, i believe raids wont have this effect, players who dont really care about silverbull will be able to still do raids with their friends, so i dont think it'll be that shoehorned in