Thoughts About Wynn Lore?

Recently a thread appeared on some lore of Wynn, most started to bash it. Sense the thread wasn't on the topic of Wynn lore as a whole, I thought I would give this conversation a new home. "Or attempt to."
This thread is simple, its meant to serve as a place to discuss this topic aswell as ask a few questions.

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First, what's so shitty about Wynn lore? Or if you think its good, whats good?

Second, how do we fix it if you believe it to be bad?

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Allow the conversation to begin, and I'm excited to her alternative oppions.

 

My main problem with it is that it’s cliched beyond belief. Light vs. Dark? How many times has that been told? I guess it could work, but the direction that Wynn is taking it is that light is good and dark is bad. This makes the lore very black and white, when one of my favorite RPGs of all time had a moral where it was okay for things to fall into a gray zone (I bet you can guess what that is)


Even if we ignore that, there’s still too many cliches to count. Oh, a time paradox that a character can’t get out of? That’s basically every time travel movie. Robots turning against their owner? Pretty much any sci-fi film that involves robots. There’s a war between two species and you have to stop them from destroying Molten Heights? Anyone getting World of Light flashbacks?


At this point I don’t think much can be done about these cliches, if future storytelling and overall quality of writing is improved, I don’t think I’ll mind it as much.

 

vaward's lore says it used to be the pants of a "great hero" while the pants themselves one of the worst abominations to ever occur

 

The best part about the lore is probably how it’s told (usually in discoveries)
The worst part is its genericness.
Though wynnexavations is great, fight me.
Even by today’s quest standards, the gameplay is still great and the lore is cool.

 

Wynn's lore is flawed at its core. Before I pull up my sleeves and get down and dirty on Wynn's story, I'd like to acknowledge some of its positives.

Wynncraft is incredibly endearing, it's a cute game with lighthearted fantasy motifs. I absolutely adore the heart that's in Wynncraft, it is so generic and stereotypical that it becomes something charming. Too many fantasy worlds are so serious and gritty just to be gritty, but not Wynn. Wynn has this "let's go out and have an adventure" tone going for it, which is both exciting and liberating. There is also this deep sense of mystery and wonder. A lot of the world and a lot of quests raise many questions, and have little answers. I adore that entirely, I hate being read the whole story and having all the mysteries quickly unraveled. I enjoy community interaction to discover something new and interesting.

Wynncraft also, every once in a while, nails something completely. They get the world just right, the story just right, and the execution just right. Shattered Minds man, what an incredible quest with actually good story telling elements. The dialogue reveals the nature and personality of Elves really well. I got a good sense of them from that quest through the dialogue, not some book or person telling me what they're like. Unfortunately, that's really all I enjoy in Wynn lore.

Wynn does a poor job of balancing tone. In film, in books, and in games you will find that they all have tones. The tone of a game is very complex, there are multiple tones you want for different scenarios, yet you want to balance them throughout your world. Earlier I exclaimed how I adore the light hearted themes of Wynn, but the more serious tones? Well, I feel like they're poorly executed. I mean yeah, Wynncraft is in Minecraft, and how serious can you take an mmorph within Minecraft? But darker themes can be expressed in dialogue and the environment. Wynn has this tendency to express their serious side through quests and the events that are witnessed or the events that have occurred. But it's just corny and cheesy, and does not get at that inner human emotion that makes us really ponder something. The content team needs to write a story that is meaningful and thought provoking, they must express that correctly too. They must execute these darker tones with dialogue and choice that bring us to think.

The current state of Wynn's tonal balance is laughable. I take nothing seriously, because the light-hearted stuff is too prevalent for the amount of dark they want in their server. The darker, more serious, themes can't be taken seriously, because they're expressed and executed poorly. Look at a game like Undertale. A game that, on the surface is just a top down retro rpg, actually mimics life rather well. It has these positive, quirky, and lovely characters. Each crafted with thought and care, each capturing the image of what a human is truly like. Yet that same exact game has incredibly deep and dark motifs that strike a cord deeply ingrained within ourselves. Wynn isn't a believable world at all. I don't care about the corruption taking over, I don't care about the towns people, the well-being of Nesaak or Detlas. If Wynn truly wants to take itself seriously at times, it needs to build a lore that mimics life.

The stories themselves can be generic and predictable, and you can still make damn fantastic lore. But Wynn doesn't do that. It is simply generic and predictable. This far off evil entity is trying to take over the world, and for some reason we perceive it as evil, and for some some reason I am supposed to defend the world in which I do not care about from it. Oh yeah and the hubris of man! Oh how corrupted and awful the beings that dwell Earth are, cursed they are for they have brought upon the great darkness that will consume all! So a portal opens, allowing emeralds to be introduced. From the Portal comes corruption, and from the emeralds comes corruption in the form of greed. Allowing both Wynn and Gavel to suffer from the effects of the darkness. Why the fuck do I care again? Why is corruption so bad? Why is a fucking dragon, that doesn't know shit about me, telling me I'm all in it for wealth (I mean I totally am but yknow). Wynncraft has absolutely no warrant, no reason for me to care. The world as it is sorta feels like a wasteland already. It's just undead and hostile wild-life. I don't care about any of the characters, I don't know why any of this is bad, and I am uninterested in what is going on.

The villains of Wynn, not just the major ones, all of them have to be understandable. As they should be entities that question what we consider normal. Antikythera is a fantastic villain, and by far my favorite. He has more character and development than any other character we see in all of Wynncraft. He is by far the most intriguing, for he is a real villain. He has motives that extend beyond simply "oh look at me I'm just evil." No, Antikythera believes that humans are a threat to the rest of the world. They brought upon the corruption and they treat everything around them as never equals. This kind of moral questioning and dilemma is flawed at heart, but it was a great attempt at proposing a real question to the players. It made us think, it made us feel, it made us reflect, and I took it more seriously than any other story line in Wynncraft. Killing Wynnston was really clever, proving to the machine that humans are truly awful. That isn't to say that Antikythera is perfect, his whole argument lies on a foundation of logical fallacies, but at least he is a serviceable villain.

Wynncraft as a whole is filled with hostility. You see cultures of pandas and cats that are capable of social structures and possibly communications, yet all they want to do is kill you. Why is the world so god damn hostile? Why does every entity have to be an enemy? I get it, battle fields and generally hostile areas should have lots and lots of enemies. But the water enemies right outside of Cinfras are total dicks. Same goes for pretty much every species in Gavel. Light forest enemies? Dicks. Canyon enemies? Dicks. Sky islands enemies? Dicks. The world should be more realistic in that kind of sense. I want to be able to interact with humanoid panda npcs, I want to speak to cats, I want to roam the world and just appreciate it. There's always some asshole mob that gives me shit xp that wants to kill me. 90% of all of Wynncraft is just full of these massively cool builds that only have filler content. Filler content being these bland and boring mobs. Reduce the amount of mobs, make way more things non-hostile. Why is everything trying to kill me? Can no one just roam the land without getting chased by hordes of mobs that want to kill you? What if the Canyon of the Lost had specific areas with hostile mobs, and had bandit camps dotted around, but was mostly peaceful? Calm villages of hobgoblins, pandas, and cats. With loveable npcs and relatable quest lines. Why doesn't Wynn just have specific battle grounds full of undead? Why does the entire continent have to be sprinkled with undead. Wynn's undead should be compacted into specific areas.

Edit 1:

Wouldn't it be cool to have different groups of the same mobs be hostile or peaceful? The peaceful ones have quests or mini-quests, and they can sell you stuff, while the hostile ones can be grinded. I just see this crazy massive world, brimming with amazing things to be seen, yet all those things feel so empty and shallow. Sky Islands was incredibly fun to explore, but none of it felt real. It was inhabited by enemies, a couple npcs, and just cool builds. What is the point of a cool build if you don't fill it with interesting things?

Wynncraft suffers greatly from not giving much player choice. The most choice you get is picking your reward. Why does every playthrough for each class have to be the exact same? Why does everything I do have no consequence later down the line? What if in Dwarves and Doguns players could either side with doguns, side with dwarves, or go down the current path of siding with neither. If you side with doguns you slaughter the dwarves until a peace agreement is reached, and you get different rewards . If you side with the dwarves, then you must fight Garaheth, and come to a peace agreement afterwards.

A thing I'd like to do now is go through a timeline of Wynn and discuss some key points. This timeline is all by FinnDestroyer https://forums.wynncraft.com/threads/the-current-timeline-of-wynncraft-lore.243370/
So in the "Sometime Before the Portal's Opening" section there are all these events that really aren't too interesting. Which I'd like to point out a MASSIVE issue in Wynn lore. There isn't much background or knowledge of the world. For a world so big and diverse, you'd think there would be a solid background for all things, but there really isn't. We only know what we see in-game, if only there was a source of knowledge outside of the game. This issue is caused due to the lore being expanded upon as the game is being expanded upon. Many of the suggestions in Wynn were player suggestions, so the lore had to fit them. Wynn lore wasn't thoroughly thought through or planned, it was built over time. There needs to be more to the world, I mean it's an entire world for crying out loud make it feel like one.

From 78 AP to 347, nothing interesting happens. Just a really long war between Dwarves and Doguns. It's so ridiculously long, but that near 300 year gap is just one event. Everything from then to Bob defeating Bak'al is just another stupidly long feud between Bak'al and Wynn. With here and there sprinkled some lore. Note that all this lore is limited purely to the game. There really isn't much lore if you think about it. Wait, are you telling me that only 100 years ago, during 900 AP there were no ocean colonies or civilizations?!?!? What? That doesn't make fucking sense. Either the lore is fucked, or Finn got something wrong, but this boy did his damn research. So point made, not only does the lore seem spotty, but there isn't much. Wynn is pretty bland and too uninteresting and just too generic. I think Wynncraft players have an inner desire to experience and see the lore within the world. There is this massive void in our experiences, and that void is the expectation that the current lore cannot fill. There needs to be more stories and more to the world. And the quality of that substance must be good.

Another abominable thing about Wynn lore is legendary/mythic descriptions. Totally random lore, made up to fit the needs of the items. Items should be made based on lore, not the other way around. And these item description lores are just so out of nowhere, and feel like they're from another game sometimes. And there is no evidence of some of that lore in the game itself. It's more lore, but it's not good, and it certainly is not of interest. Make better lore for item descriptions that connect to the game, or connect to eachother, or connect to some larger source. Hell a piece of lore for every item would be simply fantastic, and I bet you players could come up with some really great lore for them. If there was lore for every item in the game, and a small team just wove together a story for each; everyone would identify every item just to see its lore. Granted the lore has to be interconnected to Wynncraft as a whole and be interesting.

Stuff in Wynn lore ruins Wynn lore. Legendary Island really undermines the significance and importance of a lot of figures. It takes away a lot from characters like Bob or CoW. Once well respected badass enemies that were a part of the more serious side of Wynn have now become robots made by some human. The disrespect towards those characters is just so awful. Why are elements of the game taking away from the significance of lore. How did some random dude re-create Bob as a robot, THE fucking Bob. Half of all Wynn lore is about this guy, and here comes this asshole who just makes a joke out of Bob by making a robot version of him. Why is the forgery in Gavel? Why can't Gavel have its own unique dungeons, while the forge can reside in the province of Wynn? Once again, that gameplay aspect has totally undermined Wynn lore, and is just frustrating to see.

Okay there's a lot more to say, but I feel like there's a character limit, and I'm really tired of typing. I will possibly make future edits, but for now I'm gonna rest.

 

Wynn lore is one of the most important reasons of why I still play Wynncraft.

 

The quest where you get high? I mean, not entirely disagreeing, it’s far and away one of the best quests, but basically the whole quest is you tripping balls with little to no serious connection to the real world.

So, good things first; I personally really love how they treat corruption in modern day Wynn. It’s “evil”, sure, in the sense of the word, but it feels more like a natural disaster that’s occuring for 1000 years more than an actual villain. It’s a force of nature that people have different reactions to, from the Farmers in Ragni accepting it as a nuisance to the scientist from the Corrupted Village quest trying to research its effects and potential cures. It’s a thing, it’s going to stay, and people generally understand that it’s not going to go away.

I also like the idea of the clashing of light and dark being the impotus for the corruption rather than the darkness just being like “oh, let’s fuck over these puny mortals with this corruption”, and I feel like that can be expanded on in future lore (maybe by turning the light/dark good/evil narrative over?).

In addition, you’re not the great savior. You live in a world after the main story (Bob vs. Bak’al) about the fate of the world, and get to deal with the aftermath instead. It’s kind of refreshing to not be the legendary hero who saves the world, and instead just be some random person passing through and helping out.

I also like Theorick’s lore, where he’s a dick but still cares. It’s a good way of upending the “evil dictator uses fear of more evil thing to become a dictator” trope. He’s still an asshole but he understands that everyone is on the same side, for better or for worse. I really wish that Frost Bite came before FotF, though, so we could start off percieving Theorick as the “evil dictator” first before we end with a more positive image, but I did a post on that before so I’ll skip it.

Death is a unique character and a really fun interpretation of it; he actually feels like he’s done this whole schtick so often that he’s become casual about it. He’s not some evil, cold hearted psychopath or silent, hooded figure.

Finally, it does seem like the team is generally getting better at incorporating aspects of the lore. For example, the Qira Hive is no longer just another level 80 place and quest, but is mentioned around Gavel, if you look for it, and you get a sense that people fear and hate it, and it’s even given as a reason for all the evil mobs in the CoTL area. And when you beat it and DON’T kill Qira, people respond with a pretty accurate “dude, what the fuck”. Sure, it’s a bit on the nose at times, but it’s much better than before. There’s also the Siegfried fan shops around the place, and the NPCs mentioning him.

Also General Graken, while one dimensional, is honestly just such a fun character IMO and works well as the UC dungeon NPC.

Ok, now onto what I don’t like
-the dialogue is often kind of unnecessary, and often tells instead of showing. It can also be really cringy at times.
-Amadel should have been introduced in Wynnex A or B, and comes so late in the story that his big twist doesn’t feel too impactful. Small gripe, I know, but still.
-The general Clicheness of the light vs dark, humans are greedy thing that @PrimaNocta touched on
-The constant swing in tone from quest to quest. Cowfusion and Beyond the Grave are amazing, light-hearted quests, but around the same time you have the Hidden City, where you straight up murder a man to save a town. Shattered Minds and Memory Paranoia are also two quests in the same general level range that are polar opposites in tone
-Basically every minor character, and a large amount of major characters (Axelus, Korzim) have the same generic personality. You know the one; nice enough, meek, kind of humorless. They feel like they exist to give you the next step in the quest, which makes it sort of hard to feel something when you kill them off.
-Every quest is a side quest. Honestly, I’m fine with that for now as right now the main thing we need is endgame content rather than a main storyline IMO.
-Most quests don’t connect to the world at large. I mean, we found and killed BIGFOOT, and no one cares. We uncovered the king of Troms as a political puppet for the Wynnexcavation guys, and he’s just never seen or talked about again. The Tower of Ascension? It’s just there, cool music and all. Again, they do seem to be getting better at this, a la Qira Hive, but still.
-Most evil Villains are one dimensional world takeover personalities or unintelligent murder machines. Nagareth, Garoth, Charon, Garaheth, ETC.
-Some things really need an explanation, ESPECIALLY Runes and the Forgery

Beyond that, not much else to say that @PrimaNocta hasn’t already, so go read his thing. It’s 99% accurate, minus some really obscure points about the Ocean a la Torrential Tide lore

 

Seeing as its been brought up a few times I would like to give my take in the light vs. Dark narrative.

Currently speaking I don't see the light or dark as good or evil, as much as I see them as a cosmetic horror that's indifferent to us.

After all, if the light was so good, why would they choose to fight in our plain of existence? So there's doesn't become corrupt sure, but there killing thousands of innocent people through the curroption and the decay.

 

The character limit is 80000 characters. Keep writing about the lore, this post is great.

 

Whats wrong with vaward?

 

So kinda like smash Bros story mode?

 

Going to be honest, haven't played it.

 

Madkurre dislikes Vaward slapping on builds. That's basically all.

 

There is a sense that most of it is too cliched to take seriously. While not bad on its own, the entire villager elf story oh no greedy people killed the good light innocent people that can do no harm and now darkness is so overused that it's not interesting. The thing is that's kind of a trap Wynncraft is falling into and it's not completely their fault. Every single MMORPG thing (whether in a block game or not) has it, and it would be out of tune if Wynn didn't include it.
But it's not all doom and gloom, individual quests can be such a laugh, or even serious and gritty when it needs to be. Lemme roll some examples of good quests

• Iron Heart - Part I is much better than part II, not gameplay wise but when you go down into that cave and are met with a sobbing Golem crying about being too cold it hits you right in the feels man, you know something is up
• Original Star Thief - I've not actually done the reworked quest but I hope it didn't ruin it too much. It was such a wtf quest that it was amazing. So abrupt and random, with only a vague idea what is going on, it was a fucking laugh to play.
• 1000 metres under - Just damn good. Enough backstory so you have a clue what's going on without too much explained until the very end to keep you guessing. Combine this with actual enjoyable gameplay and an unfamiliar setting with a surprising amount of detail makes it a quest to look to whenever a new one is made

There is something good to be said about most quests, and a lot are really good. I'm talking Shattered Minds, The Shadow of the Beast, Out of My Mind, Memory Paranoia, Flight in Distress and the Bigger Picture just to name a few. It's just the issue that while half the quests are really good, the other half are just kinda stale. Nothing that stands out. I have faith that with future quests, the CT team can keep hitting home runs.

 

It's bad and it's going to be retconed next update to still not make sense.