World Welcome To The Wasteland

Before you read the meat of this thread, I'd like to preface that I do understand that the changes I propose are both drastic and tedious. That they are difficult to implement; therefore, it is immensely unlikely for them to come about. However, a part of this thread is for me to gauge how much of the community, at least on the forums, agrees with my viewpoints.

Every MMORPG, good or bad, tries to emulate the real world to a certain degree. Now what separates a good MMO from a bad one is how their worlds are designed, and how players interact with their environment. Yes, game mechanics, features, and game play are all highly significant into the equation that makes an MMO, but I think most MMOs do a good job of making good mechanics. Wynn's mechanics aren't perfect, and I think there is a lot of development to be made there, but overall I think there is a lot of pretty damn good content. Which is why I think the Wynn team should focus much of their efforts and resources into developing a world where players want to fall in love with and enjoy.

Why? Because the world is bland, it's a wasteland of never ending monsters. Almost every NPC is two-dimensional, uninteresting, and basic. Bosses, quest givers, and enemies they're all so boring and quite frankly poorly written. The lore is starved of rich stories and intriguing tales. Where are the politics of the world? The plagues? The drama? The religions? The denizens? The romantic bitter sweet epics of heroes? Where is the heart in all of this? I don't care about most of the NPCs in Wynn, they're just heartless, quest dispensing machines. I don't care about the villains who I do not understand nor sympathize with. I don't want to know why every enemy in this wasteland wants my head, nor do I care what race or history they have, because I know they don't have any. If you are now asking yourself "so what? the world to me is fine and gameplay mechanics should be developed over the world" then I believe you are sorely mistaken for believing that. I respect most opinions, but to think that a lack luster world is not one of the greatest mistakes an MMO can make is simply ridiculous. Players play to have fun, but they stick around because they love the world. I do not love the world of Wynn, I only love the memories attached with it. I have no reason to continue playing, because I frankly don't give a shit about the world. I'm only here, writing this, because I absolutely love complaining, and I enjoy some forum posts.

Most of you reading this have a game they fell in love with, because of the great world building. The fat lore that seemingly never ends, and branches into millions of tidbits and stories. The characters that are oh so brilliantly familiar to people you really know. Characters you care about, are interested in, and adore. The villains that capture your heart and understanding, whom almost make you believe that what they are doing is right. The villains that shatter your paradigm, and reveal some unnerving knowledge that chips away at your beliefs and makes you feel uncertain about your beliefs. So to those of you who've found such a game with any of these traits I ask you. Does Wynn carry much of this? If any at all? Does Wynn capture or emulate the real world in your mind? To me it does not, it fails at making an interesting world.

Recently I introduced some friends to Wynncraft, here are some takeaways. They did not care at all about the world's lore, I only began caring somewhat after doing much research. But only because I had questions to answers that weren't even written. They were most interested in game play mechanics and reaching level 100. They skipped all of the dialogue for each npc, and only read hints that were given. They appreciated the builds, but felt like they were empty. One said something along the lines of "there are all of these neat houses and buildings, but it feels like they're all fucking unoccupied." They are not impressed by the world, and they haven't really experienced any of the more interesting parts of Wynn, but in fairness most of Wynn is bland.

So despite all of my ramblings of how I believe Wynn is poorly written and uninteresting. What can be done about this? How do we remedy this already built world, and make it so that players become interested? I mean an MMO in minecraft inherently sounds ridiculous and cheap, so the expectation is just that. The cool and impressive mechanics aren't enough to keep players interested. So players rightfully retain their original expectation of a cheap experience, that's what Wynn feels like. But I know the community and the developers want a real world, a real good MMO, that absolutely blows expectations. Here's how we start.

Get writers from the community, volunteers who are capable of writing. Some simple parameters are ages over 14, english speaking, and most importantly a test. This parameter is the most important, because you need to know if they are good writers. A credible writer needs to conduct the test, and the test itself is to create a sample of lore. Get a random item, common, unique, or rare, and make them write a tid bit of lore on it based on the name of the weapon and what it looks like. If the test conductor decides that it's good, then they can be on the writing team, and as a bonus, add the tid bit of lore to the item they wrote it for. Note that writing for an MMO is, in my opinion, the most important part of an MMO. And most of you think that it is incredibly important too, but the funny part is; Wynn has no official writers. Yet the community is bustling with, I'm sure, creative writers. https://wynncraft.gamepedia.com/Content_Team there's a list of every contributor, and none of them real writers. I've been told Grian writes, Salted writes, and god knows who writes, but what I do know for a fact. Is that whoever is responsible for most of the game lore, is doing a poor job of building their world. No offense to whomever that is, but frankly they are not nearly enough.

Now that you've established a team of writers, easier said then done, you can rewrite quests, write new quests, write higher quality lore for explored areas, write dialogue for more npcs in every town (and maybe put said npcs in houses and shit so there's a reason to explore houses) write descriptions for every item in the game, write new dialogue and lore for enemies, write lore for the website, write reoccuring characters, write world building lore that is interconnected, write interesting things about the world like politics, plagues, peoples, and places, and pretty much anything that requires writing. Hell make a timeline of everything Wynn, just make the world more interesting.

Here's a big suggestion: don't make the world of Wynn such a massive fucking wasteland? You take two steps out of any town or city, and you got mobs up the ass. Hell if you're in Lexdale, that town is fucking gone. Oh, cool panda peoples from the Canyon. I wonder what kind of cool civilizations and cultures they ha- oh they're all trying to kill me and none of that matters okay cool. OH cat people khajiit shit? Awesome I totally dig that, I can't wait to - oh fuck they're all trying to kill me. Oh, surely SURELY one of these god forsaken humanoid species are friendly right? Fuck no, fuck you they're all the same enemies just disguised as different species to give the illusion of variety.

Avos are pretty damn cool. You got bird peoples, that aren't total dickheads, that have a cool culture, that have actual npcs, and are also fighteable. You can encounter random Avos, and fight them, but you can also interact with Avos npcs too. It's almost as if they're a real species with real intentions. I'm not saying Avos are perfect, but pretty much all races should be similar to the Avos, in the sense that they have their own cultures, quests, npcs, and towns and shit, but can also be encountered in the wild and fought.

Speaking of which, enemies you fight should not be littered all around every single province. Not every road and hill should have vicious enemies that are out for blood. There are literally dozens of enemies right outside of Cinfras, I mean they could be chill, and some of them could be npcs you could talk to. And the further you get away from the town the more aggressive they get, or I mean yknow you could just make them all death mongers. Nowhere feels really safe in the world, some parts should obviously be littered with enemies, that's fine and dandy, but when you have zombies hoarding you right outside of detlas, that's when things get too out of hand. Enemy spawns should be appropriate to their location, and should be more condensed into zones. Should nivla forest have fucktons of spiders? Sure, should they be all over the fucking road? No, that's ridiculous. That's not realistic to the world, and frankly an unenjoyable prospect. Why can I not just relax on some hill outside of ragni, or sit in a field of wheat by maltic without having dozens of undead swarming me? Do farmers have to deal with this shit every day? Do mother fucking caravans and shit have to have a million armored guards at all times? Do children fight zombies when they go out to play? Is god even real? Why can I not just throw out the million junk items in my inventory in the Swamp? Why can't I catch a god damn breathe anywhere? Must I always be fighting enemies 24/7? Lexdale? Hello?

tl:dr wynn lore is bad, get writers and fix it and a few other things. bad world = uninterested players and bad mmo (yes imo Wynn is bad even for ftp, doesn't mean I don't respect their work or dedication)

also give me feedback. am I delusional? am I shit? Are you unhinged and cynical enough to agree with me?

 

I largely agree that the stories are, compared to the standard just about every other medium (except movies), pretty bad - I realized this recently once D&D surpassed the normal Wynncraft standards and I started comparing it to novels and such, where I found it very much lacking. Currently the position of GM seems to include a whole host of stuff (in addition to presumably needing applicants to be at least somewhat good at all of them, hence the low acceptance rate for GMs), so it's very much possible that a dedicated writing team would improve the story a lot.

That said, I think the item lore is mostly fine. There are only a few that I think are lackluster.

Terrible prose is far too common, this is the most annoying part to me.

 

Yeah Wynn doesn't even meet the status quo in terms of fantasy genres. Fantasy is over done and honestly a saturated genre, so there's a lot of good and bad fantasy, but at least the bad fantasy meets some standards. Wynn is just lacking in so many ways lol.

 

I'm sorry, I don't disagree with you for say, I just find this exact qoute funny.
Politics? You mean like the secert almuj vs. nessak work? The civil war of corkus? The rebellion of rodrock? The ork war in gavel? The relations with furma and wynn? ect.
The plagues? Like the currpotion or decay? The demonic plague which toke thousands of lives?
The religions? Like the massive number of cultist? The huge number of mentioned gods, like those of thunder and air? Maybe you mean death? The god of the avos? or even bovemism?
Heros? This one is the funnist I think. Bob, Sigferid, Theric, Meal, Chack, Tisaun, Remika, Geal, Ohm, Rycar, Ethe, Fiert, The owner of guardian and vaward who we don't even know the name of yet, ect.

I'm sorry to have done that, but I kinda feel like you haven't looked into any of the lore.
While I could agree that maybe the elements are bad, or not well writen, I felt like you were attempting to act like they didn't exist at all, which is far from the case.

"Again, I agree all of this needs to be writen better, but they do exist."

 

It's all poorly written, with few exceptions. Really if you consume any fantasy media, you'll realize how garbage Wynn is. If you really want me to, I can go into depth with most of the things you mention and absolutely tear them apart and show you how bad they really are. And honestly those few things you mentioned for each of those topics make up the majority of those topics. Any other fantasy lore goes into depth greatly on so many various topics, and have so many stories. I have done my research, and I've been playing Wynn longer than 99% of the player base, so try me.

 

I litteraly said that I agreed there poorly writen, 3 different times.
Also that last part feels like a very unneeded tawnt. If we are comparing play time, for no distrunable reason, I have just over 4000 hours, the 6th highest play time on the server. By no means do I disagree with them not being well writen, some of them are, some of them aren't, I think it could be refined, reworked, and done better. What I am attempting to say is, they exist, I was just pointing out that they do.

 

-Seems a bit of a too hostile tone.
-The claim Jaydon made was: you said patently false things. Many of the things that you mention are not present ARE actually in the game. Poorly executed or not: they exist and you are most definitely exaggerating.

Counterexamples:
Bob + other heros: https://wynncraft.gamepedia.com/Bob
Theorick: https://wynncraft.gamepedia.com/Theorick
Twain: https://wynncraft.gamepedia.com/The_House_of_Twain_(Lore)

Feel free to check out any legendary item lore here: https://www.wynndata.tk/items/

-

Data from wynndata:
https://www.wynndata.tk/stats/player/PrimaNocta
https://www.wynndata.tk/stats/player/JaydonTheWarrior
You:
5 months ago
FIRST JOIN
---
JaydonTheWarrior:
5 years ago
FIRST JOIN
------
If you mean play hours:
You:
175 hours
HOURS PLAYED
---
JaydonTheWarrior:
4020 hours
HOURS PLAYED

You make some great points; they are brought down by an unwillingness to research, an unwillingness to admit mistakes, an unwillingness to tell the truth, and finally, an unwillingness to engage people interested in your content in a cordial and open-minded way.

 

+1 for Avos to be the role model for humanoid hostile mobs.
+1 to the suggestion that mobs shouldn't be swarming every single piece of exposed land not inside a city. I especially hate dernel - I still remember the moment when I managed to cross the great bridge god knows how long ago and was instantly bombarded with slimes upon slimes with no chance to even see where I had ended up.

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First off, add a poll, preferable with degrees of how bad people think Wynn needs lore updates.

The lore isn't very long, big or as well-written as 'average RPGs'. You're absolutely right. However, there's a lot if extra lore-based things to be found (item lore, discoveries (did you forget about those? they contain quite some lore for the areas they're in, and new discoveries will still be added), quests that give you info but don't connect it..) and I think you're exaggerating about how bad it is. Maybe new players come in and don't get a lot of main story progression- but that's because there isn't really a main story, aside from a few quests like Wynnexcavation and the general theme of 'corruption is bad'.

I, personally, actually kind of like the way the lore shows itself; there isn't too much and it's only here and there, but it allows people to make their own connections and theories very easily. You may find this a negative, but I prefer less lore you have to kind of puzzle together along with a few clear stories with extra hidden info compared to huge lore dumps some games do and expect you to care.

However, I'm not saying I disagree with how NPCs feel empty and fake, even on a first playthrough some already stood out, and it only got worse after that. I do feel like the ct has been trying to better them a bit, but I wouldn't be against a big part of a main update being about improving NPCs.

Also, since playtime seems to make my points relevant, I'm nearing the 1000 hour mark.

 

not my main acc

 

What is then?

 

I agree, a lot of Wynn’s story is... well, I don’t want to be mean, but it’s just straight up not good.

I love the idea of having a bunch writers from the community, there’s some extremely talented writers, one of my favorite being @WithTheFish. I personally think it also might be a good idea for credible members of the community to determine what writer applications get accepted so we don’t end up with writers of current standards (bad).

I’d love to see much more world development overall and hope Wynn can finally get it right...

Writers and GMs should work together.


Speaking of which you should apply for GM, cause we all know staff wont listen and a writer rank will never exist

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Disagree with you on the religion parts, the things you mentioned are extremely general and there’s nothing that actually goes into any detail of religions.


And while yes, the other parts exist within the story, they’re just straight up bad, corny or just poorly written.

 

I, again, no idea how many times I need to say this. I know there bad, I agree there bad.
He acted as if they don't exist, I was pointing out that they do, not really disagreeing AT ALL with the fact that they are bad.
The whole point of what I was saying was litteraly this.

You have nothing to disagree with.

 

I blatantly stated that they do exist, but there is a modicum of it, of which is poorly written. Also, what is your first language? I find it hard to read what you're saying sometimes.

 

English, I have a spelling disorder. Generally have a hard time wording things due to it.

 

Hey @all see this here? This is it.

EDIT: Ok, here's my feedback.

You're idea of a well thought out story is great, and I really like it. I dont have any points against it, I just have examples of what wynncraft could try to copy.



Almost every list of "best assassins creed games" has this come first, and that's because of interaction with the world.

Firstly, there's no region that you can't go to starting off. There are only small parts of regions that you should probably only visit late game so that you dont complete a side quest on your 50th try.

That's the first dope thing about it, and I feel like wynncraft should have that to, where I can travel to troms at lv 2 no problem, but if I stray off the path then im screwed.

Another great thing about Assassins Creed Brotherhood is that the fellow humans in the world interact with the player. They respond to its actions, etc. But more importantly, they interact with themselves. For example, groups. They're always in groups, never scattered. That makes it so if you walk strait, you should never walk threw a person, but if you walk a bit to the left or right you end up in a group of farmers talking. That's really good placement of entities. wynncraft should look into that.

Another great thing is how missions are placed. You can come back exactly to where you started to do a late game mission (igniting borgia towers, wolf cave thingies, side missions for the ladies, etc), so the player isn't constrained to one spot. In wynncraft however, the player is unlikely to return to Lusuco after completing ToA or returning to Olux after level 60. If I had my way, there would be a lv 50 or 60 mission in Ragni, and there would be a small spot that is recommended to lv20+ players)

And one last great thing about it: The story has no loose ends. In wynncraft, you learn about the Eye, Bob, the hand from EotS, Ozoth the Dragon, etc, all with incomplete stories that the player has to keep track of (You somewhat mention this). In Brotherhood, there are 3 or 4 story lines which are complete, and dont leave many questions, if any at all.

TL-DR Wynncraft has a boring layout for levels and where certain levels should be, and the mobs should interact with the world more. Also the story has too many questions not enough answers.

And those are my 2 cents on wynncrafts design.

 

You mean like Wynn has..? Aside from a few quest-only areas, you're free to go everywhere you want and explore, especially once you get a horse.

Although it could certainly be more and I have seen a suggestion about it, quests like Temple of the Legends and Reincarnation not only begin and end in familiar territory, they send you on a hunt all throughout the places you've been so far.

This point is irrelevant, seeing as Wynn is a game with continuous updates, including lore. Wynns lore will and can never really be tied up, and comparing it to, well, a finished game in terms of story and lore seems a bit unfair.

 

Ok, but going through nesaak or the great bridge as a lv2 mage isn't ideal

In Assassins Creed Brotherhood, you can go almost anywhere in rome, etc

 

Obviously you can go anywhere you want in Wynn, but there isn't anything for you to do there. I believe his suggestion alludes to the idea that you can go to Troms, do quests, get perhaps better rewards for taking a risk, even though Troms is a level 50 area. Also Temple of Legends and Reincarnation make you go back to previous quests if you didn't do them, and they're really more of a hassle than anything. I mean making you hop around the province to do lower level quests to complete it is a chore. I'd rather go to town to town with new quests, new stories, and new things to do whether I'm in Ragni, Nesaak, or even L E X D A L E. Also most lores in most games aren't anywhere close to finished, what exactly do you have in mind? Just because a game is being continuously updated that doesn't mean you can't have an expansive lore that's quality.

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Many RPGs have massive lores, but also leave out many details for players to theorize and figure out for themselves. Take Dark Souls for example, it too has item descriptions that allude to the story, but it has quality lore that is immense, yet at the same time so many things are shrouded in mystery. The game tells you nearly nothing about the world, and it is up to you and the community to figure out what is going on with pretty much anything.

Also I've been playing mmos, rpgs, and indulging in pretty much any fantasy medium for as long as I can remember. I don't exaggerate anything, I tell things how I see them, and I know that Wynn's lore is bad.

 

I've researched Wynncraft, I'm not sure on what basis you are making that claim. I have made no mistakes, I do admit them when I know I've made them. I do tell the truth. I am cordial and open-minded, but I don't treat those who are uneducated as such. I don't like discussing things with people who are, to put it blatantly, stupid. It's a waste of my time, and I know how cold and awful that sounds, but I really don't care what people think about me. The Wynncraft community is all a popularity contest, and you essentially need to sell a certain, general personality here to gain any favoritism. I think that's barbaric, but in the forum's fairness, it's full of stupid little children. I only pursue discourse with those who have experience, education, and understanding. I don't care for those who boil things down to least common denominators, who derive insanity from delusion, or who straight up misunderstand every sentence I say because no one taught them how to read. I am not here to make friends, or suck dicks to please the community or your god damn hearts. I will treat you with respect, I will treat you cordially, I will be open-minded, but I will not conduct myself in a behavior in which that is among the likes of most members of the forums. I don't need the support of the many uneducated drones on the forums, I only wish to discuss these topics with people who know how to read and think critically. If my language offends you, if my tone makes you feel bad, if I seem like an absolute dickhead to you, then congratulations, you can read. If you wish to pursue discourse in which I don't treat you like a cunt, then I suggest you pertain to the topic at hand. If you wish to discuss my character, then do so in a manner that makes you, at least seem educated. All of this does not pertain to the person I reply to, but to anyone reading. Oh but that reminds me, the person I reply to here knows the whole truth, yet he calls me a liar, which is rather interesting.

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Oh, have you considered using software that assists in grammar? Like grammarly or grammarcheck, I mean I don't use it, and my grammar isn't fantastic, but I know it helps. I have a few dyslexic friends, and they use those tools to communicate over text.