World My Issues With Wynn, Pt. 4/5/6 (the Story, Storytelling And Lore)

And we're back! Well, it's been a while. I've been busy with school and stuff, and to be honest I've kind of just not been motivated to post these, or all that satisfied with these parts (and honestly I'm still not really but it's kind of now or never given that school and D2 are choking out all of my free time). They also sort of need to be posted together, as these parts tie really closely into each other, and I was not looking forward to trying to format this giant wall of text. This is probably the second to last part; I'll probably have a conclusion that goes into more general ideas and, well, concludes this whole thing. All told, this whole essay is 7000+ words long, and I'm amazed people have actually read all of it. So, thanks.

The Story is almost decent
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Spoiler: Part 4 (Story)

No, I’m not joking. I actually like the idea of Wynn’s story, at least in concept. It’s just the way the story is told that’s the problem.


So we’ve all seen those big summer blockbusters where the bad guy has an army of evil minions (Avengers, LoTR, Star Wars). As soon as the main baddie dies, the villainous army just… stops being a problem. Either they die, or surrender, or just disappear without explanation while the next big baddie gets set up. What Wynn has, however, is the opportunity to subvert this trope in a great way. After all, As far as the lore is concerned, the player isn’t the main character; Bob is. He’s the one that pushes back the army and the big evil baddie. But when he beats Bak’al, the army doesn’t disappear. Bob basically failed to save the world- the corruption is still spreading, and the undead still roam the land- but he spends the rest of his life trying to anyways. Then Bob dies, and he’s basically the only thing holding the province together, and everyone’s basically going “oh shit, what now?” And then we get dropped in. That’s an incredibly good concept for a story. It’s like if Luke Skywalker died while taking down Palpatine, but the Empire and Resistance kept fighting anyways, and the story is told through the eyes of one of those resistance fighters. There’s a real opportunity here to explore themes of legacy and heroism, not just in Bob, but in Theorick, and Cerid, and Siegfried, all of whom do what they do for wildly different reasons and with wildly different backstories.


But no, instead Bob is the focus for all of three quests and the optional plains discoveries (which are cool as fuck, don’t get me wrong), Theorick’s storyline is interesting but unfocused and his legacy is treated as a joke, and Cerid and Siegfried are barely mentioned at all. The interesting story is replaced by a tired “light good, elfs good, darkness bad, evil undead” storyline. And the way the story is told makes it all the worse.

The Storytelling is almost painful​

Spoiler: Part 5 (Storytelling)

Remember the Ultimate Discovery in Nivla? Remember how awesome it was when Bob just tears through the mobs in the most overkill way possible? Or remember the War in Dwarves and Doguns IV? Where literally every bit was a detailed murderfest full of awesome magic? Those were awesome, and did a lot to show the power and scale of the wars in the game.


And then people start talking.


Seriously, no offence to the people who design the quests, but you just aren’t very good writers. The ultimate cutscene is probably the worst offender. You get the awesome parts, but the badassery just comes to a screeching halt when Bak’al says something about the Twains and Bob goes “Unlike the Twains, I wasn’t born with magic. I learnt it!”


Seriously? That’s your badass line? That’s your witty, memorable quote? It’s such an anticlimax. Why would that even mean he’s stronger than the Twains? It’s awful, and taints the rest of the cutscene, especially since that’s the last spoken line in the scene.


This problem, which I will henceforth call the “Bob Problem”, is present in most of the game as well. Stark tone shifts, dialogue that doesn’t fit, cardboard characters, and more plague the game and its quests.


There are exactly four memorable characters in the game in my opinion: Death, Antikythera, Theorick, and Slykaar to a much lesser extent. Those are the only characters with clear cut motivations and actual personalities. Every other character in the game basically exists solely to spew exposition or bad jokes, or die at the end so you can feel vaguely bad for like two minutes (you know who you are). There’s exactly one personality in pretty much all of Wynn’s characters; talkative and ready to spew bad jokes and exposition. Hell, that’s probably why the aforementioned characters are actually memorable; they show actual anger or bitterness at the right times (besides death, who’s just a chill dude all around). They don’t just go “well shit my son died guess the war’s over” and then immediately move on like the King of Rodoroc.


In addition, the characters basically never interact with each other; they pretty much only interact with the player. Off the top of my head, the only three quests I can remember where the characters actually talk to each other without involving the player are in the christmas quest in Almuj, the Dwarves and Doguns line, and Wynnexcavation, and each time it happens like once per quest at the most. The rest of the time they’re either having a one way conversation with you, or a three way exchange where a third of the participants can’t talk because, again, it’s you. Probably the worst offender is 1000 meters under. The majority of the quest takes place in a cramped boat with like 6 or 7 people. Do you know how many times they have actual conversations? None. They don’t ever talk to each other for more than four lines, and those four lines are exposition.


And then there’s Maxie. Maxie is so bad at times I need to talk about him specifically. First off, he’s one of the few characters that has an actual personality trait- he’s bad at electromagic. Okay. That’s interesting. It’s a damn shame it only comes up three times. He never has a moment where he figures out how to use it, he never grows into his own, and it doesn’t even affect the plot. And the payoff? It’s one line. “It turns out I’m pretty good at making stuff”. What? When does he figure that out? How does that connect to his electromagic deficiency? Maxie’s defect could literally be removed from the story and nothing would need to be changed. It has no bearing on the plot besides to slow it down, it doesn’t have a payoff, and it feels like Shyamalan writing, where actual personalities are replaced by quirks.


And then there’s the pop-culture references. For example, the Shrek Quest. The entire quest is a joke with the punchline only being funny if you know what it’s referencing, and it basically beats you over the head with the joke to the point where it’s not even funny. Slowly decaying swamp with inhabitants barely hanging on to life? Nah, how bout SHREK! I mean, credit where credit is due; you at least took out the blatant Star Wars and Lord of the Rings references, but you still left in the most egregious one, which just feels like tonal whiplash compared to the location it’s in.


Speaking of tonal problems, wow does Wynn have them. I mean, I love the drug quest, but you have to admit it has a really different tone to even the quests of the same level. An island of death and despair where its lone inhabitant is forever trapped? A world ending finale to a four part quest line? How bout a quest where you get high and the shenanigans that ensue? And that’s not even mentioning the quest literally three levels before where a woman gets her heart ripped out of her by her husband who was corrupted by the forest around him. It’s a rollercoaster in the worst possible way. That’s not even mentioning the hero of the province is named Bob, and it’s just… treated seriously. Even a SINGLE joke acknowledging the sheer ridiculousness of that name would do wonders to break the tonal tension between “badass hero” and “Bob is a dumb name”.


Then there’s also the fact that, y’know, this is a Minecraft server, and the bright and cheery side of being that is kind of unconducive to trying to write a gritty RPG. The tonal clash between the medium and the story is really distracting. And the worst part is, there are still ways to tell a relatively serious story with a lighter tone in a text video game format. Pokemon Black and White tells a great story centered around the question of whether Pokemon battles count as animal abuse, complete with interesting characters with good arcs, and it’s a lighthearted kid’s game. It knows when to take the issue seriously, by centering the serious moments around N, but the grunts themselves aren’t taken too seriously, which means the tone is light for most of the story. Then, when it gets to the climax, it knows that that should be taken seriously, so it cuts down on the humor. But Wynncraft doesn’t do that. It feels schizophrenic in its tone changes, and tries to be dark and lighthearted at the same time, but the fact that it’s a Minecraft server that turns memes into actual updates makes the dark parts feel undeserved and the bad jokes and poor writing make the light parts feel like a slog.


So how would you fix the Bob Problems? First, hire a writer, or get some volunteers to write the dialogue. Second, let the characters talk to each other. Let them ignore the player for more than five seconds. Give them actual pasts, and use each of them more than once, and give them at least some banter. If you’re going to have Character-of-the-week style storytelling, at least do it like Doctor Who does it, where the minor characters get basic arcs and personalities. It’ll be a step up from having no personality at all. In addition, let them show emotion. Let them reject the reality of their situation, instead of blindly accepting everything. Give them agency, emotion, SOMETHING besides exposition. Finally, pick a tone for each area and level range and stick to it. And for the love of god, PLEASE give Bob a better line in that cutscene. Like, “The Twains were raised in a more peaceful age. I never had that luxury.” or “The Twains were only human. I am more.” Just, something that’s not “I learnt it.”

The Lore is Disjointed​

Spoiler: Part 6 (Lore)

There’s never any real sense of time passing, and the things you do aren’t connected to the loot you get. There’s also things that are just completely unexplained, like the Forgery. Why is there corruption in Gavel? We dunno. Why is there a time travel skyland in the light forest? We dunno. What are the Runic words? We dunno. The discoveries would be a good way to learn about this, but there aren’t any, although that’s not really the fault of the content team and is moreso just a matter of needing more time.


The world is super disconnected from itself, as well. Everything happens in a bubble, and none of it is ever really explained. For example, let’s look at Wynnexcavation. It’s a conglomerate of the most powerful in Gavel, and it reveals the existence of these powerful, world ending crystals. Then you take care of Amadel and everything tied to it ceases to exist. You’d think there would be at least one king or mayor disgruntled by your meddling and who tries to take revenge, but nope. Oh, there’s world ending crystals of great power buried under the world? Let’s never talk about it again, even if they could almost definitely be used to fight the corruption, or at the very least need to be monitored and studied. What do they do? We don’t know besides turning people into monsters and making the land around them multicolored. How do Wynnex know about them and why do they want to use them? We don’t know but the King of Troms says they’re doing it for an admirable purpose… which immediately gets thrown away for absolutely no motivation besides “infinite power”.


So how would I, personally, fix this? First off, give the crystals a defined power set. For this example, I’m going to give them a single specific power: they open portals to other realms. With this one simple change, you could do so much. For example:

• The mysterious nether portal could have been the ancient’s last attempt to use the crystals. In fear, they seal it away and hide the crystals, only for both to be found later by Bak’al and Wynnex, respectively.
  
  
• Make it so Wynnex doesn’t just focus on the crystals, but rather all manner of magical artifacts that they can make money off of. The crystals are just a recent development in their profit driven plans. Then, you could tie in the Star Thief quest, for example, into Wynnexcavation instead of just having that one random agent, and make Wynnex a bigger presence.
  
  
• Wynnex could have been trying to use the crystals to A. Open a portal to any realm to exploit their resources (as it is a company focused on profit) or B. Open a portal to the light realm to try and find a cure for the decay, if you want to go altruistic. Or if you want a mix, make them try to find a cure for the decay in order to sell it to people, for the fuck-you punch.
  
  
• Either way, they open a portal to Dern in their hubris/foolishness and Amadel gets consumed. Fight proceeds as normal, then the king comes, takes the crystals, and destroys them, this time because he knows that the last two times the crystals were used, one ended with Amadel and the other ended in the Nether Portal that doomed the entire province. So yeah, really bad idea to mess with them.
  
  
• Scatter a few more mentions of Wynnex in Gavel. Like, the Purple and Blue NPC could mention a group that was trying to get him to talk about the lake, but they haven’t been around for a while for some reason. That way, the whole Wynnex thing doesn’t just come to a screeching halt.
  
  
• At level 90 or so, start a new quest about a splinter group of Wynnex led by Ahmsord’s wealthy trying to grab all the crystals again, this time for revenge.
  
  
• At the end of the quest, open a raid themed around traversing the different realms.
  
  
• Make the raid drop Cataclysm, a mythic themed around warping space and opening portals. Change cataclysm lore a bit accordingly (IE it’s four claw blades were each forged from a crystal).

In one fell swoop, you would:

• Give the crystals a clearer power set

• Have ties to the Corruption, the main storyline of Wynn
  
  
• Have ties to the Decay, the main storyline of Gavel
  
  
• Have ties to the Meteor side story
  
  
• Tease Dern and the power of the Darkness
  
  
• Give clear reasoning for Wynnex looking for the crystals besides “world domination”
  
  
• Give the Ragni king a clear reason to destroy said crystals
  
  
• Make the Wynnex group a clearer presence in both Gavel and Wynn, and
  
  
• Tie the story into the loot in-game.

And even without going that all-in, you could still put little tie-ins between quests just for continuity. For example,

• The Emerald labyrinth in the Jungle Fever quest could have been built because of the bank robbery in the Sandy Scandal quest, a robbery that’s now committed by the Creden Tibus group from the Kingdom of Sand quest.
• The orc storylines could actually tie into each other and form a single storyline rather than being seperate
• You could mention the artist dude from that swamp quest in the Ball section in the Almuj Christmas quest, to establish him as a well known artist among the rich instead of some dude who paints with blood.

Just tying in stories like that, with little mentions, would make the world feel much more alive than it does now. Hell, you already have a few; the Green-Skinned Trouble quest references the Heart of Llevigar. Just, more things like that.

 

I absolutely agree with everything here. wynncrafts story has always been such a contrast with other games that go for the same caliber of story. wynncraft has such a great potential with their world and all the characters yet it's never harnessed.

quests could be so much more fitting with the world if they just had more connected stories, but instead the content team decides to give the player all the story in little bits of lore scattered seemingly randomly through the world instead of actually using what they have to make a true engaging story.

the lack of any true villain or threat to the world or the player makes the game feel pretty bland too. the corruption is just there and has been for so long, yet it isn't an evolving threat. the corrupt governments from wynnexcavation or d&d are just tied to their respective quest lines and don't really give any sort of threat outside for them. qira is supposedly some super powerful being in gavel yet she isn't actively in any conflicts and is just some superboss sitting on a throne waiting for you to prove yourself by defeating all her minions. CoW is just some random spaceflea miner who happened to discover the nether portal, not some major evil guy, and it just goes to show the nether has much bigger threats that you don't get to fight, than a measly corrupted average joe. the tower of ancesion plays no role in the overall lore I believe and it's just some tower in the middle of nowhere with some super powerful monsters.

hopefully 1.19 has some better writers or tries to fix some of the story and lore issues, they've been long overdue and rtd definitely seems like an important place that should be connected to a lot more things than we realize.

 

I’d love to see more interactions in quests, but there is a problem where some players don’t like to wait for the dialogue. But it can be solved by making a toggle if it’s on it will skip Scenes and dialogues.

 

Gavel is great with the tie-ins, TBH.

The Llevigar's heart stuff. That's great. At first it seems like an isolated power plant incident. But as you do more of the quests around the level range, you actually see that it let the orcs get a super strong magic weapon and it was caused by people stealing tech from the generator for their quartz mech. See? That makes it feel like it actually had a reason and lasting effects!

Same thing with the pirate quests. In Flight In Distress, you kill the pirate queen. Lo and behold, in Royal Trials, they are trying to find a new pirate queen because the old one died. A NPC in Ahmsord even remarks that they were the same pirate group.

If there was a lot more of that around, the world would feel a lot more alive.

 

Yeah, I pretty much agree with everything here. Your points about the story premise (at least in Wynn) being pretty good, the bad writing contrasting with the excellent technical quality (Bob is far from the worst occasion), etc. I'll concur with Bluescreen that Gavel does tie-ins quite well, though.

The Shattered Minds quest is one of my favorites, not because of the technical quality (I found it to be of pretty high quality) but because it fills in some interesting lore for Efilim. Compare to, say, Aldorei's Secret Part II which is a textbook case of what not to do - begin by subverting the trope and then reverse this, playing things straight - the elves were right all along, there is no nuance to anything. It pisses off both people who might have enjoyed either part separately.

 

I agree with these 100%

 

I pretty much agree with everything here. When it comes to the storyline and lore, I often feel like I exist in Wynncraft just to exist.

In my opinion it would be a great addition if finishing certain quests would have effect on the world, other than "here, you get this seemingly low ammount of emeralds and some random item you can't throw away and have to fill your precious bank space with it". I'd question whether CoW is a heartless monster considering how many times it's heart has been ripped off. But after beating him nothing happens and he probably wakes up, walks up to his cabinet, takes out a heart then goes back and waits for another dumbass (who could be you, consider you can still enter the cave and find him safe and sound) who thought of going on a suicide mission. If the cave was sealed or a cave-in blocked it (from your perspective) that would give the feeling that "yeah, this guy is surely done for". Afterall in Kingdom of Sand, before completing the quest the dungeon is still locked by crystals or whatever they are but once you beat it you can see the dungeon wide open. Also if there is literally a tunnel in CoW's chamber that leads to Troms, what keeps him from using it? I'd assume that some so-called monster of corruption that every NPC beforehand tried hard (but failed) to make look intimidating would have the guts to do such an act.

My favourite character in this game is Antikythera. For a computer it has a bigger personality and more individuality than most NPCs. Death is cool, I personally like his jokes. You could say... I'm dying for them. Theorick is ruined by his sudden change of tone when you enter his dungeon, going from a complete jerk to a submissive person. Slykaar is... okay.


To name a few quests I despise, don't understand or disagree with are:

- Jungle Fever: You infiltrate two banks to give money to a guy who is obviously lying about his illness and just wants some pocket money. I feel like an idiot every time doing this quest because I know this guy is just a shameless thief but the quest still pushes me to do his unethical tasks. At least give us a choice or something like in An Iron Heart pt. II.

- Studying the Corrupt: A bunch of intellectuals need your help to determine in the end that Garoth was corrupted and destroy the boulder in three spells even though the whole province has been overran by corruption and a likely way to die or disappear is because corruption. Brainpower. The adventuring mage says you'd need stronger spells to break through that cave-in and proceeds to use Ice Snake. As if ice snake was a stronger spell than Meteor. It just adds to the insult that the quest is level 21 and you just unlock Meteor as a mage.

- Green Skinned Trouble: Mr. detective refuses to act by himself because it would break the villager-orc treaty but the fact that the orcs stole a super weapon and destroyed villager houses is fine and can be left without a say and need a random human to solve it?

- Aldorei's Secret Part II: If Part I didn't brainwash you enough, enjoy Part II. The moment you enter the embassy you are greeted by the leader of the incident. Now, what do you think is the best way to explain a confused human your motivations and the reason why they have been thrown into this clusterfuck of puzzles? Why of course a series of death rooms with even more puzzles and probably the laggiest parkour in existence. At the end they make you choose between: a treasure room guarded by some underwhelming elf who might die after the first spin attack; and the "true path". Obviously the latter is available only because after beating Vidobe (or whatever they were called) just teleports you back and you either have to go through the ordeal again for nothing or accept the fact that some random point of view has been enforced on you. In the end, you still have no fucking idea what is going on but you get 2.5LE or insults of the finest at least. Yay.

The list ends here. I didn't go into analyzing other quests yet, however I might end up finding more to talk about.


Overall, improvement to lore, storyline and character design would be amazing.

 

The part I don’t get is that they could’ve just made the entrance to the cave over a lava pit or something and then had him freeze the lava rather than the cave in. Same purpose of “oh look cool new spell you’ll get eventually”, but it actually makes logical sense