Announcement 10 Years of Development

Hey y'all! Wynncraft will be 10 years old on the 29th, incredible! I thought it was a good opportunity to dig through my old screenshots and plans and make a gigantic thread with everything I can find. Some of those were shared before, but there's also a lot of new ones. You can also check out the Ability Tree Making-Of thread if that kind of behind-the-scene stuff interests you.

At the beginning, we secretly worked on Wynncraft on our old CraftedMovie community server. So because of that, you might see some slightly inappropriate chat messages here and there. Sorry about that.

Let's get started!

2012-2013

Spoiler: 2012-2013

Making of Ragni. This is the oldest screenshot I have. Taken somewhere between late 2012 to early 2013



The Ragni gate, the first real completed build. I planned to take this nice screenshot during a sunrise... too bad I also got a potion particle in the way to forever ruin it.



Detlas after being pasted. This was done before we even finished Ragni. To find the right spot for it, I simply walked from Ragni in a straight line for exactly 5 minutes. It's still the same location today, you can try it right now and see that walking at normal speed from Ragni to Detlas will take exactly 5 minutes and is a straight line for the most part. It's a small thing, but it really set the overall scale of the province.



Making some trees for the Emerald Trail. The blocks you see in the back were to mark the start of the Nivla Forest




The first Wynncraft mob ever implemented! This zombie was lifeless and couldn't move, but it was still an exciting moment. You can tell I knew it was special because I went into F1 mode to hide the HUD for it.



The first lobby. From @WithTheFish thread



Extremely old and rough plans for the early Wynn Province. We had a running gag to call everything "The Great X" back then before we had official names. I promise we weren't THAT bad at world building, just a little bit.



Early work on Nemract




Early plans for the trading system, apparently taken on the 15th of January 2013 at 2:21 PM



Early work on Almuj. For the most part, this version of the town still stands today.



Pigmen Ravines




Very old version of the Animal Dungeon (now Lost Sanctuary). Not one of our finest work, probably because I helped build it.



Immature shenanigans. Taken on the 17th of March 2013 at 10:42 PM.



Working hard on the Zombie Dungeon entrance (now Underworld Crypt)



Second lobby, probably the most remembered one.



Working on swarms. The amount of mobs was legitimately problematic as we had no way to make ourselves invincible. We ended up getting stuck in a death loop for a while.





Working on the VIP Town (RIP)



Probably Troms?



Definitely Troms




Making silly faces on a statue in the desert. Likely the Emerald Labyrinth or the Mummy's Tomb.






We used to use regular vanilla maps to get an overview of the whole world. It was miserable.



Working on the old Dernic Island.



Working on Bob's arena.



To finish this, here's the announcement post on the old CraftedMovie forums. It's hard to pin-point the exact release date of Wynncraft, as we had a closed beta, open beta and the official video announcement. But for the most part this is considered the actual release. From that point on, Wynncraft was accessible to everyone and never closed.

2014

Spoiler: 2014

From now on, I do have the exact time each screenshots were taken.

24th of October 2014 at 7:46 PM. Mock-up of the compass menu with the new Wizard Fortress minigame




Plans for Wizard Fortress



I don't know why I screenshoted that but here it is. It's just me asking a dev a random question about a brand new Minecraft feature on the 29th of October 2014 at 2:57 PM



Plans for a sub-class/archetype system back on the 11th of November 2014 at 2:28 PM. This was a long time coming! These were just random ideas for the sake of the mock-up, don't read too much into it.






Likely plans for the Relic Shrine locations. 12th of November 2014 at 12:34 PM



Now that's a more interesting one. The unfinished Gavel map from the 13th of November 2014 at 7:41 PM



Plans for a Guild Bank back on the 20th of November 2014 at 11:18 AM. Another feature that took 6 years to come out.



Testing Guilds on the 21st of November 2014 at 8:49 PM. Some of the oldest parts of the code uses the CraftedMovie name, as we didn't have a name for the game yet.



Plans for Guild Territory locations.



We were so young and naive...

2015

Spoiler: 2015

I took a LOT of screenshots during the development of the new item system as I was trying a lot of different things. The current item design seems obvious now, but it really wasn't back then. Not only did we have less tools, but the Minecraft servers space back then also wasn't very advanced on the design department. We had to figure out a good hierarchy of information, what to emphasize, what to deemphasize, what information to group, etc.

They are in no particular order and were taken between the 4th of February 2015 to the 21st.



Earliest plan for the entire Gavel Province



Design for the holograms when hitting mobs and the new compass menu




Screenshots of my server list on the 23rd of March 2015, at 2:13 PM, 6:22 PM and 10:08 PM. You can see Hypixel at around 8000 players back then.



Artwork of a potential new Wynncraft logo we never used.



A more complete Gavel on the 12nd of April 2015, 10:55 PM. The release date was getting closer! (yet still far)



Plans for a profession system. Boy making this thread is really making me realize how long it takes us to add these new features. Taken on the 13th of April 2015 at 11:52 PM.



Mock-up of the new website redesign we were working on. It ended up looking almost the exact same. 14th of May 2015, 01:16 AM.



Idea for the Warrior's pose. It didn't feel grand enough.



Other drafts of the new class arts we were working on.




The next screenshots are all during the development of the Wynnpack as we were trying different textures and colours! The grass texture is the one who took the longest. We had to make sure it was perfect, since grass is everywhere in the game.

It was truly a magical moment once we had a nearly finished pack. It made the game look so different and so unique. No other large Minecraft servers were using that at the time, at least nowhere near that scale.



Trying out ways to show health and mana



Working on the Colossus.



Plans for the Sky Islands



I believe this one is me editing a Gavel announcement trailer at 1 AM. Unsure if I ever finished it. As a bonus, you can see everything else that was open on my PC at the time, and even a glimpse of the new website homepage art as my desktop background. This is probably an accidental screenshot since both of my displays are in it.



Almost final version of the new item system! Taken a little more than a month before release.



Gavel is out! Everyone is online!

Likely taken in the middle of the night less than an hour after release, or the next morning. It felt awesome to finally be done with it!



Working on the Rymek/Ternaves border

2016-2019

Spoiler: 2016-2019

2016

Gavel was now finally out! Unfortunately, I don't have as many screenshots from that time up to now. Thankfully @Hams does!

Here's us coming up with new names for the dungeons



Testing out the new crate system. It wasn't working very well.



Not only could we not code properly, but we also couldn't spell properly. 30th October 2016 at 4:36 PM.



The next screenshots are all Corkus during development and rough plans.



2017

Working on the new lobby!




2018

Working on the new profession system, more specifically the trees. 9th of June 2018 at 10:55 AM



Working on the DnD throne room. (I think)



2019

The great flood of 2019. Someone accidentally set the whole world underwater. It looked kinda cool at times.



Working on the Silent Expanse

2022

Spoiler: 2022

This is a little bit of a bonus! We recently reworked our website, here are the mock-up plans done for that and for the special 2.0 page we made when the trailer released.

That's all I got! Working on Wynncraft for 10 years has given me much too many grey hair for someone under 30, but I wouldn't want it any other way. It's by far the best job in the world. Thanks for sticking with us all this time, here's to another 10 years!

Yes I am also currently taking many screenshots of the development of Fruma. Maybe in 10 years I'll share them!​

 

that explains the grey hair

 

can you believe it? 10 years, just a week away!