World Lore Overhaul

I was reminded of this by the "Moral Ambiguity Doesn't Work in Wynn" thread. Over the years, there have been a ton of updates, retcons, additions, removals and other various changes to the lore of the world. However, they have happened at different times, and they range from "solid" to "contradictory" in many cases. Add to this that item descriptions cannot be considered canon, and the lore is kind of a mess.
This is a tragedy. Wynncraft has, since Wynnexc was first released really, had a large emphasis on the lore of the world. Specifically, on the War of the Realms, and all the events surrounding it. However, the rest of the world isn't nearly as fleshed out, and there's a lot of uncertainty in details and when and how certain things happened. I personally like vague, "fill it in yourself" lore, and I'm okay with most of that. However, we aren't given enough details in many cases, and some of what we're given is contradictory or non-canon, in the form of item descriptions.

I think that a massive overhaul of the lore would greatly improve this situation. I'm not talking about a total rework and retconning everything, just bringing all of the extant lore into parity in a form that can be taken as canon in the future. At the same time, I also think that adding a bit more depth to the lore, and ways in which it can be discovered, would make the world more immersive and make the lore itself more engaging.

I'm going to reference Dark Souls as a huge inspiration for how I think this can be done. In Dark Souls, you are given very little lore directly, however the significance of what you are told builds the more you explore. If you don't care about the lore, you'll miss most of it. However, looking at areas, item descriptions, and character dialogue, you get a much clearer picture for the world and how it came to be the way that it is. I propose doing the very same thing with Wynncraft (but differently, because it's a different type of game).

What would this entail?
This actually wouldn't be that much work (okay, that's a lie). Primarily, this would mean someone (Salted and whoever else works on the overall lore/story) making sure that there is a detailed and consistent history of the world up to this point (I know there already is one, but I suspect that it hasn't been totally overhauled in quite some time, and I don't know if it has the whole scope). Then, they would need to look at all of the quests, discoveries, dungeons, and map to ensure that all of them are consistent with this. I think most are, and many of what isn't would need only small changes to bring it in line. That's the biggest thing. If you have a consistent history, even if you reveal very little to players, they can fill in gaps with educated guesses and see patterns, even if they can't see the whole thing.

Step 2 would be to do the same with item descriptions (ideally while adding a lot more of them). Ensuring that all item descriptions can be considered canon gives the ability to add a ton of lore to the game. In Dark Souls, this makes up a majority of the lore you get. In Wynncraft, I think at the very least you could use it to flesh out most of the events that aren't mentioned or detailed, but that are important to the game's history. This would give lore buffs a ton to do, and allow the addition of far more details in the future, without cramming them down the throats of players who aren't interested in the lore. Again, in most cases I think this would only require minor changes, but would massively improve the experience for lore-focused players. I think that future item descriptions would be easier to write with this, as the lore behind them could be easily settled. Adding more to the majority of unique+ items would be ideal, but realistically, just adding it to a majority of items of at least legendary+ rarity would add a ton of lore that would be easily digestible and, if implemented correctly, could be researched in-game, leading players to learn far more about the world in a natural fashion.

The third step would be the most work-intensive in-game, but is already something that's being done with nearly every update. This would be to add more dialogues to random NPCs, more world and item details that hint at the lore. Remnants of battlefields, lore on miscellaneous items, books in libraries (some of which are incorrect maybe), especially secret dialogues with odd triggers. Some of these are probably impossible, but here are some ideas. Give the Yahya brothers a unique dialogue if you approach them wearing or holding an item with significance to the meteors, such as Pure. Give Bob's Reincarnation special dialogue if you are wearing Bob's Battle Chestplate or if you use the weapons of his mentors. Give Gale a unique dialogue if you use one of Ohms' items. There are probably plenty of others that would work that I'm not even thinking of, that would give more depths to the interactions with characters and give small tidbits of lore to people curious enough to try them, Talking Mushroom style.

I'm aware that this would be a large amount of work, and that parts of this are already being done a bit at a time. I just think that one massive lore fix update to set the record straight and to set up new lore would make the world that much more immersive and interesting, and would undoubtedly add a lot of fun exploration.

 

I don't like this. It's a lot of work and there's not really any actual idea here, just 'Write lore' with some additional 'Have certain items result in unique interactions'. This post is a nothingburger.

 

We update the lore over the course of normal updates. You could consider this update a relatively large "lore update", given it removed all the outdated mentions of 'Nether', minus a few item lores.

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Dedicating an entire update to lore is just not gonna happen. There's too much to update-- like entire quest sections needing to be redone-- and a "lore update" as something like 2.3 would be massively disappointing to most players.

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To give a list of just some off the top of my head:
Creeper Infiltration (complete redo)
WynnExcavation Site A
Tower of Ascension
WynnExcavation Site B
WynnExcavation Site C
Memory Paranoia
Temple of Legends
WynnExcavation Site D
Troubled Tribesman
Almost definitely some tweaks to ASP I & II to make the message clearer
Beyond the Grave (probably just some slight tweaks)
One Thousand Meters Under
A Journey Beyond (at least some small adjustments)

 

I'm not necessarily saying that this should be 2.3 or something, only that as it is the lore is pretty jumbled, and that one big update to move it into modernity feels necessary to catch all of the less important or less cared-for loose ends. Even if this were done over the course of 1-2 updates, the main thing is just adding more sources of canon lore and making sure that there's a single unified history they all agree with. It also doesn't need to be a strictly "lore" update. There are so many awful old quests that I'm sure are meant to be updated soon, I think a general "updating all the old stuff" update is in order. The quality disparity between new content and some of the old stuff is ridiculous. I think plenty of that is already planned though, which is why I focused on just the lore, which gets updated but frequently bits get retconned or adjusted to make more sense, sometimes without adjusting old quests for a few updates. The main goal of this is to prevent that from happening and to establish all item lores as canon so that players have more sources of lore than just discoveries and quests.

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I quite literally gave exact ideas on what I think should be done, from my thoughts on specific steps that I think should be taken to ensure there's an overall history that can be referenced on their end to ensure consistency, to adding more ways of getting lore such as unique interactions. Those were the only things I didn't fully explain, because I don't (and shouldn't) necessarily know all of the interactions they might seem relevant.

 

salted doesnt do any lore, its mostly grian and his team

 

This really isn't an "idea" as it's just saying "make lore better", and while I 100% agree with this sentiment, I think it's also important to understand why and how lore gets updated.
A "lore update" just wouldn't work for numerous ideas stated already by Deusphage, but if I were to choose any aspect of lore that I think should be changed, it would be the Villagers as a race. But let's talk about Wynncraft's history for a little bit before we get into that.

Now, I have absolutely no way to prove this directly because it's a theory more than anything, but back in the old days (like, OLD old days), Wynncraft was clearly meant to be nothing more than a simple gimmick of "hey, look! It's Minecraft, but as an MMO" and although some inspiration came from Runescape, Wynncraft really was just Minecraft with MMO ideas. Dungeons were just based on Minecraft mobs, Villagers were the NPCs, powders just gave vanilla enchantments to gear, the Nether, etc. And of course the lore reflected that original gimmick.
However, somewhere along the line, the Wynncraft team started showing signs of ambition and wanted to make their own systems for the game, which led to more original ideas, and that itself seems to have led them to want to move farther and farther away from Minecraft to realize the potential that Wynncraft has to become its own game without the "Minecraft MMO" title (even if they still advertise it as such). I mean, I think Rekindled is good proof of that already.

And this leads to the fact that I think Villagers should be reworked, because while it's easy to argue for the charm of still having a Minecraft mob in the game, that charm can only go so far if the mob in question is extremely important to the lore of Wynncraft. If nothing else, the race should at the very least be given a new name, with my ideas being Gavellians or Gavelfolk due to the lore surrounding them.
And personally, this would require a big currency rework but I think the entire emerald<emerald block<liquid emerald should be changed to simply emerald coins because aside from being a Minecraft remnant, it seems a little silly for Wynncraft characters to canonically be carrying huge blocks of emerald around and it would make more sense if they were coins instead.

 

Again, I'm not necessarily saying I want the lore changed or expanded upon (well, I suppose I am, but only in the general sense that I want them to keep making new content), just the way that it is reflected in-game. I made this suggestion just as a suggestion as to how to better make the community aware of the lore and to make sure there isn't (ideally ever) outdated or incorrect information in-game.

That said, I would love to see more villager lore, because I 100% agree that "villager" started being a weird name for the race as soon as Wynncraft started taking itself seriously.

 

half of the wynncraft updates focus on updating some of the old stuff, and the other half typically update some too. The gavel rework basically took two updates, and it still needs more work. an "updating all the old stuff" update would probably take 3+ years.

I also don't think most items are a good fit for lore. Most of them are randomly dropped with no context to apply lore to, and the ones you get from specific sources (raids, dungeons, etc.) usually have lore already.

 

Yes

No!
I love the currency system, I dont care if it's "too tied to minecraft"
Wynn is still the Minecraft Mmorpg, it doesnt have to take itself seriously ALL the time!
also coins are generic

 

It’s fun, and kinda makes sense in an rpg setting, and better than other servers that just have “double compressed X”

 

if Hsb bought wynn

Emerald
Enchanted Emerald
Enchanted Emerald block
Enchanted Emerald Block Bundle

Each denomination is 2.5 stacks of the previous
it takes 10 seconds to mine an emerald
to get any useful gear you need 1000 Enchanted Emerald Block Bundles



for 1 dollar irl you can buy 5 Enchanted Emerald Block Bundle

 

hsb moments

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i suggest adding flasks of emeralds which are equal to 1stx