Guide The History of Wynncraft (up to 2.0.1)

Earthbrine · Mar 19, 2023

WithTheFish said: ↑

Welcome to the unofficial "History of Wynncraft" thread!

This is a thread dedicated to chronicling the mostly complete history of one of Minecraft's largest servers. Threads like this have been made in the past, but this one aims to be both more concise and the most up to date. What this thread will not cover in significant detail is every feature added or removed over time, as that info is already on the version history page in the wiki. This guide will be split up into multiple spoilers so it is less of a wall of text. Enjoy!

2011-2013:

Before we cover Wynn's history, we need to talk about CraftedMovie, the previous Minecraft project Salted had a hand in.

CraftedMovie (abbreviated as CM from this point on) refers to either a server or a youtube channel. The youtube channel began uploading Minecraft videos around 2011, and you'll spot a lot of familiar faces (and builds!) in their videos. Their more iconic projects include "Mirrors in Minecraft?", "Lion King in Minecraft (circle of life)", and the 3-part Misadventure on the Sea series. The channel amassed hundreds of thousands of subscribers, but sadly, CM isn't really a thing anymore, with their last video being released in 2015.

The CM server was a whitelisted survival server with a very tight-knit community. It's also how Wynn's admins met many of their eventual builders and mods. Sadly, the server isn't really a thing either.

Eventually, Salted got the idea to make a MMORPG in Minecraft, and he decided to drag his friends Grian, Jumla, and Crunkle along for the ride. Rounding out this initial team of admins was Tama63 and HiMyNameIsAJ, two web developers who have sadly left Wynn.

Wynncraft wasn't built in a day. The secret "Project W" was built and coded over almost six months, and it grew from a plains city named Ragni to a large map featuring three dungeons, five cities, and several smaller towns and points of interest. Wynn was ready for release.

Wynn launched to a decent amount of fanfare. It was no Mineplex for sure, but it had a fair amount of players, some of whom were willing to donate to both keep the server running and for some OP perks. The server's playerbase scale was best reflected in the lobby, which only let you join 3 or so different servers. But while the playerbase was small, it was tight-knit. You probably knew who every high-leveled player was.

The original lobby

Getting to a high level was an insane feat. Grinding mobs was the only sources of XP, and despite the level cap being 70, there was no content past level 40. The true content here were dungeons, exploring, and of course the social aspect. And some of the earlygame areas (the desert and taiga) were donator-exclusive until 1.5!

A lot of features we take for granted today were... flawed. Spells on release weren't great, to the point that they were reworked less than a year later. Some of them were drastically different from what they are today. Ice Snake was an AOE spell named Ice Barrier for instance.

Needless to say, early Wynn was very lacking, but the admins were committed to improving and growing the server. More dungeons and cool features (like identifying) were added in the coming months. Eventually, Wynn had its largest update yet in 1.5: titled The Pet Update due to adding pets to the store. However, that was such a minor new feature in comparison to other additions like swarms, higher-level "content", and a new lobby. In comparison to modern major updates it isn't that much, but at the time this had to have been pretty cool.

The first major event in Wynn's history was the release of an official trailer. It attracted many new players, causing the playerbase to the levels seen in modern times.

Despite this though, Wynn still managed to maintain a group of well-known players, primarily consisting of high-leveled players. Wortho27 obtained fame by being the first person to ever hit max level. They did so on Assassin, which meant that the other 3 classes still had vacant spots for the first max level person. Those spots were later filled by EgyptianSDS, Acer78, and AbandonedBank. A common thread between all these players were that they were donators - grinding to level 70 without VIP's double XP perk was a madman's task.

During this era, the greatest completionist of all had to be samabizzle. They did the unprecedented feat of reaching level 70 on ALL 4 classes. While that's beyond hardcore in it's own right (the highest-leveled area at the time was the level 50 jungle), sama then went on to get a class to level 71. Level 71 wasn't even intended to be in the game, it was basically a glitch. Getting to it required sama to get all the xp needed to get from levels 1-70. Sounds familiar? This was almost certainly the inspiration for today's bonus final level of 106.

The Quest Update may just be the most important update in Wynn's history. It's what added skill points and quests to the game, along with true endgame content in the form of grinding for level 70 legendaries and fighting the Corruptor of Worlds, Wynn's first superboss. CoW was hyped up as a level 100 monstrosity but was soloed day 1.

Early Wynncraft quests were pretty robust. They mostly amounted to getting items and maybe fighting a boss. Everything was basically Cook Assistant, but we took what we could.

The following update, 1.10 (The Ocean Update) did ramp stuff up however questwise, with more lore-focused quests, some of which focused on Bob himself. Bob's Reincarnation was also added in this update, and was beaten as quickly as CoW was. Those who bested him (a lot of people) were granted one of his mythic items, the strongest weapons in the game until Gavel.

As its name suggests, the Ocean Update also significantly expanded the ocean, boosting it from two islands to about a dozen. Interestingly enough, the website map wasn't updated at the time, meaning everyone had to find the new islands on their own. 1.10 also raised the level cap to 75, which wasn't too hard to grind at this point since ToL was a really good grinding spot at the time.

The Wynncraft Map, circa 1.10

The Wynncraft wiki is created, quickly becoming a great source of finding out about that upcoming quest or area you haven't visited yet.

Grian posts the lore of Bob on the forums. Today, this very lore can be found in Ragni's secret library.

Speaking of the forums, they switched over to the Xenforo host in later 2013. November 25th 2013 is the forum's birthday!

Wynncraft had its first christmas update. It featured a snowman pet and a christmas-themed fetch quest that's no longer in the game.

2014:

Prior to 1.11, all of the updates in the game had focused on adding new features, not adding old ones. But the spell update changed that trend, as it was dedicated to revamping the spells of every single class, and even replacing some of them. In terms of content, The Spell Update didn't have much, although it did revamp the nether and added the long-requested Skill Point Scrolls.

The Nether revamp in particular was interesting, as it made it so skill points and equipment didn't affect your stats, meaning the nether would be fair no matter what endgame gear and build someone had. This, combined with the fact that the Nether was changed to give Gold Coins (removed store feature), made the Nether THE endgame content of Wynn at the time. Some players such as Francis12qwasyx and Yzzero managed to rack up tens of the thousands of kills in this part of the server.

The wait between 1.11 and 1.12 was the longest in Wynncraft's history thusfar, with only two new quests and a Gavel door tease being added to help us during the wait for the mysterious upcoming update. That's not to say Wynn was any less active though, in fact, this time period featured many of the server's most well-known historical event.

Wynn was notorious for being laggy in its early years, but the lag incident of February 2021 was unlike anything seen so far. They had to cut the amount of available servers from 18 to 9, and even that didn't help much. Turns out Jumla planned on fixing it, but a power outage hindered those plans.

The lag was fixed around March, and soon after, by pure coincidence, several famous Minecraft youtubers such as inthelittlewood made videos on Wynncraft, which caused the playerbase to hit numbers seldom seen. I'm talking around 4000 players online at once! This was the first instance of a big youtuber making a video on Wynn, causing many new players to come to the server. Unfortunately, not all of the community was too pleased to see an influx of newcomers. By this point, Wynn had lost it's feeling as a tight-knit community, for better or worse.

Other events during this time period included an April Fools joke where everyone had a pet named Squiggles the Squid following them around, and Grian posted a thread to get people hyped about the eventual Gavel update. Applications for the build team and the gm team opened up, with the later team being rather mysterious at the time. New builders and gms were definitely needed though, as the upcoming update would be Wynn's biggest yet!

Around the same time the extreme lag came to an end, 1.11.1 released. This added Beneath the Depths and The House of Twain quests, the latter of which stood out due to its heavy and cryptic puzzle focus. The Nesaak forest was also revamped, giving us a glimpse of the higher-quality builds that would soon come.

Speaking of glimpses, the highlight of this update was the door to Gavel. Previously, Gavel had just been hinted at as the homeland of the villagers, but not we pretty much got confirmation that we'd soon be able to visit it.

The Mob Update was Wynn's largest update yet. As people had gleaned from its many teasers, it revamped almost all of Wynn's builds, but it's other main focus turned out to be additions such as better mob AI and mob spells. This was also teased, albeit in cryptic posts by the @King of Ragni forums account. There was also just a lot of general QoL and miscellaneous improvement changes. All in all, a lot of testing was needed, and the VIP-exclusive beta testing went on for over three weeks, with the update finally releasing on August 1st.

Some of 1.12's most iconic features actually weren't planned. They were added in the final days due to changes in Minecraft's EULA. Features such as double XP and damaging pets that gave players advantages were removed, and to compensate, mainstays of today's store like VIP+ and Bombs were introduced.

Other standout features include more quests beyond level 60, somewhat better dungeons, the Rymek region, and easter eggs. Easter eggs may have been 1.12's defining feature, as there were tons of them, most of which are now removed. The community certainly had a lot of fun trying to discover all of them, and member Jamdoggy made an entire website to catalogue them.

With 1.12 here, the community turned its excitement towards the eventual addition of the Gavel province. The admins knew Gavel was anticipated, and hosted an event called Gavel Week to boost this hype. Every day that week, Grian would host building streams and would post a screenshot of Gavel on the forums. Hide-and-seek events would be hosted too, with winners getting the Seeker's Aid helmet. But the highlight of the event arrived on the final day, with the addition of the MINIGAME known as Wizard Fortress.

Wizard Fortress is now removed, and it's such an outlandish feature that it could honestly warrant its own section here. It was an FPS Capture the Flag minigame made in minecraft with no true ties to Wynncraft's lore and world. It was fun for a while but slowly died out, but not before some members of the community worried the server was heading in the direction of becoming a minigame server.

Afterwards, it turned out Gavel wouldn't be coming out as soon as we thought. Fortunately however, we would be getting 1.13, The Wynnter Update, in the meantime. It added higher-level content, including the Tower of Ascension (among other quests), the now-removed Relic Shrines (which technically came a month later), Armor Skins, and Guilds. Guilds should be well-known among the community in terms of its features and effects on the community, but Armor Skins are way more obscure and were as interesting as Wizard Fortress. Armor Skins made it so that every piece of armor was actually a modification to your minecraft skin, not a texture. The picture below should explain it better.

Various Armor Skins (From JuicedBananas)

2015:

After 1.13, there really wasn't much that happened (outside of the community and guild politics, of course). Grian released some teaser videos for Gavel, such as an Aldorei build timelapse and a playthrough of An Iron Heart Pt. 2. Salted began teasing a new item system, which went through a lot of changes throughout 2015. The Wynncraft twitter teased some cool stuff, and we also got a super cryptic unveiling of the Wynnic language. Still, it wasn't enough. The community wanted Gavel, but months had gone by without it. Would the wait be worth it in the end?

To partially alleviate the wait, 1.13.1 released in the early summer. This concluded the WynnExcavation questline, and at the way end, the king teased that we'd be going to Gavel soon... only furthering hype.

9/7 refers to an event where a user named Admintest1 joined, and as their name suggested, they had the red admin rank. Around that same time, every single thread started disappearing before the forums eventually closed down for a few hours. When they returned, all threads were gone, with only profiles spared. The forums got a fresh start, and 9/7 went down in history. No one knows what truly happened, but everyone joked that Jumla spilling his coffee ruined everything.

Admintest1. Note that Tantibus has more posts pre-9/7 than he does now.

Around that same time, we also got the famous Gavel teaser trailer, and a quick watch will show you that a lot of its features never made it get into the game. We never got Ragnar, or that chat system, or a main storyline (not mentioned in the trailer, but had been hinted at elsewhere). It took 5 more years to get the Grootslang boss too. Despite this, I think the trailer did a great job at hyping up Gavel, as it showcased all of the update's highlights that managed to make it into the game. It certainly got the community excited at the time, but Gavel was still a few months away.

As some may know, 1.14/Gavel released in late December, and the weeks leading up to that were filled with unprecedented amounts of hype. Beta testing began in November, and given how many secrets Gavel would have, those testers were either hand-picked or winners of official giveaways. Everyone else had to rely on lore teasers and an AMA from Salted to be satisfied. We also got a livestream in the final fews days which really showed just how massive the update was. And then, at long last, The Gavel Update arrived on December 21st.

Gavel did not start perfect. Bugs were prevalent and many hotfixes occurred in the first few days, and class balance was definitely out of wack too. Nonetheless, there was so much to see and do, and features like a texture pack, quest cutscenes, and human mobs made the world so much more immersive. That's right - before this update, Wynncraft didn't have its own texture pack!

However, there was a group of players who didn't really focus on exploring, but rather speedrunning to level 100. After all, the level cap had been raised for the first time in years, and a first level 100 had to be crowned. Eventually, the contest was won by veteran player J6Unlimited/Zuikaku_, who reached that level after many sleepless nights. Players TheDollarBill, DodoBird, Kokaga, SeanThomas2, Gartato, and Hanky soon followed in their place. Not many people got to level 100 for a while though, and that's because leveling used to be VERY tedious due to a lack of grind spots and the fact that the highest-level was Fantastic Voyage. Fun fact: the best grind spot upon Gavel's launch was a cave filled with trolls visited during The Thanos Vaults quest.

Gavel, circa 1.14

Apart from well, Gavel itself, the most prominent feature added in 1.14 was a new item system. Prior to Gavel, there were no elements, no more than seven different identifications, and armor gave defense rather than health. The update opened up a lot of potential for build variety, but upon launch... that really didn't exist. + Attack Speed (which affected SPELLS) and Raw Spell were the tyrants of the meta, with the latter being nerfed way sooner than the former. This thread perfectly captures the early Gavel "meta". It definitely took a long time in Wynn's history for the meta to reach the diversity it has today,

Gavel also added Mythics, and between this and the addition of items that required good roles, the economy evolved significantly. Players now had things to spend their money on apart from white horses and the same four pieces of armor, leading to a much larger market community.

It took a while, but over time, a class builds community popped up as well, with a forums and discord channel for the gameplay aspect eventually popping up. Today, class building has a thriving subcommunity that has changed as much as the item system has, and they can be credited with discovering and calculating a lot of buildmaking aspects (such as how damage is calculated, Effective HP, and how often mana/life steal triggers)

2016:

The golden age of easter eggs may have ended, but Gavel had a lot of secrets to offer, including one hidden in the quest book! ??? was a quest so obscure that mentioning it publicly was against the rules, but it definitely wasn't perfect. It eventually got reworked in 1.14.1, which I'll talk about later. We also got the hunt for Gale's Tomb, a secret relating to a boss created by Selvut. This massive hunt spawned a thread with thousands of replies, and it turns out a patch was needed to actually make the tomb obvious to the public. And there was also the Clock Mystery, where it turned out that eight clocks scattered around Gavel could lead to hidden boss-fights and items.

The greatest secret at all wasn't even found until April 1st (unfortunate timing for sure), and it was the existence of the hidden level 101. Moderator Broettinger somehow got all his quests reset, and he found out that he was still getting XP past level 100 upon doing them. It turns out there was a secret level 101 that required all the XP you needed from levels 1-100. Player motoki1 later got to level 101 legit a few weeks later, and few others followed soon after. But unlike the bonus levels of today, 101 was a pretty rare achievement.

2016 marked the departure of several of the game's original admins. The two pig-themed web developers, Tama and HiMyNameIsAJ, both left at different times. Crunkle left at the same time as AJ did, but he did return later. These departures took me and a lot of others by surprise, as they had been around for so long that Wynn could feel different without them.

I'll use this section to highlight some other admins who have come and gone. mooman219 was a game developer who helped with the game with several years. rmb938 did work on server side of things in 2014, and MrTwiggy was an admin around the same time. Mazen was a dev in 2015, but I also don't know what he did. redx475 was a sysadmin who contributed a lot for many years.

And while he was an admin from 2017-2021, I have to shout out best admin colin350 who was a CT member, web developer, game developer, and community person throughout his time on Wynncraft. A great person with some of the greatest contributions to the network.

Like with any update, Gavel was not perfect. I already discussed the lack of content past level 90, but there were also annoying cactus builds (AFK thorns builds), and a very annoying glitch that reset your skillpoints sometimes when you logged back in, causing you to potentially lose items with skill reqs. There were also delays in features like powders, which would eventually arrive, and the main storyline, which despite being promised for a release a few weeks after Gavel, still has never released.

The summer of 2016 also introduced the closest thing Wynn had to a rival MMORPG server: Zentrela. It was relatively new, but it attracted a lot of active community members who had grown frustrated with the state of Wynncraft. This coincided with a thread being posted to criticize the community and moderators. It actually sparked a lot of good discussion and became maybe the most active thread of all time, but eventually had to be deleted.

The thread may not have lived for more than a day, but it forever changed the network. The community started to improve for the better, and it's partially due to the introduction of the Community Manager rank. The rank first belonged to Pretzule, a veteran moderator. It led to a true mod manager outside of the admin team, a voice to relay feedback to the admins, and a host of community events. Nothing lasts forever though, and after a good 2-year run Pretzule resigned.

Post-Gavel Powders were promised a few weeks after Gavel, but things didn't go as planned. They ended up being roped up with a cornucopia of miscellaneous features in The Gameplay Update. It added todays modern dungeons, the concept of corrupted dungeons, the seaskipper, boss altars, QoL stuff, level 80+ quests, and more stuff that I probably can't think of off the top of my head. The crown jewel of 1.14.1 was possibly a revamp to the ??? quest, which the community had to collectively figure out how to solve together. It took over a week for a group to finally complete the quest, and I'm honestly not sure how the managed it.

The admins didn't hit the breaks after 1.14.1, and cool updates kept coming! First we got another corrupted dungeon, then about a month later we got The Hallowynn Update. In terms of content, it didn't add more than a few hours of stuff, but it really shook the server due to its store changes. The minecraft EULA had actually changed again in September 2016, so Wynn's store had to change too. It did so by adding the HERO rank, mob totems, and crates. Said crates capitalized on Wybels, cute creatures introduced in 1.14.1 that had become super popular among the community.

Mob totems were the standout part of the new donator ranks, as they allowed for insane grind parties before they got nerfed (obviously they're still good today). The Demon Cave near Rodoroc was the preferred place to grind levels at the time.

A "DCave" party (From Glitch496)

Next up came 1.15, titled The Wynnter Update (not to be confused with the OTHER wynnter update). It really didn't add much apart from a seasonal Wynnter fair event that's only returned once, as well as a quest and some coastline improvements. The update pretty much only served as a tease for Corkus, which brings up to the next part of this thread.

2017:

Corkus was a suggestion writted by MrCoffeeTime, and for some reason the Content Team loved it. This led to an official April Fools thread in 2016 by gamemaster Tantibus, which claimed Corkus was coming to the game. What no one could have predicated was that Corkus is actually real, it got officially hinted at in 1.14.1! Towards the end of 2016, Grian hosted a livestream detailing what Corkus would contain. 1.15 then added the island, which had only the coastline accessible. And then in April was got the full thing, The Corkus Update, complete with four quests, many secrets, and a new dungeon!

MrCoffeeTime's suggestion mentioned a place known as Legendary Island, and that's a name you probably recognize. Legendary Island became THE endgame content, and is just as popular today as it was back then (although it took a while for the challenge runs to catch on). The other huge addition of 1.16 was the Corrupted Sand-Swept Tomb. Prior to its revamp two years later, the dungeon could be completed very quickly. Still, it wasn't a huge source of XP... until dungeon bombs were added a month later. This led to the rise of CSST parties, which allowed players to level up in groups ultra-rapidly. It became quite common to see players who had never done a quest past level 71 just because they ran CSST so much.

In June, Grian posted a thread teasing the upcoming updates. We didn't get much info on 1.17, the upcoming update, but we did get a surprisingly large teaser for the next one: it would be the "Road to Dern" update. Dern, much like Gavel, had been hinted at since 2013. Naturally people were quite excited for this. Things sadly didn't go as planned however, and in what was considered a divisive move at the time, RtD announced as pushed from being 1.18 to 1.19 in late 2018.

Grian's teaser also mentioned that 1.17 would focus on content over coding gameplay changes. This was a result of the server's refractor being worked on, AKA code improvements.

Unfortunately, after the frequent string of update releases, there ended up being quite a large content drought after Corkus. Many believed the was due to work on the "refractor", aka code improvements. Much like after Gavel, people acknowledged that the game had flaws and hoped the next update would fix them. Interestingly enough, Wynncraft was saved less by the next update, and more by somewhat unrelated events.

Around November, the admin jpresent (who had been around for a while but never seemed to do much) started doing a TON of bugfixes. Needless to say, the community was really happy about this. He fixed lag apparently! The other cool thing around this time was mythic balancing (finally), and the introduction of the Item Team. Yes, only Salted and Selvut were able to change items before 1.17 came out! The ways IDs were rounded was also changed to what it was today, and this decision was a bit more controversial at the time.

Of course, all of these events should discount the impact of 1.17, which was a very cool update in it's own right. The Dungeons and Discoveries Update added true discoveries, a lot of new quests, and some long-awaited suggestions: a better quest book and more bank space!

Wynncraft switched over from Teamspeak to Discord, leading to the place you all know and love today. Yes this happened in 2016 but it was really late that year so

Wynncraft gets a Guinness World Record for being the largest Minecraft MMORPG.

Mod applications open up, allowing people to apply for the funny orange juice rank.

Pretzule hosts many events and smaller mini-events along with the mod team.

Player Motoki1 figures out damage calculations, which paves the way for dukioooo's website WynnData, and eventually hppeng's WynnBuilder site today.

2018-2019:

After 1.17, Wynncraft entered its largest content drought since Gavel. But the community didn't mine. The game was in the healthiest state it maybe ever has been in, the community was doing well, and Pepo (event manager at the time) entertained us with a community event called The Factions. The event never really happened, and its legacy is leading to former IM jptheflip starting a trend of saying "the factions..." in a now-removed discord channel. We also started getting some teasers for 1.18 in the summer, and they were initially VERY cryptic, they eventually progressed to more normal stuff like a teased Detlas revamp.

Eventually, a trailer confirmed what some people suspected: Wynncraft was adding professions to the game! It was also adding new builds, many more armorstand models, new quests, and just a lot of cool stuff. This seemed like a neat beginning to a new era of Wynncraft, and everyone was excited when the beta dropped... although reception wasn't entirely positive when people saw what professions were like, but I'll get to that later. Around the end of the beta (which went on for a very long time), the update's "secret feature" was unveiled, and it was the ingame marketplace! The Economy Update launched soon after in early 2019, making the wait between 1.17 and 1.18 the largest in the server's history thusfar.

Professions are called optional by many and you'll frequently see people on discord recommending new players to avoid them, but they've had quite the history and impact on the game. By history, I mean a history of more and more sources of prof XP being added. Prof XP and Speed bombs actually weren't even a thing until late 1.18 beta. That was all we had for a while, but then 1.19 added Hunted Mode and Prof miniquests, while 1.20 added gathering XP/speed ingredients and guild boosts. What's interesting is how willing the community is to work together in order to alleviate the prof grind, with players making discord servers and entire guilds to collectively hit the max prof levels.

The age of players hitting combat level achievements died a few years before 1.18, but the economy update led to an age of prof-related achievements. Karen_Kujou became the first person to hit level 100 in any profession (woodcutting), and what's most impressive is that they did so less than 48 hours after 1.18 dropped! awesommme then took things a step further, and got to level 132 in a profession, which is a true completionist achievement given that profs didn't give you any benefits past level 100 at the time. And then, a year later, Pododang took it even further by getting to level 132 in ALL 12 PROFESSIONS.

I'll begin this section by talking about controversial move of not boosting level 101 players with a ton of leftover XP to level 104, but rather to level 102 at most. Some players had spent hundreds of hours grinding XP with the expectation that they would instantly be max level again if the level cap was raised, and naturally most of those players quit. A thread was made regarding this on the day 1.18 launched, and responses from the CT only viewed the fire, as they had a differing opinion from the community on this.

Then, former IM bloww made a thread titled "Wynn isn't what it used to be", where he pretty much discussed his gripes with the server and community. A lot of players agreed with him and the thread sparked some great discussion. Salted himself ended up replying to it, and cleared up some other stuff in Wynn's history too. Things should've been fine after that, right?

No, a few days later, the shoutbox was removed. The shoutbox was basically a small forums chatroom that also showed which new threads were made, and it was at the heart of most of the forums history. Sure, it wasn't used much partly due to discord, but it was a useful tool for seeing what threads were added and had a lot of value to many of the more active forum-users. Member Moss made a thread asking for the shoutbox back, and the thread has been kept alive for two years with still no return of the shoutbox. And as you'll read next, things briefly got even worse for Wynncraft.

In late March, the market shut down, and that just happened to coincide with the release of Wynncraft's Trailer, which is actually super cool but just came out at an unfortunate time. The trailer was promoted by Grian, who if you don't know, was a super famous youtuber at this point, and Wynn reached an obscene number of players. This led to them needing to close down guild war servers (guild wars were done on separate servers prior to the 1.20 rework), meaning that the market and guilds, two of the main endgame features, were gone.

This is how popular Wynncraft got.

At some point in earl April, jpresent seemingly just vanished. He's no longer and admin and never seemed to have returned to the network, even as a normal player. This meant that guilds and the ingame market were down through April and half of May. Who would get the server out of this predicament? Turns out a serpentine savior returned when we needed him most...

After original admin Crunkle left the server in 2016, I'm not sure if anyone expected him to return. So everyone was surprised when he not only came back to Wynncraft in may 2019, but he also brought back guild wars and added 1.14 (the minecraft version) support. Was this a sign of better times? The answer was yes. The market also returned in 1.18.1, a patch that also added the much-liked /skiptutorial command.

This same update also added the Hardcore, Ironman, and Craftsman challenge gamemodes. It only took a few months before player YYGAMER completed all content with all 3 restrictions active at once. He later went on to beat the similar HICH challenge too after 1.19 dropped, and player Linnyflower would go on to complete both challenges not long after.

After 1.18, the community naturally should've focused a lot more on the (likely) upcoming RTD update. But during the summer, they found themselves focused on a different upcoming feature - The Elemental Revamp. This was a rebalancing of almost every item in the game, and most items would be modified to fit ten tri-elemental archetypes. The thread about it would do a better job explaining all the changes than I could... and it also does a good job showing just how controversial this change was. Yeah, this was probably the most divisive idea for changing a part of Wynn that was shown to the community. In fact, the Elemental Revamp was most scrapped in the end, although some of its aspects like Hive Armor changes did make it into the game.

It's time for another major update! In October, we got our RTD - I mean The Silent Expanse - trailer, and like always, the teasers had only touched the surface of what was being added. For the first time in Wynn's history, a new class was being added in the Shaman! This is honestly one of the most insane additions to Wynncraft, and there's an argument to be made that it wasn't truly balanced until this year, if at all.

1.19 also had some class rebalancing, adjusting the four other classes to roughly their power levels pre-2.0. There was also the addition of the Hunted Mode, which led to a rise in people doing professions more thanks to its XP bonus, as well as the HICH challenge (I'll discuss that a bit more later). Another "small" feature added was loot quality, which made mythics more common if you had more loot quality. This led to a significant spike in mythics being discovered, and also elevated lootrunning to more of a prominent subcommunity. And we can't forget the Eldritch Outlook either, a new endgame challenge that added the Eye, a powerful foe that had been hinted at for years.

2020:

1.20 launched in January 2021, making 2020 one of the few years to not have a 1.XX update. So, what happened during that year? Well, we pretty much got the usual. 1.19 got some patches, one of which actually added back the Wynnter fair for a bit. People did all the new content until they got bored, and right as that happened, teasers for 1.20 started trickling in.

This time, the admins did something different: monthly news threads about the update. Most of them showed simple stuff like a build revamp, but the first teaser actually laid out what the eventual update would be about. It hinted at no new regions but more mid/late game content as well as general improvements. The teaser also mentioned the admins planned on releasing an update before 1.20, which would add a new feature and update the store. Both of those things ended up being delayed until 1.20 however.

As more teasers arrived, it became obvious that 1.20 was possibly larger than we originally thought. The teasers had minimal common links beyond (general revamp), and the timeframe between 1.19 and 1.20 was growing to be one of the largest between Wynn's history. By late 2020 Wynn also had four game devs (Jumla, colin350, Apollo, and HeyZeer0), the most it ever had in history.

Many had speculated that 1.20 would include a Gavel revamp. But no one predicted that The Gavel Reborn update would also include housing, raids, and a guild update, three of the most highly-requested additions/changes in recent years. Due to this, 1.20 seemed like it could surely become an instant classic, but all of those cool things were overshadowed by the elephant in the teaser: the Champion rank.

It makes sense that another rank was added. After all, server hosting costs and developers needed to be paid. Still, all of the forums discourse in the first few days after the 1.20 trailer focused on the champion rank, as it added several controversial features such as the bomb bell and champion slots - both of which still get some criticism to this day. Fun fact: champion Rank may have ended up as a subscription base rank, as was possibly hinted at by a survey sent out during beta.

Despite the trailer's release in early November, it was obvious that a lot of work still needed to be done on the update, as was evident when beta testing finally began in December. Two raids and several quests were missing, and while most of them were eventually added in beta, the Nexus of Light raid didn't arrive until a while later after 1.20's release.

2021:

2021 was not a great start for Wynncraft. Days earlier, a massive dupe glitch had struck, causing mythic prices to skyrocket. It was so bad that players actually were clamoring for a rollback, but due to logical reasons, it couldn't really happen. This meant that the trade market was down until 1.20 dropped, but launch week had its own problems - beta testing naturally can't squash every bug.

1.2o honestly had one of the roughest launches ever. Only 2 of the 3 raids were in the game, housing was missing a lot of cool features it had, and guild changes were not well received, at least initially. In addition to all this, some of the hotfixes for 1.20 had issues of their own. I'm not just talking about introducing new bugs - I'm talking about hotfix 6, a notorious event that changed how damage was calculated, causing players to deal WAY more damage in the past. The change was put on hold the day after hotfix 6 until items could be rebalanced, but not before a little trolling had been done.

1.20 was definitely not without its flaws, but I feel as if the admin team clearly showed that they wanted to make the update its best for the community. The reason I believe this is because many 1.20.X updates released afterwards, some of which came out months after 1.20 did.

1.20.1 added the Nexus of Light raid, finally adding the last piece of intended content Gavel reborn was supposed to get.
1.20.2 added improvements to housing, early-game changes, and raid-reward buffs. Said early-game changes were two new quests and the Time Troubles daily event, which correlated with an uptick in people discussing the controversial player retention. It also changed the dialogue system to the shift-based one we had today.
1.20.3 came out not long after, this time focusing on improving guilds and adding Guild Seasons.
1.20.4 added emerald pouches, and the first new mythics since 2019.

In the summer of 2021, Wynncraft started doing something brand new: festivals. These were limited-time events where people could earn or buy crates with special cosmetics. Detlas would usually get some visual changes too. This was basically all the 1st festival, the Festival of Bonfire, had, but according to Salted the event was successful nonetheless.

The next festival, the Festival of the Spirits, took things a step further. It had more things to do like raffles and an event where you find and catch spirits, and community manager Hams hosted an art content which is now a staple of these events. The Festival of the Blizzard went even further above in beyond, adding temporary interactions with a ton of popular NPCs and bringing back the Wynnter fair. Wrapping up the 1.20 era was the Festival of the Heroes, with a scavenger event and performances that gave special buffs.

2022:

Not long after 1.20.4 came out, teasers for the next update, presumed to be 1.21 at the time, began. They were pretty cryptic, and it was hard to discern what would happen apart from some build revamps and a rework to Galleon's Graveyard. In particular, the Nameless Anomaly raid was hinted at through a lot of pictures of plants.

But hype went into overdrive when it was revealed that the update was being rebranded to Wynncraft 2.0. Shortly after the trailer dropped, showing everyone the upcoming ability tree, the Nameless Anomaly raid, and new content Gavel would have.

Despite the trailer dropping in May, a lot of work needed to be done before the update finally released. It took almost two months before the beta dropped, which then led to a long testing period where people slowly got access to classes to test as time went on. The beta ended up lasting nearly three months, a record for the server. And even with it, balance wasn't perfect (as classes were intended mainly to be playable and fun, with balance patches coming after), and the controversial Ability Shards were added at the last minute. Spellbound finally released the same day the queen of england died.

It seems as if 2.0 had a lot of positives. The Nameless Anomaly raid seems regarded as the best raid yet, and acts as a great source of getting money. A lot of new quests have been received, and Galleon's Graveyard seems regarded as a step up from the original.

Not all of Spellbound's features arrived on time. The Breaking Point quest and Corrupted Galleon's Graveyard had to release with 2.0.1, which also brought changes to the boss Charon and a lot of balance changes.

Around the time 2.0.1 beta testing started, the 2nd iteration of the Festival of the Bonfire was wrapping up. This version featured new and old cosmetics and events, but the highlight was the Battle for the Bonfire minigame. This was more comparable to Wizard Fortress than the Wynnter Fair, transforming the game into an entertaining FPS with cool prizes to win. Later in December, the Festival of the Blizzard also made a comeback too.

In what I believe to be a completely unexpected announcement, Salted announced in the middle of November that their next update will (probably) be Fruma. Fruma, the province we originated from, has been teased since 2015 and we've slowly learned more and more about it. Not only that, but it seems as if it will be the next endgame content, as it will raise the level cap.

The making of Wynncraft! | Wynncraft Forums (archive.org)
https://web.archive.org/web/20140625110540/https://mojang.com/2014/06/lets-talk-server-monetisation
https://web.archive.org/web/2014101...nnouncing-gavel-week-18th-25th-october.60437/
https://forums.wynncraft.com/threads/when-is-the-follow-up-update-coming-out.105131/#post-1137050
https://forums.wynncraft.com/threads/announcing-1-15-the-corkus-update.119823/
https://forums.wynncraft.com/threads/wynncraft-isnt-what-it-used-to-be.243357/page-7#post-3000678
https://forums.wynncraft.com/threads/an-update-on-the-1-17-update.194506/
https://forums.wynncraft.com/threads/double-xp-craftmas-up-to-80-sale-champion-preorder.279567/

IMAGE SOURCES:
Some screenshots come from @PikaLegend @JuicedBananas and @Glitch496 who allowed me to use their images in my original thread.
https://forums.wynncraft.com/threads/history-of-the-wynncraft-map.239080/
https://forums.wynncraft.com/threads/1-14-the-gavel-expansion-changelog.97175/

Click to expand...

You should update this thread to contain the latest 2.0.2 patch(Isles of Fiction, assassin changes).

WithTheFish · Mar 20, 2023

Earthbrine said: ↑

You should update this thread to contain the latest 2.0.2 patch(Isles of Fiction, assassin changes).
Click to expand...

Yeah, I plan on adding some stuff for 2.0.2 later.

Log in or Sign up

Guide The History of Wynncraft (up to 2.0.1)

Earthbrine The Dirt of the Realm CHAMPION

WithTheFish Internet Macrocelebrity CHAMPION