2013

Closed Beta (aka Alpha) (- Apr 2013)

Project W’s development continued early into 2013, seeing the construction of several new cities and the implementation of many new features.

By January enough features had been implemented to make gameplay somewhat viable: around this time, Project W was opened to select members of the CraftedMovie community for initial testing (the closed beta, aka the alpha).

Throughout this alpha testing, bugs were fixed and features continued to be added. This continued until the server’s eventual public beta release in April, 2013.

Early Months (Apr. 2013 - Jul. 2013)

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.

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.

Early Community (Jul. 2013 - Sep. 2013)

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 (Sep. 2013)

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 Ocean Update (Oct. 2013)

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.

Misc Events (Fall 2013)

• 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.