2014

The Spell Update (January)

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.

Unexpected Events (January - July)

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!

1.11.1 (March)

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 (July)

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.

Gavel Hype & Wizard Fortress (October)

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.

The Wynnter Update (December)

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.