2016

Gavel’s Secrets

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.

Admins Take Their Leave

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.

The Flaws of 1.14

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, took half a decade to release.

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.

The Gameplay Update (August)

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.

Holiday Updates (October - December)

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.

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.