2018

The Economy Update

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

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.