I am always on the lookout for a new MMORPG to try. When the opportunity to interview Francis “Salted” Mailloux, owner of the Wynncraft MMORPG private server, came up, I was curious as I immediately recognized the server's name. While playing Minecraft, I was constantly looking for new servers to try, one of which caught my interest at the time was Wynncraft. But my work life picked up shortly after that, and Minecraft fell to the wayside.
Wynncraft is a full MMORPG created entirely within Minecraft on a private server. It was initially released in April 2013. It had all the features you would expect of a typical MMORPG: quests, crafting, guilds, bosses, dungeons, and raids. There are even some PvP elements for those who are interested. Starting classes include Archers, Assassin, Mage, Warrior, and Shaman. Each class also has three archetypes that unlock new abilities.
Before my interview, I tried Wynncraft and started my journey from level 1 to 106 with the latest class, Shaman. So far, the early game has been straightforward, and some of the UI/menus are unintuitive. But I found myself having a lot of fun with Wynncraft rather quickly. It surprised me how easily I got caught up in doing just one more quest.
The crafted continents are fun to explore, and while the character models are limited due to being built in Minecraft, the environments are impressive. Combat feels simple initially but has a good element of danger compared to many modern MMOs. All in all, my first impression was a good one.
By the end of my first few hours playing Wynncraft, I was curious about how Salted, as he is known on the forums, got into developing an MMORPG in Minecraft that is now a decade old. In the interview, we also discuss how the server came about, different features, development challenges, the latest patches, games Salted plays in 2023, and why new players might want to try Wynncraft.
Owner/Developer Interview
MMORPG: It has been ten years since the Wynncraft server went live. Did you imagine even being at this point with how popular this Minecraft MMO is and being able to develop it even further as a full-time job?
Salted: No, no, no. In fact, that's kind of a mistake we made at the beginning. We thought that maybe it would last two years or something in 2013. Minecraft was still kind of young, we didn't really expect it to still be relevant 10 years later. And so, we made the server. But we didn't do it very well. A lot of the work we've had to do after was just kind of fixing the problems because of that on the backend.
MMORPG: So, you have mainly had to use Java to code the server and develop various systems? How did you decide to create an MMO in Minecraft versus a game engine such as Unity or Unreal?
Salted: On Java, yeah. So, in 2010 I started playing Minecraft and then in 2011, I started a channel called CraftedMovie on YouTube that also got very popular. So that kind of forced me in a way to stay up to date with Minecraft in general. And what I've noticed over the two years between doing that is that Mojang was adding a lot of RPG elements that could be used to make an MMO. So, in, 1.8 or 1.9 beta for example they added levels to the game, which was a big thing. The added potion effects that could be used for status effects.
And a big one was adding item tooltips where you can hover over an item and you can show any text you want on there that's very required for an item system in an MMO and just a bunch of other miscellaneous stuff like brewing, enchanting. They made a lot of useful assets that could be used for MMO and so I've always been an MMO and more RPG fan. So, I just kept seeing that happen and eventually, I was just like them we should really make an RPG. Nobody has done it so far. And we've done it. We thought we could do it and we didn't expect the amount of work that it would be, but it ended up being good.
MMORPG: Now that Wynncraft has been running for a decade, do you have a favorite aspect/feature?
Salted: Oh, yes, I do have one, actually. So, you have to know a little bit about how a Minecraft server works. Minecraft servers are not made for MMORPG. They're made for having an infinitely expanding world with a small community. While an MMORPG is kind of a static world with a lot of players. So, we couldn't, we couldn't quite get the feeling of MMORPG into one server because it just ends up too laggy on Minecraft even after all the optimization we've done. So, what we're doing instead is we’re separating the game into many worlds that have a 50-player limit. And then, through some developer magic that even myself I'm not too sure how it works, we're able to show each of the players on every server to other servers. So, it can give the impression that there are hundreds of people around you even if they're on other servers actually so that gives the feeling of MMORPG even with the limitations of Minecraft.
MMORPG: Is this kind of server transparency limited to hub areas/city, or is it everywhere in Wynncraft?
Salted: Wherever you are in the world, other players in other servers in the same area will see you, so if you're in a town that has nobody except one other guy in another server, you're going to see that guy. So, it's really everywhere.
MMORPG: What challenges have you encountered while Developing Wynncraft in relation to Mojang/Microsoft?
Salted: MMOs are really an upset of what Minecraft is meant to do. So, the big limitation really is to try to minimize the impact of lag for us. We had to recode a lot of random stuff, like the mod system was completely ours. Two weeks ago, we changed how the game loads chunks, because chunks are really heavy in Minecraft, and in an MMO we can do some stuff to kind of help that. Really 80% of the time when we were struggling with Minecraft it's about optimization. There are some limitations because of course, we're just a server. We can only use the tools that Mojang really gives us. So, for example, for a long time, we couldn't show text on the screen because Mojang didn't code that into the client. Eventually, they did, and then we started using that. But it's always kind of a weird limitation.
A funny one, for example. We have custom mobs. Minecraft has zombies and skeletons and all that stuff. But we want to do our own, but we don't have access to the client. So, what we have to do is we have to get like a dozen armor stands, give each of them a part of a body, stitch them together, make them invisible, and then move them in a way that looks semi-realistic so that we can make our own mobs. It's a lot of weird workarounds we have to do to give that effect. But it's fun, in a way it's part of the challenge really. The advantage of that is that players don't expect it at all. They log into a server, and they see a completely new map they've never seen before. That's awesome.
Or they hear music playing. Like we have our own custom music. Of course, we can't make real music because we don't control the client again. But what we can do is we can make the server play each note using note blocks from the game and just make music with that. And so, when they're in a region music starts playing, and it's just invisible note blocks around them that creates the music, it always blows people's mind.
MMORPG: I have seen a lot of positive feedback from players about the music in Wynncraft. Has it always been a big focus?
Salted: Yeah, we have a big focus on music. I’ve been to college and studied music, so it's a big focus.
MMORPG: Has running the MMO within Minecraft led to many limitations/constraints, or do you find it easy to work around issues?
Salted: Give me a minute, [I] think there's, really a lot. But I've been doing it for so long. They're kind of second nature in a way. What else do we do? Well, we, okay, just a small feature we added maybe a year or so ago. When you track a quest, for example, we want to help you out. So, we show a beacon that you can follow, and you can continue the quest without having to figure it out. But we can't really show a real beacon in Minecraft because they don't really work very well. So, what we do is we create a texture of a beacon on the resource pack, which is really the only thing we can do to affect the client. And we stack a bunch of mobs on top of each other, invisible again, holding the beacon. So that it looks like a gigantic beacon that touches the sky. But in fact, it's just a bunch of mobs that are moving around as you get closer to them to give the effect of a beacon. You know, as I talked about it makes me realize how much we stack mobs together just to create effects.
MMORPG: When accepting quests so far in Wynncraft I was mainly navigating by X and Y coordinates, but I did find the giant beacon useful to get me going in the right direction. That is really interesting that you had to stack the mobs up.
Salted: Right. Have you noticed that the beacon kind of moves away from you as you get closer? Yeah. It’s because we can't spawn it outside of like on the real location because the chunks aren't loaded in Minecraft, it just doesn't work out if you tried to spawn a mob where the player hasn't loaded the chunks. So, we have to make it closer, and then as you get closer to it, we have to move in a way to give the illusion.
MMORPG: Have you found that developing in Java holds things back in certain aspects, or has it allowed for a faster iteration of features?
Salted: Java is fine. It's kind of an easy language. As I understand it. I'm not a coder myself. So, I don't quite know. But I talk a lot with developers and coders that do generally know that stuff. It's not the hardest language. It is inefficient, though.
MMORPG: Are there hard limits you have encountered while developing within Minecraft that you wish could be more easily resolved?
Salted: It goes back to the issue with performance, that's always the one thing we have to improve. Java hasn't been such a huge hurdle. It's mostly the limitation of Minecraft itself that has been more in our way.
MMORPG: Any solutions or problems that surprised you as Wynncraft has expanded over time or as Mojang/Microsoft has added new systems?
Salted: Yeah, or having to deal with some decisions that they've taken in the past that they didn't quite expect. I got another example, actually. So, on the right of your screen, when you track a quest or just anything, there's text there, right? If you've played it, you see it. So, this is a scoreboard Mojang added 10 years ago, and they really did not expect you to use it that way. So, what we have to do is we have to create fake players and give them a fake score so that they're scored higher, and then we renamed the player to have the proper text that we want to show at this stage. Then it comes up right.
MMORPG: How had the latest patch been received? Are there any outstanding issues that still need to be addressed from your viewpoint as a developer?
Salted: 2.0.4 was fine, for the most part. We've improved some end-game-related activities and honestly, I think the response has been pretty positive. This was kind of a response to 2.0.3, which was another patch from two months ago. 2.0.3 was a lot more controversial, I guess. And 2.0.4 I think, is just an improvement of that. But today, we did release another patch, it's funny you mentioned that, it's actually an event, so it doesn't change that much.
MMORPG: What is your favorite feature of the latest patch?
Salted: Yes, in that patch, this was an eight-month-long project. So, it was very took a lot of work. In that patch, we increased render distance significantly in the game up to 12 chunks. Without affecting performance, which was the big issue. So that's my favorite one. So now you can play, you can actually see what's around you. Before the render distance used to be six and because it's a radius around the player, it's kind of exponential. So, going from six to 12 is way more than double, it's almost like four times more chunks. So big improvements. As a player, it's sometimes you see something cool in the distance, and you want to explore it. So, the more you can see, the more that can happen. We have a lot of stuff now to discover as well. Like over 1000 quests.
MMORPG: Some players on the forums and in other media have mentioned that the gathering part of the crafting system can be quite dull. Are there plans for future gathering improvements?
Salted: Yeah, that's interesting that you mentioned that, I didn't expect that at all. I do have some ideas. And it's true. It's something that the community dislikes a bit. Professions, in general, are grindy. For crafting it's not as bad because you can spend money to power level faster. But gathering is a bit grindy, it's true. And it's been grindy for a few years, and we haven't touched it. It's not because we think it's perfect as is. It's because I do have an idea with it, which I haven't completely finalized. But my goal with it, over time, is to make it a little more like kind of an idle game I could say. Something that's a little more automatic that you can kind of set up and then come back the next day, and then you get rewarded. I think it's a good space to do a system like that.
MMORPG: So maybe something like a minigame for gathering that you might see in the “cozy” style games that have become more popular recently?
Salted: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I think it's good that there are different elements that are different. So, there's combat, which is a little more action-oriented, and I think professions, especially gathering, should be a bit more chill, something you can do while watching a YouTube video or just by not being there.
MMORPG: One of the other things that I have seen players talking about is the endgame of Wynncraft. Like in many MMOs as new raid are released older content become less relevant to go and complete. Are there any plans to make existing content retain relevance as new raids are released?
Salted: Yeah, I think it will keep happening. It's, it's kind of a slow process, we have four raids right now, they're relatively new, they've only started, we only started doing them since three years ago. So we still we have time to kind of improve them. But they are part of the progression. So, if we if we want to get a bit more into the design aspect. As you level up from level 1 to 100, you find items that are more and more powerful, but it, it's less powerful as time goes on. So, from level 1, you go from a weapon that does 10 damage to 20 damage, it's double. But when you're level 100, it goes from 100 damage to 105 damage, it's a smaller improvement.
In raids, what they do is they give you tomes that don't replace any of your items except other tomes, and those act as the vertical progression of the game. So, the goal is that eventually as you reach endgame, you're going to stop getting better items that are just flat-out stronger. You're going to get new items and have interesting ways to kind of combine them together that can make you stronger, but that's a more horizontal type of progression. The raids are going to take care of the vertical one, where they give you more straight power. They're going to give you like 10% damage bonus, and that basically it. So you're going to do raids to get your vertical progression, and your items are going to be part of your horizontal progression. At least that's the plan right now.
MMORPG: Some other MMOs have implemented systems, such as timewalking dungeons in WoW, to help keep older content fresh. Any thoughts on a similar system for the future in Wynncraft?
Salted: Yeah, that might be something we do too at one point, but we're not there yet.
MMORPG: 2023 has been an amazing year full of great games so far. Are there any games you are currently playing or potentially drawing future inspiration from?
Salted: There are. There is one type of game I'm playing a lot lately that I don't quite know what it is. 20 Minutes Till Dawn and the Halls of Torment. There are probably more games like that. It's a type of game where you're, it's roguelike ish. And it's RPG Salted: Well, I know that people, sometimes I go on Reddit or whatever other website where there is a lot of MMORPG fans and Wynncraft gets mentioned. A lot of the reaction that people have is why should I play an MMO that's in Minecraft when I can play real MMOs, as if that's all there is to it. But I think we craft has a lot of interesting aspects that even regular MMORPG players can like. I'm a big MMO RPG fan, I played all of them in the mid-2000s. All day I was trying new MMOs, there was a lot that was coming out during that time. So, I really tried my best to make Wynncraft something that I would personally enjoy.
I think Wynncraft respects your time a lot more than you would expect. There's not a lot of grinding, you can basically go from level 1 to 100 by just going with the flow, doing quests, doing content, and maybe a little bit of grinding here and there. But nothing that you might think when you think of MMOs. We have a big focus on progression as well. When you're level five, we care about that. We don't try to get you out of level five into the end game right away like some other games do. I know in World of Warcraft you can buy levels when you come back, something like that. I really dislike that I, want the full experience to be nice. That's something we focus a lot about too.
We have actually meaningful abilities. Sometimes in MMOs you get a new ability and something like 5% damage bonus for 60 seconds with a 30-minute cooldown. It feels a little lame, and our stuff is very action-oriented. It generally always matters and our quests are real quests, not fetch quests. I think there's a lot to Wynncraft if people gave it a chance and ignore the fact that it's in Minecraft. Truly try it, and I think a lot of people would like it.
