The documentation says it will create ripples. So far I've been unable to get it to modify the water at all.

My "water" is a simple morphable square from poser props with many subdivisions, and a water material added. Here's a snapshot of my "water" with a wave deformer.

The bottom line is that I haven't a clue how to use the Wave deformer. Reading and googling isn't helping.

You forgot to include the image.

Yah. Bit under the weather this moring and my brain is all fuzzy.

Here's a snapshot.

I did go off and play with Wave and the Ground. Hmm. Yes, I got it to do ripples, but not "tight" enough to fit in the box above. More like circular waves, not ripples. If I reduce the wave length to try to make ripples I could use in the box, it goes all choppy.

Try using amplitude.  It modulates the height of the wave.

Here's my setup for ripples. Move the wave off to one side to not show the full ring. Use the morphs to affect how the ripples look. You can see which ones I used. You do need to make sure you have enough polygons. It doesn't seem like subdivision will help with that

Also try parenting the box to the wave object.

You can always add displacement to vary the look of the waves.

You can also get some interesting effects by adding more than one wave to an object

Thank you both so much. I can hardly wait to go play with it again. It will have to wait until tomorrow, I think. A bit under the weather today. Fever and tired and all that. Sigh.

But I can HARDLY  WAIT!!!! I've been crudely making ripples with the morphing tool. Multiple morphs. Concentric circles. Hard work and not very satisfying result either.

Well I couldn't wait. I had to play with it just a bit. And -- Major Progress! Thank you guys again...

much better

Check it out! Definitely getting there. Have to quit soon and get back to it tomorrow. Really. But -- WOW!! And thank you SO much.

Btw, switching my surface over to ClothPlane helped too!!!

that looks good

I couldn't resist playing with this.

Cool!! So many times one sees renders where a model is just stuck in the water with the water just a flat sheet of water. And your image shows wonderfully that it needn't be that way. Very impressive!

And here's what you guys have helped me create! My earlier image showed the possibility, but (sigh) I stayed up, tweaked various noise parameters, and came up with this, and I'm extremely pleased with it. 

Thank you both!!!