Wurm Online: The Ultimate Sandbox MMO

[Eagle1]

I found this game, and its everything I ever wanted in a game and more. Take a look at this unofficial trailer:



Wurm Online is a game that was created by Notch (Markus Pearson, the genius behind Minecraft) and Rolf Janson. It has an unlimited free trial up to level 20 in every skill, and you can earn premium by getting coins from other players ingame while doing work for them so you never have to pay a cent of real world money. There are PVP servers where you can fight for one of the default kingdoms or a player made kingdom, or you can join the kingdom of Freedom Isles if you don't want to be killed by others (though there are still nasty creatures that live in the wilderness that will cause problems). Every structure in the game is made by a player, and there are no NPCs besides personal merchants, guards, bartenders, animals, and zombies (created by the evil Horde on PVP servers, which is a faction of players). Each island has its own history, which was determined by the actions of the players and not by a scriptwriter. The economy is entirely player driven and is a free market.

Its similar to Mortal Online, however as you an see in the video it has a lot more customization. This game had a low player count because until recently because the graphics were terrible and it scared new people away (though it still managed to get in PC Gamer's top 20 best PC games list). In the last year, there has been some major improvements, and the player count is slowly rising.

Have you played this game before? What were your experiences? Post bellow. If you want to play, I recommend finding a village that will be willing the recruit you first in the forum. You can read tons about the game in the Wurmpedia as well.

 

[belowmecoldhands]

I love this game, but the reasons it hasn't been popular has little to do with its graphics. It has more to do with its nature.

I'll just give a list of things describing how Wurm Online was in 2012:
1) It had no in-game map and/or in-game radar
2) Corpse runs (and when you die, your items remain on the corpse, as well as losing skill experience)
3) Gameplay isn't quest driven, in fact, it's not really driven by anything at all
4) You're thrown into the world (and basically not given direction)
5) Pvp servers is Free-For-All
6) You can lose everything (it's lootable or lock-pickable) on the Pvp servers (including everything on your corpse)
7) Gaining skills (known as levels in other games) was/is very, very, VERY slow
8) The free game caps your skills to 20
9) UI was minimal - almost NO hand-holding (but most importantly it's not bloated)
10) High level (or otherwise dangeorus) creatures regularly roam the wilderness
11) No easy way to find out where you can readily build your house or plot of land without directly exploring

Basically, the game was and still is veyr inaccessible to the modern gaming audience.

That's largely why I loved and still love this game so much: it's hostile and doesn't guide you. What I experienced in 2012, I kid you not, outdoes EQ, my first love, and every other MMO I've ever touched. This game blew me away and continued to! It was so incredibly immersive. The tension when exploring was palpable. And the world, the world! Was alive and breathing!

Yet there're things I don't like about it. My complaints are complex, however. I've written threads in their forums about it.

I'll (try to) keep it simple:

Skill Development - .... is too lacking! It leads to a lot of grind. More works needs to be done to break up the monotony. Even the very basic process of imping carpentry items via (pelt+carving knife+file+log+hammer) is much better than the monotony of mining or fishing. One of the possible reasons it's this way is so players can queue several actions and then go afk to browse the internet or cook dinner. There's some merit to that, but it's not going to be a popular idea if your game is made to be played afk.

Player Community - .... is hampered by skill progression! Lower level players generally have essentially no value to the community if the community is composed of higher skill members. This is the case because almost nothing the lower level player can do is of competitive value. SOME THINGS have value for a new player in the community, roughly speaking, like dirt or stone bricks or digging the terrain. Yet the problem of higher skill players always being better at things still looms over it like a heavy gloom.

So what to do? There're probably many ways of addressing this "shorfall" in community integrity.

1. Decrease the absolute value gained from X skill to X+Y skill. So if a player creates an anvil at skill level 30 and creates another at skill level 70, the items which're produced will be closer in value. This is true for any difference in skill level. This places a cap on how much better items are when they're produced by playres with higher skill. A lower value means new players are more competitive.
2. Limit some items to lower skill ranges. For example, a mallet might cap at carpentry skill level 20. If a player has a higher carpentry skill than 20 the mallet will not recieve any benefits when it's created over one that's created at skill level 20. What this achieves is it sets aside some items for lower skill ranges, thus giving value to players in those skill ranges if they produce the relevant items.

Skill-restricted items - .... should be unlocked and spread out! For example, if an item is currently locked behind a 25-skill requirement in order to build it then remove the lock and allow someone to build it at skill level 1. But ensure what they make is low quality. Also ensure the item is connected to many recipes IN OTHER SKILLS. This prevents (or reduces) players from suddenly having to make something they've never made before but having no decent way to make it without grinding a useless (or otherwise unknown and irrelevant) skill. And keep in mind this whole deficit is made even worse by grindy (read: undeveloped) skills.

High level creatures - .... are probably too common and uniformly (indiscriminately) spread. I think part of this is due to so many high skill players wanting things to hunt, so they want them everywhere. However, this can make it hard for new players to explore and/or get around. I'm not against hard, absolutely not! But I do think sometimes it's abnormal. I think placing higher level creatures more discriminately in true wilderness, as well as not uniformally, is a better option. There has to be a way to do that and also please the hunters or the people who want creatures to be easy to find. There's a way where there's a will.
......

Alas, my cries will go unheard and the game is going to do whatever it wants. I'm resigned now to the understanding Wurm Online is going to be mudflated and 'dumbed down' just like any other MMO. Its only advantage is it started out its decline in a place I (mostly) loved, although not without its imperfections. Yet the gradual slide to old age is inevitably wearing on me.

Lastly I want to add the game has added in-game maps and bulked up its UI in other ways since 2012. It has also given new players easier "houses" to make by allowing them to build tents. It has done other things as well, but the game still has much of its old school flavor from 2012. I'll add I don't agree with every change. For example, its crafting UI is not what I'd make, if it were me making it. I think the crafting UI should have acted more like a quest UI. Instead it's disjointed and not nearly as helpful.

I play on Chaos (Pvp server). I can be found nearby to The Landing. If anybody is interested in finding me, go there. I play infrequently. I'm not deeded. If you PM me here, I can introduce you to the game.

Oh and here're some things to start with:
1) It's about $21 for 2 months of gametime (my preferred method - in 2012 it was $13 for 2 months!)
2) You have to pay money for deeds, but you don't HAVE to have them - they make owning and maintaining property easier
3) The client is java and quick to download - the patches are small (my wurm directory is only 1.3 gigs
4) The graphics, despite all the naysayers, EVEN IN 2012, were beautiful in my eyes
5) You can earn silver in-game and buy gametime with it (some players don't spend any $$$ to play)
6) You can play for a while comfortably (maybe a month or two) without paying anything, up to skill level 20
7) My system is old-ish - 2.3ghz dual-core, 3gb ram, 9800 gt - the game runs smooth
* you will need a dedicated video card or a newer system to run the game smoothly
8) Don't say I didn't warn you: This game requires years and has lots of grind.
9) Wurm-logic happens, it's something which will p*** you off, but you learn to live with it

Some links to get you started on the long road to becoming a Wurmian:
http://surviverman-on-wurm.blogspot.com/p/adventure-1.html
http://wurmpedia.com/index.php/Server_types
http://forum.wurmonline.com/index.php?/topic/35467-guide-to-the-stone-age/
http://wurmpedia.com/index.php/Main_Page
http://forum.wurmonline.com/index.php?/topic/40508-guide-to-feeding-yourself/
http://wurmpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Interface_and_Controls

 

[DarkUnderlord]

I remember seeing this back in the days I was playing Haven & Hearth. Fired it up tonight...

http://forum.wurmonline.com/index.php?/topic/70733-seriously-no-mouselook/

It's a full first-person 3d "immersive" thingy and there's seemingly no mouse look. Even resizing the GUI requires console commands and I end up trying to work with a windowed box with hidden controls. I love the comments defending no mouse look though...

Of all the things I've ever had an issue with regarding wurm.. this has never even entered my mind. >.> Either it doesn't bother most people, or I'm weird.

if this is what people makes quit wurm, they didn't really want to play it at all. there are tons of games outside wurm where you have hold LMB in order to look around. don't know what games they play.. maybe they are console players..

Toggle mouse look???? I have always had to press a mouse button to mouse look either right or left in games I played.​

I hate games where the interface just shits me off.

 

[Xenich]

The game does look interesting, it reminded me of an RPG variation of 7 days to Die or other similar sand box survival games.

I remember seeing this back in the days I was playing Haven & Hearth. Fired it up tonight...

http://forum.wurmonline.com/index.php?/topic/70733-seriously-no-mouselook/

It's a full first-person 3d "immersive" thingy and there's seemingly no mouse look. Even resizing the GUI requires console commands and I end up trying to work with a windowed box with hidden controls. I love the comments defending no mouse look though...

Of all the things I've ever had an issue with regarding wurm.. this has never even entered my mind. >.> Either it doesn't bother most people, or I'm weird.

if this is what people makes quit wurm, they didn't really want to play it at all. there are tons of games outside wurm where you have hold LMB in order to look around. don't know what games they play.. maybe they are console players..

Toggle mouse look???? I have always had to press a mouse button to mouse look either right or left in games I played.​

I hate games where the interface just shits me off.

Reminds me of the Doom days as new mouse based games came out when there used to be major fights between the keyboard players and the mouse players over who was superior. I used to frequent a shop that sold LAN time on an IPX/SPX network that had everything from Doom, Warcraft 1/2, to eventually Duke and Quake.

 

[belowmecoldhands]

I remember seeing this back in the days I was playing Haven & Hearth. Fired it up tonight...

http://forum.wurmonline.com/index.php?/topic/70733-seriously-no-mouselook/

It's a full first-person 3d "immersive" thingy and there's seemingly no mouse look. Even resizing the GUI requires console commands and I end up trying to work with a windowed box with hidden controls. I love the comments defending no mouse look though...

Of all the things I've ever had an issue with regarding wurm.. this has never even entered my mind. >.> Either it doesn't bother most people, or I'm weird.

if this is what people makes quit wurm, they didn't really want to play it at all. there are tons of games outside wurm where you have hold LMB in order to look around. don't know what games they play.. maybe they are console players..

Toggle mouse look???? I have always had to press a mouse button to mouse look either right or left in games I played.​

I hate games where the interface just shits me off.

You mean 3rd person. It does have 1st person mouse look. I can, for example, move my mouse to look around and move in the direction I am looking. I can look up and still be moving forward. But ya, I can't zoom out and look at my characters. This makes it somewhat less strategic. But I love it. Still, I loved it in Eq too, but EQ had a 3rd person mode. I used 3rd person more often when I was outdoors. The thing though was 1st person in EQ was well made and easy to use.

There does seem to be a divide in the population between players like myself and others who want constant feedback or direction. I mean, I'm ok with a map. The current in-game map is great. However, there're lots of plaeyrs who'd love it more if it had GPS (showed you where you're on the map). And there're tons more players who like all the extra UI which ahs been aded over the past couple years - like extra targetting stuff. Theyd' be happy if there was an in-game radar and even more crap added. Personally, I think all this crap makes the game harder to immerse in. It's like a big obnoxious walll is between me and the game. This is why I shut off most of the UI. Unfortunately, it has been inflating for a while and wil continue to. It's sad because I was immensely turned off by the UI inflation in EQ and EQ2 and in other MMORPGs I've tried. The UI's are always hostile.

EDIT: Ok I see what the linked thread is talking about. You have to click-and-hold the mouse button to "mouse look". This has never bothered me. I actually prefer it because I frequently move my mouse and wouldn't want my screen to move to. I will say though I sometimes wish I could look around me as I am moving without changing hte direction I am moving.

This highlights though how even something as small as this creates trouble. Imagine how much more trouble is recieved from player who want an in-game radar or want monsters to be automatically highlighted (so can be seen in night and in forests)? I see so much BS like this in the chats I just shut them off. People wnat EQ2 or WoW and it just makes me mad. /sigh I've been there though. I know what it's like to be used to a certain set of features in the games you play and then play a game which doesn't have those features. Still, can't we live on Earth and have games be different? Games shouldn't have to all be the same.

Understand though that for every player who wants those things there're a few like myself who're repulsed by it. When I enter a game which is filled with UI and even gives feedback on my heart rate I want to vomit.

And one other hting.. you can resize the UI windows in the client and move them to with your mouse. Don't need console commands for that. The only time I use the console is for things like /playtime or to bind a key.

It's not a console-based client, if that's what anybody reading this thread will think. Not even remotely.

The hardest thing with Wurm Online isn't its client. It's ... the unfriendliness of the progression. No fast travel. No quest hubs. Almost everything is player-driven. There's SOME developer-created cotnent, but minimal. However, I do expect them to start adding more and more tasks (quests) and other things just to appease all the people logging who're used to that.

Remembe it's a sandbox not a park or something premade for your entertainment.

 

[belowmecoldhands]

And one more thing before it escapes me.... A TOGGLED mouse look is not a bad thing if they added it optionally. Keep in mind hte current control scheme is taking into account lots of things. It's not just thrown in. So keeping a toggled mouse look optional is extremely important. Otherwise you risk breaking more than you fix.

 

[Xenich]

I think maps are bad. Knowing where you are is an important part of play, especially in PvP.

GPS for the same reason, but not just bad, but plain cheating. Why not just hand the players admin codes as well?

All of the "hard things", those are what I call solid game play mechanics. I mean, it is supposed to be a game right?

 

[belowmecoldhands]

I think maps are bad. Knowing where you are is an important part of play, especially in PvP.

GPS for the same reason, but not just bad, but plain cheating. Why not just hand the players admin codes as well?

All of the "hard things", those are what I call solid game play mechanics. I mean, it is supposed to be a game right?

Well GPS makes me want to kill myself, not just vomit my previous meal. EQ had that and it makes you look at the map window more than the actual world. The "staring at the map window" thing is like a bad memory.

Rolf (one of the creators of Wurm Online) promises not to add GPS, but they promised not to add in-game maps. I predicted two years ago they'd add a map. I've predicted other things that came true. My predictions are simple: I assume the game will give hand outs to players. I assume the game will inflate. So I also predict the in-game map will soon show where the guard towers are (and what faction they're) and also possibly show you were your corpse is. These're incremental changes.

The "auto-highlight monsters so they can be seen at night or in forests" is even worse. Presently, they don't auto highlight. You have to move your mouse cursor on them to highlight hem. One of the nights I do in forests or at night is move my mouse around to see if I get any highlights. It's not a foolproof way to spot monsters, but it helps. While I do use this method when traveling in deep forest, it's not as bad as it "reads". They're also adding sounds so you can hear the monsters. But the thing is, most of Wurm Online isn't spent outside with the monsters. Many players spend most of their time on deeds which protect the from monsters so ti's not a concern. And the rest of us, including myself, at least have a fenced area or a house to protect ourselves. Lastly, when you get higher skills or play with older players, you get a horse. And with horses you can just run past virtually all of the monsters with no concerns. Rolf also made it easier for horses to deal with steep slopes.

I both dread and expect these incoming changes. Makes me appreciate the curent (and temporary) wurm online more. Years from now this'll all be a memory and the o nly way to find these things will be to play a new/different game.

EDIT: With horses you can mouse-look without changing direction. Didn't know tha.

 

[Xenich]

I think maps are bad. Knowing where you are is an important part of play, especially in PvP.

GPS for the same reason, but not just bad, but plain cheating. Why not just hand the players admin codes as well?

All of the "hard things", those are what I call solid game play mechanics. I mean, it is supposed to be a game right?

Well GPS makes me want to kill myself, not just vomit my previous meal. EQ had that and it makes you look at the map window more than the actual world. The "staring at the map window" thing is like a bad memory.

EQ didn't have maps on release. It was later that they started adding that crap. In the beginning, you had to memorize the zones and your sense heading skill was a mechanic of making your compass eventually work so you could tell which direction you were going. That is, until you got it up to like 200, it would sometimes lie to you about the direction you were facing, which really put you in an interesting position if you didn't have it maxed. I once led my group into a mass of mobs because I foolishly didn't put effort into getting it up. Talk about a simple thing as having no map create so much issue in a game, it was brilliant.

 

[Gerrard]

Toggle mouse look???? I have always had to press a mouse button to mouse look either right or left in games I played.​

​

This is someone who has never played any game besides WoW or other old 3D MMOs.
Fucking Wild Star didn't have mouse look by default because MUH OLD SKOOL MMO, just how anachronistic can you be?

 

[Morkar Left]

Reading the title and the first sentences I thought it's a rainworm simulator MMO which could have been awesome :shrugs:

 

[DarKPenguiN]

Wurm is actually a great game-I used to play quite heavily.

-Reasons I stopped- IDK...

Might have to check it out again. Any changes in the last couple years? Hows the populations?

Thanks.

EDIT- OP, you said its like Mortal Online- I TOTALLY disagree. Unless things have changes massively. MO is essentially an online Arena with very little sand in the box. WURM to me was a real sandbox with far less arena mentality.

 

[belowmecoldhands]

Wurm is actually a great game-I used to play quite heavily.

-Reasons I stopped- IDK...

Might have to check it out again. Any changes in the last couple years? Hows the populations?

Thanks.

EDIT- OP, you said its like Mortal Online- I TOTALLY disagree. Unless things have changes massively. MO is essentially an online Arena with very little sand in the box. WURM to me was a real sandbox with far less arena mentality.

They added a new PvE server named Xanadu which is popular and 4 times bigger than the previous bigest ones: Inde and Chaos. I actualy traveled there to deliver a passenger because it's easy to sail there from Chaos.

Here:
http://www.wurmpedia.com/index.php/Server_types

There's a challenge server as well which is fast paced PvP. Epic is slower and Chaos is the slowest PvP. But a big difference is alos the chalenge server resets, so whatever changes are made in one cycle don't remain in the next. Players get prizes.

They've added a crafting and map GUI. While I think a crafting GUI is a good idea, I don't like theone they added. I do try to use it, but more often than not it just seems clumsy. The map is simple and just show a zoomable map with quadrants. Only real purpose it servers is to tell someone "I'm at Quadrant X/Y" or to get a quick idea where the towns are. You can also create labels on the map which could be a house or a village you're part of. I "think" it shows what servers the map connects to too...

They've done lots of things though. They've improved the graphics a lot. New models. Noobs can make tents. Tents are just easier to make than the wooden house. There're acheivements. I don't care for htem - "You killed 100 rats!" BS. They've added some tasks to various places - a mission/task window accompanies it. New targetting windows. They added multi-story houses back in 2013 I believe. They want to add bridges now, last I played (actively) a few months ago.

I started in 2012 so if you started before that you'll see a lot of changes.

Oh and population (across all servers) is still hovering around ~1300. Peaks or paked at ~2000. On Chaos, for example, I can expect ~60 on average. At night it probably hovers ~40. Inde has probably ~100 on average. Xanadu is ~250.

EDIT: Just started up client and it says they lowered the water level by 3/4 meters on all servers to create more land.

Also I see there're archery towers now. On the subject of towers, guards don't autoattack monsters like they used to. You have to shout "Help!" When I start4ed in 2012, guards autoattacked based on proximity. This created a lot of corpses. Was a popular means to get easy meat. I'm not sure what the reasoning was for removing. Maybe because champion monsters kept guard towers empty? One of my first memories was seeing champion crocodiles killing all the guards at a tower.

 

[Norfleet]

EDIT: Just started up client and it says they lowered the water level by 3/4 meters on all servers to create more land.

Sounds popamole, not to mention randomly harmful to the guys who were formerly owning beachfront property. If you wanted more land, you should have gone full Holland, and if the devs wanted to give you more land, they should have made this possible!

 

[belowmecoldhands]

EDIT: Just started up client and it says they lowered the water level by 3/4 meters on all servers to create more land.

Sounds popamole, not to mention randomly harmful to the guys who were formerly owning beachfront property. If you wanted more land, you should have gone full Holland, and if the devs wanted to give you more land, they should have made this possible!

Correction: Most servers, not all. Not mine. I could see it being a problem if boats are inside a property. I could also see it being a probelm if former channels cut thorugh the land are now not crossable by boats.

I've seen examples of that. On Serenity there was a channel for small boats.

 

[Norfleet]

Theyd' be happy if there was an in-game radar and even more crap added. Personally, I think all this crap makes the game harder to immerse in. It's like a big obnoxious walll is between me and the game. This is why I shut off most of the UI. Unfortunately, it has been inflating for a while and wil continue to. It's sad because I was immensely turned off by the UI inflation in EQ and EQ2 and in other MMORPGs I've tried. The UI's are always hostile.

I dunno, I'm more turned off by the pointless graphics distracting me from the game and generally causing unnecessary CPU load. I've actually done full client replacements for games that COMPLETELY REMOVED GRAPHICS and turned the game into a MUD. I turned a flashy graphically 3D space thingy into mtrek. CPU load went to 0%, quality of UI increased massively as I could actually see what the fuck was going on without having the back of a camera in my face. Graphics, schmaphics! Forsooth!

I challenge you to come up with a 3D camera that can show me both of those objects on the tactical display at the same time.

 

[belowmecoldhands]

Theyd' be happy if there was an in-game radar and even more crap added. Personally, I think all this crap makes the game harder to immerse in. It's like a big obnoxious walll is between me and the game. This is why I shut off most of the UI. Unfortunately, it has been inflating for a while and wil continue to. It's sad because I was immensely turned off by the UI inflation in EQ and EQ2 and in other MMORPGs I've tried. The UI's are always hostile.

I dunno, I'm more turned off by the pointless graphics distracting me from the game and generally causing unnecessary CPU load. I've actually done full client replacements for games that COMPLETELY REMOVED GRAPHICS and turned the game into a MUD. I turned a flashy graphically 3D space thingy into mtrek. CPU load went to 0%, quality of UI increased massively as I could actually see what the fuck was going on without having the back of a camera in my face. Graphics, schmaphics! Forsooth!

I challenge you to come up with a 3D camera that can show me both of those objects on the tactical display at the same time.

I've done that b4. I've made programs for the games I play. I programmed a VC++ application to scan webpages and display the parsed results. I made another program to "model" DPS for weapons in Entropia Universe (inevitably I found my mathematics knowledge to be lacking). But I think I wasn't really having fun, I was just being a nerd.

When I play Wurm Online, I don't want to look at numbers. I want it to play as natural as possible. I really champion how the game has played the past few years, minus the UI bloat and the grindier portions. It's still the best game out there which I'm aware of. Too bad it'll be ruined by mudflation and generally a tendency to lose its identity. But that can be said for all MMO's. They all go down that lonely sad road. Even Eve Online and WoW, sturdy as they're, are on that road. It's a physical law of nature.

EDIT: Programmming is one of my hobbies. I programmed in gtkmm recently in Ubuntu. It's nice and all but since it's tied to the OS, you can't easily run it on Windows or something else. For that, need Allegro or QT Creator or something.

 

[Norfleet]

I've done that b4. I've made programs for the games I play. I programmed a VC++ application to scan webpages and display the parsed results. I made another program to "model" DPS for weapons in Entropia Universe (inevitably I found my mathematics knowledge to be lacking). But I think I wasn't really having fun, I was just being a nerd.

That is my favorite part of the game, the part where I get to ruin the fun, because I hate fun. If I still have to have fun in a game, I'm not enjoying it.

When I play Wurm Online, I don't want to look at numbers. I want it to play as natural as possible.

That sounds horrible. Give me lots of numbers to be dissected into as dry and soulless an experience as possible, as long as the rest of those schmucks can still have their filthy FUN. The greatest thing about sandboxiness is the sheer amount of fun that exists for me to ruin.

 

[Turisas]

http://www.wurmonline.com/2015/09/16/wurm-unlimited-announcement/

Coming to Steam the 21st of October 2015, Wurm Unlimited allows you to play in the Wurm world locally on your PC and even host persistent servers yourselves.

The game is pretty much a full copy of the current MMO engine with Steam integration. The idea behind the release is to present the Wurm world to new players and also help players who never got into the game to experience it in a more relaxed way. Hopefully our current or previous players will find it entertaining as well.

There are initially two modes planned for release: “Adventure”, which is a predefined world with a few warring kingdoms to live in and explore, and “Creative” which is an undeveloped map. The main goal for the Adventure mode will be to find a way of becoming a deity on the moon Valrei which we think is suitable both for a single player and a group of players either cooperating or belonging to different kingdoms.

In both modes you can set your player to become a Game Master with the possibility to instantly create items, summon creatures, build and terraform faster in order to create the experience you want for other players or just fool around with the features. You can also copy the whole game directory of any mode and create own, custom modes. You will be able to tweak variables such as initial skill values, skill gain rate, action timers and max number of creatures. It will also be possible to connect servers to each other and travel between them in order to create large persistent clusters.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/366220


Finally, someone removed the greatest weakness of any MMO; having to play with random assholes.

 

[Havoc]

The private persistent servers is neato.

 

[Havoc]

http://www.dlgamer.eu/wurm.html 22,39 Euro.

 

[belowmecoldhands]

It would be better as a collection of custom servers, IMHO. Sort of like NWN or Minecraft or FPS servers. The makers could focus on just the server and client code to facilitate custom implementations, rather than having to make their own implementation(s). It's very niche right now, so any dramatic changes to the implentation are tied down. There're presently "different" rulesets, but it's still very restricted by this. I know I myself like the old rulesets and would not be happy if it "mainstreamed" itself.

That is,... if they want to grow substantially. If they're happy with a stagnant game which produces stable but very small profits, they could probably go on for a long while. But I somehow doubt they will be satisfied with that. I think most game makers want to push themselves further. They don't want a stagnant situation. It's bad for reputation and isn't as exciting.

But this is impressive. Shows they're trying to branch out and pull in some income. Part of any business. Regardless of the outcome, whether it favors me or not, I have to respect that. I reserve further opinion for later...

 

[belowmecoldhands]

(....)
Finally, someone removed the greatest weakness of any MMO; having to play with random assholes.

Technically you don't have to play with anybody. I don't normally, although sometimes I run into others and help them with things. For example, the last time I played, I helped a player build a boat and he sailed off to another server. In Wurm, nothing happens very fast. It took a couple weeks for that to happen. But it was a great feeling when he left. I felt like, however small, we had touched each others fates and perhaps somehow in teh future we will cross each other again.

And I play on the pvp server, where you have to be careful who you associate with.

 

[Havoc]

Gonna be out in couple of days. Anybody knows of a very cheap server service? My four friends and I want to play together, but far from drama and all that shit, so we were thinking of hosting a server just for us, but the cost are too high (especially if it's just 5 people and Wurm).

 

[Havoc]

Almost a week since release. Some servers started to pop up. Me with my pals went from our private server to a server with Tamriel (Elder Scrolls) lookalike map.

Spoiler