Yes this game does have most of what we sandbox people want but unfourtunately it looks like shit. There is no way I am playing a game, on my high end rig, that looks like something from 10 years ago.
Just because we like sandbox MMOs does not mean we will accept archaic visuals.
I've played this in early beta and sometime after it went p2p, but to be honest, I don't see this game ever becoming any more popular any longer.
It's been 5 years since the official release now and it hasn't really changed that much.
Don't get me wrong, it's a great and quite an original game, but it would never appeal to most MMO players today
Also, since the release of Minecraft, Wurm sort of fell into the abyss I think since Minecraft almost overnight success overshadowed any need for the development of Wurm. I'm sure Mohjang made more money in selling Minecraft than they have in years of trying to work on Wurm.
It appeals to a larger crowd too. Why bother building a house for days (Wurm) when it can be done in minutes (Minecraft)
It has the sandbox, but it also appeals to the less patient gamers with a short attention span. Therefore, the huge success.
Wurm on the other hand is a lot more complex, but also requires TONS more commitment and most importantly is not nearly as entertaining.
As for the combat, it's there and it's actually quite fun. Back in the days the Horde used to constantly attack, raid and destroy villages and there were quite a few big battles (less the special effects and the flashy animations hehe), but just in Darkfall, it took months to get to the point where you could kill anything worthy. I remember spending days trying to farm pumpkins so that I could build a training dummy, so that I could then spend weeks hitting said dummy and raise my fighting skill by like 10 points (out of a 100).
All in all, it's a great sandbox game, but if you're anything like me, you'll just play Minecraft/Terraria when you need your sandbox fix hehe
Mojang have never had anything to do with wurm. Yes Notch did work on wurm but that was before he even created minecraft.
I have been playing wurm for the last couple of months, and I have to say you need to be a certain type of person to play it, Patience is needed. May have picked this up as I also play Eve online. And a couple other people I play with also play eve and use wurm as relaxation.
Yes this game does have most of what we sandbox people want but unfourtunately it looks like shit. There is no way I am playing a game, on my high end rig, that looks like something from 10 years ago.
Just because we like sandbox MMOs does not mean we will accept archaic visuals.
Right now I'm actually playing a game that is even 12 years old now (Asheron's Call) on my high end rig and enjoy it a lot. I don't need opulent graphics but *if* there are any high res textures already, w/o a minimum of animation ("hovering" NPCs as in wurm) it looks so pathetic, I just can't swallow that. Also the visible environment frames are an immersion killer to me (although I guess they probably might be switchable somewhere in the options).
I have been playing wurm for the last couple of months, and I have to say you need to be a certain type of person to play it, Patience is needed. May have picked this up as I also play Eve online. And a couple other people I play with also play eve and use wurm as relaxation.
Great game, and got to say great review
It has indead several things in common with EVE, unfortunately all what I always hated in EVE: A whole *huge* time sink with loads of tiny text boxes looking like spreadsheets. Lack of patience is surely not my problem though...
Actually, Mojang was the company that originally developed Wurm.
When Notch & Rolf went separate ways, Notch got to keep the company name and went on to create Minecraft using it, and Rolf renamed his part (Wurm) to OneTwoFree then to CodeClub:
Character models and animations are among the weakest part of the game and are scheduled for an overhaul in coming months, but much of the landscape and environment is actually rather nice if you crank up the settings (not compared to triple-AAA releases of course -- but frankly, I'll take Wurm over any pretty-face triple-AAA game on the market today.)
Personally I think the combat aspects are very weak, but then I am in for the crafting/building aspects so the weak combat doesn't bother me. It's a niche game, it won't appeal to everyone. But for myself, there is no other game on the market today that appeals to me the way this one does.
It's free to try, so up to each person to decide for themselves.
Yeah combat is just a staring contest and requires no input really from the player other than clicking shield bash or switching stances which most are useless to use than normal mode. The game is lacking in a lot of departments and there are other terrain modification sand box mmo's out there that have better combat systems already in place. While animation would be a welcome addition after 8 years of the game being in production it is bottom of the list for a lot of people who just want to see a lot of balancing issues fixed along with bugs. People still stand on their mounts while riding around, so I guess everyone is a pro trick rider and the same goes for carts.
There are only 2-3 good boats to use and the much larger versions are useless as they go so slow and getting any number of people to make them go fast or having a gust of wind last long enough to make them viable just isn't happening. Rolf really should play his own game but as Notch once said after playing it for a few hours " This game just isn't for me" and that's coming from one of the founding developers who couldn't even stomach playing his own creation.
I would love to see a live play of Wurm done by Rolf but honestly it would only serve as a sleep aid.
This game been out since 2006 and this is the only Staff review i can find on mmorpg Dated Jan 26th..No thank you for this game.Sound like there desperate for players.
As the author of the review mentioned, Wurm Online has given me some of the most memorable moments in my 14 years of playing MMORPGs. Sure, the graphics are weak, but once I got into the game, the way the wind moves the trees and grass, the sound of the crickets on a moonlit night, it still has a way of drawing me in.
This game isn't for everyone. It is slow as hell at times, but I can't think of another game that makes me fist pump the air after suriving an ambush by a pack of wolves like Wurm does. Everything you do, everything that happens actually MEANS something to you and your character. Others in this thread have mentioned that it's hard to survive alone. Hard, but not impossible. I was able to build a small house with a farm and a well, build a fence for protection and guard it with my life for about 3 months (as a Free Player).
My only 3 complaints are:
1. Next to no animations.
2. Zero character customization...save for if I want to sport a hang-down or not.
3. Every single action I perform needs to be twice as fast as its current duration. It is a game afterall.
It sounds like they are finally going to do something about #1 and 2, and since they likely aren't changing the speed of the game, I guess I can deal with #3.
Wurm Online has done what so few other games can claim: they have created a WORLD. I'm definitely going to give it another go when those animation and customization options go live. Shit, I may even pay for it.
3. Every single action I perform needs to be twice as fast as its current duration. It is a game afterall.
Not sure what you mean here. Can you explain it any further with an example perhaps? Hope you're not talking about skill progression...
No, not skill progression. I was just referring to how long it takes to perform an action. For Example, nailing up boards on a house frame, or mining a tile out enough to get it to collapse. This is just my opinion of course, but they need to do a better job of balancing out the game with the simulation. In its current state, it's just a tad on too heavy on the simulation side for me.
Skill progression is definitely very slow, by design. That's difficult for a lot of people who are used to games where you progress very fast. Wurm is definitely "old school" in that regard.
The actions themselves are also slow. Everything is on a timer, you can't just take some leather or wood, *clap your hands* and presto you've created something elaborate. Even making nails (one by one) takes time. Making a fence takes time, making the planks and the shafts for the fence takes time, and chopping down the tree takes time. Making the saw and the forge to do all of that before you can even start on the fence, takes time.
Wurm is a game that takes its time.
For many, it's too frustrating for that very reason. The game will ALWAYS be too painful for them, no updates are likely to change that. For a small few, taking the time to do things, and not being able to "rush through content" or be mega powerful in days, weeks, or even months, is actually part of the appeal. In a game where it takes so long to do anything, your focus gets OFF of gaining levels and whizzing through content, and more on the immersion and the process rather than competing for flashy achievements. It really is a niche game that is not going to appeal to very many gamers today. That part is not going to change just by adding animations and character customization, although those are greatly anticipated by its small loyal fanbase. That said, it is the only game out there that I can sit and enjoy day after day, month after month. Most of the modern games out there bore me after a few days at best.
When Skyrim came out, servers were emptier as many Wurm players took a few weeks off Wurm because the open-world sandboxy style of Skyrim holds a lot of appeal for this crowd. Also, sometimes its nice for a while to see some drop-dead-gorgeous triple-AAA polish created with multimillion dollar budgets ^_^ It's like dessert in a fancy french restaurant after you've been chewing on smoked moose for months on end. But after a few weeks, most of them were back in Wurm again. Defeating dragons on your first day in Skyrim seemed oddly ... unappealing after a game where your first day, you were running for your life from rats. It's like a diet of candy, versus a diet of coarse bread you grew and baked yourself. A diet of just candy gets old after a while.
Its hard to explain the appeal, but those who love Wurm, love it fiercely. The fact that the game got 5's in Aesthetics and Polish for this review, are less important to this crowd than the fact it got 9's in innovatioon and gameplay. The review was a very fair one, and if it gave off red flags for some readers, it's probably not their sort of game. But there are lots of other games out there for them. There is really only Wurm, for a few of us.
3. Every single action I perform needs to be twice as fast as its current duration. It is a game afterall.
Not sure what you mean here. Can you explain it any further with an example perhaps? Hope you're not talking about skill progression...
No, not skill progression. I was just referring to how long it takes to perform an action. For Example, nailing up boards on a house frame, or mining a tile out enough to get it to collapse. This is just my opinion of course, but they need to do a better job of balancing out the game with the simulation. In its current state, it's just a tad on too heavy on the simulation side for me.
I can definately again. Another reason why I left was because I couldn't play this game without multi-tasking. For example, when mining, I'll cliick a iron vein, then read something on my other moniter or continue watching a movie while I waited the minute or so to finish. Its not terrible, just not for me.
I've been playing (and paying) wurm for the last ~1.5 years on and off, and i mostly agree with the review.
If you can get past the bad graphics, no animations and no customization - it's a great sandbox game, much better than any sandbox released in this millenium.
I also agree with the posters above in that many things could become faster, mostly on the noob side of things - once you get your skills up and get high QL enchanted tools it becomes a non-issue.
Airing your dirty laundry on a public forum = not a good idea. I just took him as a troll and nothing more, personally.
Yeah I'm afraid replying may be worse than ignoring. I'm tired of these ulteriour motive troll posts whichever game it applies to but of course I react more strongly when I get personally attacked. It's like everyone lets the trolls slip and don't think they do harm. Maybe they don't.
I just thought I would share my view of this game. I've been playing for 8-9 months now and i have 51 days of playtime in wurm. It is the single most addictive game I have ever played. For at least half of this time I have been working on improving my own village, creating homes and farms, terraforming hillsides into terraces, and creating a nice atmosphere for myself and a few strangers (who are becoming fast friends) to enjoy. I don't consider my village to be finished, i can think of a few things that could be improved or expanded or altered in some way, and I fully expect that the village will never be finished. This is not a bad thing for me - it is the sense just like in RL that theres that little project you've been meaning to do for ages.
I also think that the visuals of wurm are not as bad as people make them out to be. You can get stunning views, and not just from the graphics being good - the world itself makes these views spectacular because the world is so large that you can set up a house on a hill and be the only person to have that view: that is your view.
It's also worth mentioning that i do not play pvp. PvP is not something i am or ever was interested in, and with wurm I have the choice of playing on a PvE server with other people that are like-minded, interested in creating your own little kingdom and becoming a master of a trade. Speaking of trades, there are many skills in wurm, not a few like was said earlier: over 100 in fact. And these skills range from the basic (digging, mining) to the useful and valuable (smithing, tailoring, fighting) and to the entirely-useless-yet-still-appealing (yoyo, puppeteering).
So i guess all thats left to do is post some images other people have shared on the wurm forums - these were screenshots taken in-game and show what i would call "pretty good graphics":
I just popped back into the game after 6 months away and had an incredible first night back. I started a new account and went at it from scratch, and really had some awesome moments last night.
I've been playing Wurm for about a year now, with breaks periodically to try other games, but I always come back to Wurm. Why? I love the creativity and the scope of what is possible with the tools that Rolf has given us, and the community, though we have the occasional bad egg, is by and large very mature and decent compared to most MMOs... and they are passionate about the game. The memorable moments you'll have in Wurm aren't going to be during raids or whatnot, but will definitely be focused around your neighbors and the other people that you meet here. The game is surprisingly addicting, more so than any other MMO I've played since WoW.
I won't lie, the game is hard. Not in the way of having difficult raid fights or anything like that, but it requires patience, self-motivation, and resourcefulness to do well in Wurm. If you want instant gratification, you're not going to get it here. If you get frustrated easily, you're probably not going to enjoy the game. That doesn't make it a bad game, it just means that it isn't for everyone.
Considering that Rolf and team are so small, they've done amazing things with Wurm.
Comments
Yes this game does have most of what we sandbox people want but unfourtunately it looks like shit. There is no way I am playing a game, on my high end rig, that looks like something from 10 years ago.
Just because we like sandbox MMOs does not mean we will accept archaic visuals.
My gaming blog
Mojang have never had anything to do with wurm. Yes Notch did work on wurm but that was before he even created minecraft.
I have been playing wurm for the last couple of months, and I have to say you need to be a certain type of person to play it, Patience is needed. May have picked this up as I also play Eve online. And a couple other people I play with also play eve and use wurm as relaxation.
Great game, and got to say great review
Right now I'm actually playing a game that is even 12 years old now (Asheron's Call) on my high end rig and enjoy it a lot. I don't need opulent graphics but *if* there are any high res textures already, w/o a minimum of animation ("hovering" NPCs as in wurm) it looks so pathetic, I just can't swallow that. Also the visible environment frames are an immersion killer to me (although I guess they probably might be switchable somewhere in the options).
It has indead several things in common with EVE, unfortunately all what I always hated in EVE: A whole *huge* time sink with loads of tiny text boxes looking like spreadsheets. Lack of patience is surely not my problem though...
Actually, Mojang was the company that originally developed Wurm.
When Notch & Rolf went separate ways, Notch got to keep the company name and went on to create Minecraft using it, and Rolf renamed his part (Wurm) to OneTwoFree then to CodeClub:
http://wurmonline.com/wiki/index.php?title=Mojang
Character models and animations are among the weakest part of the game and are scheduled for an overhaul in coming months, but much of the landscape and environment is actually rather nice if you crank up the settings (not compared to triple-AAA releases of course -- but frankly, I'll take Wurm over any pretty-face triple-AAA game on the market today.)
Personally I think the combat aspects are very weak, but then I am in for the crafting/building aspects so the weak combat doesn't bother me. It's a niche game, it won't appeal to everyone. But for myself, there is no other game on the market today that appeals to me the way this one does.
It's free to try, so up to each person to decide for themselves.
http://brashendeavors.net/
I watched a video of a "Raid" or whatever on a Red Dragon. It was the lamest thing I had ever seen, and I've seen some lame stuff...
Yeah combat is just a staring contest and requires no input really from the player other than clicking shield bash or switching stances which most are useless to use than normal mode. The game is lacking in a lot of departments and there are other terrain modification sand box mmo's out there that have better combat systems already in place. While animation would be a welcome addition after 8 years of the game being in production it is bottom of the list for a lot of people who just want to see a lot of balancing issues fixed along with bugs. People still stand on their mounts while riding around, so I guess everyone is a pro trick rider and the same goes for carts.
There are only 2-3 good boats to use and the much larger versions are useless as they go so slow and getting any number of people to make them go fast or having a gust of wind last long enough to make them viable just isn't happening. Rolf really should play his own game but as Notch once said after playing it for a few hours " This game just isn't for me" and that's coming from one of the founding developers who couldn't even stomach playing his own creation.
I would love to see a live play of Wurm done by Rolf but honestly it would only serve as a sleep aid.
Currently playing WO and EVE as they are really good. That being said, if ya know of anything better now, please advise as I just don't see it.
This game been out since 2006 and this is the only Staff review i can find on mmorpg Dated Jan 26th..No thank you for this game.Sound like there desperate for players.
I retired retroactively..Haha
As the author of the review mentioned, Wurm Online has given me some of the most memorable moments in my 14 years of playing MMORPGs. Sure, the graphics are weak, but once I got into the game, the way the wind moves the trees and grass, the sound of the crickets on a moonlit night, it still has a way of drawing me in.
This game isn't for everyone. It is slow as hell at times, but I can't think of another game that makes me fist pump the air after suriving an ambush by a pack of wolves like Wurm does. Everything you do, everything that happens actually MEANS something to you and your character. Others in this thread have mentioned that it's hard to survive alone. Hard, but not impossible. I was able to build a small house with a farm and a well, build a fence for protection and guard it with my life for about 3 months (as a Free Player).
My only 3 complaints are:
1. Next to no animations.
2. Zero character customization...save for if I want to sport a hang-down or not.
3. Every single action I perform needs to be twice as fast as its current duration. It is a game afterall.
It sounds like they are finally going to do something about #1 and 2, and since they likely aren't changing the speed of the game, I guess I can deal with #3.
Wurm Online has done what so few other games can claim: they have created a WORLD. I'm definitely going to give it another go when those animation and customization options go live. Shit, I may even pay for it.
Joined - July 2004
Not sure what you mean here. Can you explain it any further with an example perhaps? Hope you're not talking about skill progression...
No, not skill progression. I was just referring to how long it takes to perform an action. For Example, nailing up boards on a house frame, or mining a tile out enough to get it to collapse. This is just my opinion of course, but they need to do a better job of balancing out the game with the simulation. In its current state, it's just a tad on too heavy on the simulation side for me.
Joined - July 2004
Skill progression is definitely very slow, by design. That's difficult for a lot of people who are used to games where you progress very fast. Wurm is definitely "old school" in that regard.
The actions themselves are also slow. Everything is on a timer, you can't just take some leather or wood, *clap your hands* and presto you've created something elaborate. Even making nails (one by one) takes time. Making a fence takes time, making the planks and the shafts for the fence takes time, and chopping down the tree takes time. Making the saw and the forge to do all of that before you can even start on the fence, takes time.
Wurm is a game that takes its time.
For many, it's too frustrating for that very reason. The game will ALWAYS be too painful for them, no updates are likely to change that. For a small few, taking the time to do things, and not being able to "rush through content" or be mega powerful in days, weeks, or even months, is actually part of the appeal. In a game where it takes so long to do anything, your focus gets OFF of gaining levels and whizzing through content, and more on the immersion and the process rather than competing for flashy achievements. It really is a niche game that is not going to appeal to very many gamers today. That part is not going to change just by adding animations and character customization, although those are greatly anticipated by its small loyal fanbase. That said, it is the only game out there that I can sit and enjoy day after day, month after month. Most of the modern games out there bore me after a few days at best.
When Skyrim came out, servers were emptier as many Wurm players took a few weeks off Wurm because the open-world sandboxy style of Skyrim holds a lot of appeal for this crowd. Also, sometimes its nice for a while to see some drop-dead-gorgeous triple-AAA polish created with multimillion dollar budgets ^_^ It's like dessert in a fancy french restaurant after you've been chewing on smoked moose for months on end. But after a few weeks, most of them were back in Wurm again. Defeating dragons on your first day in Skyrim seemed oddly ... unappealing after a game where your first day, you were running for your life from rats. It's like a diet of candy, versus a diet of coarse bread you grew and baked yourself. A diet of just candy gets old after a while.
Its hard to explain the appeal, but those who love Wurm, love it fiercely. The fact that the game got 5's in Aesthetics and Polish for this review, are less important to this crowd than the fact it got 9's in innovatioon and gameplay. The review was a very fair one, and if it gave off red flags for some readers, it's probably not their sort of game. But there are lots of other games out there for them. There is really only Wurm, for a few of us.
http://brashendeavors.net/
I can definately again. Another reason why I left was because I couldn't play this game without multi-tasking. For example, when mining, I'll cliick a iron vein, then read something on my other moniter or continue watching a movie while I waited the minute or so to finish. Its not terrible, just not for me.
I've been playing (and paying) wurm for the last ~1.5 years on and off, and i mostly agree with the review.
If you can get past the bad graphics, no animations and no customization - it's a great sandbox game, much better than any sandbox released in this millenium.
I also agree with the posters above in that many things could become faster, mostly on the noob side of things - once you get your skills up and get high QL enchanted tools it becomes a non-issue.
Important question: why on earth is it called WURM online? Wurm? wat.
Airing your dirty laundry on a public forum = not a good idea. I just took him as a troll and nothing more, personally.
Joined - July 2004
@ronsson
What you say about nkitz may be all true but where exactly did he lie in his post you quoted above?
The official reply about DB exploiting money from the game which in any game would get you permabanned...
http://wurmonline.com/forum/index.php?topic=39920.msg384124#msg384124
But then you have the case of this guy...
http://wurmonline.com/forum/index.php?topic=60256.0
I hear he got banned for 273 years, for "misbehaving" which amounted to chat violations.
Nice job to not ban a cheater but you ban a guy that was actually good for the game for swearing.
Wurm is a great game and only getting better but once in awhile you get these dumb decisions.
I'd highly recommend giving it a shot though, its an awesome sandbox.
Ya, same here, just took it as troll talk.
Great crafting game.
If they ever add in animations so combat ''might'' be fun Ill definitly play it.
Right now its gets boring quickly.
Yeah I'm afraid replying may be worse than ignoring. I'm tired of these ulteriour motive troll posts whichever game it applies to but of course I react more strongly when I get personally attacked. It's like everyone lets the trolls slip and don't think they do harm. Maybe they don't.
http://www.wurmonline.com for gods sake!
I just thought I would share my view of this game. I've been playing for 8-9 months now and i have 51 days of playtime in wurm. It is the single most addictive game I have ever played. For at least half of this time I have been working on improving my own village, creating homes and farms, terraforming hillsides into terraces, and creating a nice atmosphere for myself and a few strangers (who are becoming fast friends) to enjoy. I don't consider my village to be finished, i can think of a few things that could be improved or expanded or altered in some way, and I fully expect that the village will never be finished. This is not a bad thing for me - it is the sense just like in RL that theres that little project you've been meaning to do for ages.
I also think that the visuals of wurm are not as bad as people make them out to be. You can get stunning views, and not just from the graphics being good - the world itself makes these views spectacular because the world is so large that you can set up a house on a hill and be the only person to have that view: that is your view.
It's also worth mentioning that i do not play pvp. PvP is not something i am or ever was interested in, and with wurm I have the choice of playing on a PvE server with other people that are like-minded, interested in creating your own little kingdom and becoming a master of a trade. Speaking of trades, there are many skills in wurm, not a few like was said earlier: over 100 in fact. And these skills range from the basic (digging, mining) to the useful and valuable (smithing, tailoring, fighting) and to the entirely-useless-yet-still-appealing (yoyo, puppeteering).
So i guess all thats left to do is post some images other people have shared on the wurm forums - these were screenshots taken in-game and show what i would call "pretty good graphics":
I just popped back into the game after 6 months away and had an incredible first night back. I started a new account and went at it from scratch, and really had some awesome moments last night.
I've been playing Wurm for about a year now, with breaks periodically to try other games, but I always come back to Wurm. Why? I love the creativity and the scope of what is possible with the tools that Rolf has given us, and the community, though we have the occasional bad egg, is by and large very mature and decent compared to most MMOs... and they are passionate about the game. The memorable moments you'll have in Wurm aren't going to be during raids or whatnot, but will definitely be focused around your neighbors and the other people that you meet here. The game is surprisingly addicting, more so than any other MMO I've played since WoW.
I won't lie, the game is hard. Not in the way of having difficult raid fights or anything like that, but it requires patience, self-motivation, and resourcefulness to do well in Wurm. If you want instant gratification, you're not going to get it here. If you get frustrated easily, you're probably not going to enjoy the game. That doesn't make it a bad game, it just means that it isn't for everyone.
Considering that Rolf and team are so small, they've done amazing things with Wurm.