It can be fun , but it's a grind... servers questionable.

chaintm

So ok this is my thoughts on wurm (for those looking to get into this title or thinking about it ) after about over a week of playing.

First , the game as a sandbox goes is pretty amazing, I have to admit the stuff you can do from building and crafting can't be compared to anything but minecraft and even that fails to compare. Being able to build anywhere is pretty dam awesome, thou there are downfalls and other issues I will get into.

Secondly the game has a grind, I mean if you thought EQ was a grind, I laugh at you sir. This game is definitely not for your instant gratification crowed. Building a wall for instance for your house, will require about 1 hour of work total, from gathering ore to smelt into nails too gathering wood from trees to make planks then the multiple re-actions into hammering said items into a wall will drive most away instantly. The only true way to survive this game initially is have another source of entertainment around , be it a tv or other game.

Third , you have those good parts and bad , but i think the worst of worse issues with this game is the servers. I think (and it's probably a dam good guess) this guy has these servers in his basement or in his apartment. The only time you will EVER see a server reset or reboot is when the main owner "Ralph" is up and around and "get around to it". Basically your at the whims of an over grown kid with a god complex. If this guy didn't want this rep, he would have given the ability of others that assist him in his services by being able to remote boot. However, being in the I.T. industry now for 30+ years, it is my guess at this point it's all about  "not knowing the tech".

 

 

 

 

In any case, this last issue is a big one if your one that doesn't have a whole lot of time to dedicate to a game. In example you work 40+ hours a week, you have about 8 hours to fit in there for game play, if your server is down (which on my server was every other day)  and your not from "Ralphs" area (sleeping time) your screwed. Yes, it is a game after all and you can indeed play it for free, HOWEVER (caps on purpose) you best pay the piper if you don't want to be stopped before you get started. Read below...

Ok, so those are the breakdowns, let's get down to the nitty gritty. The game graphic wise is pretty old ,even at it's highest settings you definitely would see better with texture packs for minecraft, but graphics are not everything. The screens they show for this game are well... not in this game. *my system is brand new, i7 yada yada, trust me, I can crank it no matter what the fan bots say*

However the graphics really are passible and you do get a "feeling" of fantasy and being "out in the wilderness", so they do work for what the game offers. The animations, well. let's not even go there, think again minecraft. maybe 2-10 slides of animation per creature /character /movement (insert fanbot reason java game). Basically if you can cut corners it was done in this game. Even WITH this, it's still very passable and enjoyable, it's just obvious this developer A: hires out all his help B: hires out all his help.

Now some say the famous Notch came from this game and this was his inspirations for minecraft, that might be true, but I can tell you it must be when he left, the talent went with him. I say this , because can see updates and development cycles and what they bring looking in their history of development. Most stuff happened, (yeah you guessed it) during the supposed time notch was in play. I have no doubt that again referring to A and B, this is the situation with this game.

 

 

 

 

To the gameplay in general it's pretty fun for again what it is, it's a true sandbox for the definition of an MMO sandbox, however the other issue of free to play vs paid is night and day. Let me run down the differences for you...

Going Free: You get......

1. skills up to max of 20 in any skill

2. you can produce a writ (house) you own, (the house) you don't own (the land around you), you could (place a fence) if you (do it right , dont mess up thou).

 a quote :

You can play Wurm completely FREE for as long as you wish. But there are some limitations. You cannot raise your skills above 20, which prevents you doing things like knocking down walls and building stone houses. Additionally, you cannot join all the Servers as some are premium only.

3. without skill 21, you can't as said in the quote, knock down walls and more basically the next tier is 21 and above to do the  things you would want to of course, make a mistake? you can't fix it.

 

 

 

 

Going Paid: You get....

1. Skills above 20+, this gives you all skills enhancements such as.. mining faster, greater smither, farmer, carpenter , well everything in game that you would strive for. basically free to play is "a trial run", you stay long enough to hit 20 you probably will end up paying.

2. Village Deeds! This is the end game, hell this is the game. basicly please see below about *village deeds

3. Your paid that's great best get some silver to keep going! , is this a must, no  but if you want to do anything it is.. please see *village deeds

*village deeds are a must for this game, I don't care what anyone says here, they are. If you are into this game for what it is about , being an open world sandbox where you can pretty much do anything you will get a village deed. Why is this so important to this game? Let me sum it for you...

 

 

 

Buying a Village Deed Gets You The Following..

1. starting 5x5 area that NO ONE but you can manipulate. You being the mayor can change settings to allow others to do things, you can invite friends to become citizens and do more. There are plenty of nice options here to allow and not allow what people can do. Basically this 5x5 peice of land (which in game = 10squares by 10 squares lot) will enable you to lock down this piece of land to do what YOU see fit, not your your enemies or neighbors. This really is the game, without it, you are stuck placing houses down, hoping to get a fence in area that isn't attacked by other players or mobs and holding the land within. (People can not pass fences period, you can add locks to gates and hand out keys, but that's a small deterrent, fact is , someone could come by if you don't actually have a deed and just smack it down).

2. you can hire guards! Well , ok they are not really guards they are "spirit guards" , basically guys that have a see threw appearance in armor. I guess they did this so guards clipping threw items,walls and more wouldn't seem weird, thou you can opt to have the guards not do this, I just find this part a little withdrawing but whatever. Guards are awesome for in the game , you are whimp, you can't kill a dog, well ... ok you could if you actually work your str up and other skills but at the start everything will kill you. There is a saying in this game, "welcome to wurm, you will die many deaths". With guards however, they take things down quick, you fight along side them to gain combat experience and butcher the fallen for meat and items, in the end this is a win win. Thou again there is another cost even here.

3. you can expand! Your able to expand your borders of your village by editing the town, there is a cost factor and also a boundary issue. I will get into that in just a moment.

 

 

 

So good and bad you have plenty of options to do what YOU want to do. In the end it will cost if you want to get the full experience out of the game. The premium service (basicly a monthly payment) gives you way better options to enjoy the game from stats and more. To get a deed it cost 10 silver, 10silver purchase in this game is around 13-14us dollars depending on when you purchase. So initially if you go prem you best get some silver,  that will be a total of around 30bucks if you do it right. You can do it cheaper but trust me , you will regret it later.

When you place your deed, other issues do come up, the game works on borders, (which makes sense) you have to have the room to expand and in theory this would pretty easy on a simple indi game like this one is. Not a super high population means a good chance of finding some quality land around to claim and expand on.However, as I found out, within less then 3 days, I was surrounded and  lost the ability to expand much further then I did when I initially placed. It became a compition with others that moved in and the biggest money won. What i mean is, I didn't have the silver to expand at the time, they did, so that means they got to expand on land I could have, in turn whipping out my chance of ever expanding unless they "leave" and yeah, you can guess, that won't happen. So if you do this, expand beyond what you need, go for the gusto! save yourself headaches later.

Another thing to note is, I was mentioning before about population, sadly this game has a downfall (which I find a bit un-nerving). Most people on my server turn out to be others from the other servers just coming over to claim more land. One guy even said  the day before "well I will just place houses all over the areas I don't want claimed to keep it pristine". So what this guy is doing is making tiny houses block any possible grown for villages. While it's very open for him to do so the grieving for land in this game is almost childish, then you have these people coming from other servers admitting multiple ownerships.

Don't take me wrong, it's all in their rights to do so and if I had the money and played as long I might have done the same thing, however that is the issue, land is being claimed up daily if not hourly at sense my time of a week + ago, I hear of people hitting the borders of the server already looking for land.  However, when the server is down, only about 5 of us complain, why? because everyone goes back to their other server.

Talking about servers, servers are actually connected in game threw water ways which I found interesting, so people make multiple accounts to handle multiple lands. I can't imagine the actual cost of running those, the killer of this game and probably the worst part is  ,all money is generated by cash to coin only. There is NO WAY to make money in the game other then threw the cash to coin option (IE real world money for in game coin) , the only other way is threw trade, but that trade for items is usually a request in coin (I get the offers all the time for trade for coin). The drain is the villages and unique items you can buy off the traders in game. (traders directly ran by the servers) and that money goes poof! and the cycle continues.

 

 

 

 

Summary:

I kinda went on a rant there (sorry) and a bit all over, but if you read all of that, my summary of all described is...

"If the game had true 24/7 server support I would recommend it to anyone looking for the ultimate sandbox that wouldn't mind paying a monthly fee, sadly however sense #1 is not supported and the system feels like it's being ran out of this guys house I just can't recommend the game. Even thou I paid into it myself, I had to figure all this out myself. The community as a whole is very nice don't take me wrong, but when it comes down to the dirty nitty gritty questions , they go silent and for good reason, I enjoy the game and will play my time out till it's over. It's a grind fest but it has it's moments. If you ever wanted to make a homestead ,castle, village, town anywhere in a world and it felt like you actually built it (Which you WILL!) , you will love this game!"

 

 

"I personally just can't get past the service being "at the whim of a guy in his jockey shorts"

chaintm

LoL this game is definitly out of this guys basement. This is the community response to servers going down...

 

"Hey it's Ralph , don't you know that?"

 

So if you don't know, Ralph is the guy that own the game and basicly has control of the servers, when he is asleep or "away" things don't get rebooted or fixed. Even the community knows what the deal is here but racks anyone in the nuts if they actually "say it". All you need to do is goto the wurm forums and type in the search box about "Server Down" to see how "reliable" these servers are.

If they want players like me to take them seriously as an MMO game, they need to take their business to a professional level. This means , 24/7 server support rotation, You got GM's on, let them remote boot if needed and the list goes on. There really is a great game here, if they could just get past this "in the basement" feeling.

Larsa

Strange, the servers I play on don't go down, apart from 10 minutes a day for maintenance. There's also no "Ralph" around in Wurm but a "Rolf".

Anyway, we get it, you don't like the graphics and the animations and you want a F2P game. Okay.

chaintm

If you get that from my responses then you took the summary rout which is fine, everyone has their own opinion. Anyone can search  their forums on server down postings and just read to get the feel of the service in general. It might be free to play if your willing to not do much, I do love how people like to spew out free to play = crappy issues ok. Wurm got some coverage here and wanted to be taken seriously as a sandbox MMO, to be taken seriously you have to have a serious business model or players will move on. Graphics are "Fine" for what they are, I never said I hated them so that's an assumption like most fanbots do. Point being, there is a good game to be had here and "IF" your willing to pay you might get something worthy of accomplishment. But for a kid holding the reigns on the servers "because he feels he needs to hold control" is just hurting themselves, maybe the idea here is to keep small I have no idea, this is just an honest review for those interested plain and simple.

Good game, has it's moments, but pay you will and be ready for min support server wise. As far as Ralf or Rolf, whatever, it's a kid with a god complex on server control hurting their business, no direct insult intended but a metephor.

Hodo

Let me help you out Chaintm.

 

1st Rolf and Notch did start Wurm Online together many many years ago, Rolf and Notch handled almost everything in the game from modeling to network coding.   Neither of them were great modelers as they would admit.    Rolf and Notch went different ways due to developmental dissagreements.   It was under good terms they split and they still talk in real life.   Notch wanted a simpler quicker game, Rolf wanted a harder deeper game, well you have Wurm now, and Minecraft.  

 

I used to play Wurm Online a few years ago when the Roma Victor servers finally died while waiting for Mortal Online to come out, and went back after Mortal online sucked on release.   I no longer play WO, because I dont think its worth the money they are charging.    But things are changing in game, you can FINALLY customize your avatar, something that wasnt possible when I played oh 2 or 3 years ago.

 

The game is basicly a survival game, in a low fantasy setting.   To bad Rolf will never change his mind on this.   Rolf is still the primary coder for the game, and rarely out sources the work for new things.   This lets him put things into the game with minimum of bugs.   But it also slows down development to the pace of dead.  

 

It may sound like I am defending Wurm, but honestly I am not.   I think the free to play option is a joke.   The grind on any server except EPIC is stupid long unless you AFK macro for a few weeks.   And the game is still very clunky in feel.  

 

The server stability issue is pretty much a non-factor.   The server rarely goes down for any length of time and when it does it usually comes up with in 4-6 hours.   There were two times in the year that I played that the server went down for any length of time.   Once was due to a malicious attack by a hacker.   And the second was due to a power outage where the server is located. 

Sora2810

There's a good bit of free players who survive. They tend to do labor for others, simple things such as digging or making stone bricks. Players will pay them, you can use in-game cash to buy a deed and premium. 

Hodo

Originally posted by Sora2810
There's a good bit of free players who survive. They tend to do labor for others, simple things such as digging or making stone bricks. Players will pay them, you can use in-game cash to buy a deed and premium. 

 

I called those players "slaves" because many premium players used free players as slave labor.  

 

"I need 10,000 bricks. For 50cp."

mgilbrtsn

Is it worth playing.  I'm looking for something to tide me over until DFUW.  This is one of those that might do it, if there is a good population and is fun.