played both Wurm  and Xsyon

and imo Xsyon is by far a more immersive experience

i just cant get past the 1980's graphics of Wurm :(

Originally posted by Osirrus

played both Wurm  and Xsyon

and imo Xsyon is by far a more immersive experience

i just cant get past the 1980's graphics of Wurm :(

 

I can't get past the "Having to pay for something even though you have no idea if it's playable or not" deal with Xyson, also excludes everyone who can't afford to pay and everyone who can afford to pay but would prefer not to. You wouldn't buy a house without seeing inside it, therefore why buy a subscription to an MMO without being able to try it first?

Originally posted by Osirrus

played both Wurm  and Xsyon

and imo Xsyon is by far a more immersive experience

i just cant get past the 1980's graphics of Wurm :(

 

Now this, I don't understand at all. Last time I checked in my subjective opinion it seemed like Wurm was in extremely close positions in the graphics league, neither being very good but neither eye-burningly bad either. Google does a terrible job at presenting up-to-date screenshots of Wurm so I'll assume it does the same for Xsyon, but whevever I look I fail to see the real difference in graphical fidelity except in very specific cases (I.E Xsyon has more detailed character models, but Wurm has superior-looking fire effects).

The screenshots in this thread speak for themselves

Heres a screenshot from a game in 1980:

Originally posted by Osirrus

played both Wurm  and Xsyon

and imo Xsyon is by far a more immersive experience

i just cant get past the 1980's graphics of Wurm :(

 

I tried giving a review yesterday but the op is probably the one one that reported me as trolling and perhaps got my post removed by the overmoderational lean of this this site when someone writes an opposing view that is in contrast to an origonal post.  In any event, i agree with this sentiment, and in response to the title, the OP's point can be misleading.  

I do not consider Wurm as the "BEST" Sandbox, though it can be considered in the top 5.  I'll them and Wurm Sandboxy, because all have their limitations.  Now, how you cut that top 5 is a personal preference, and by that means, it might be your best. but not necessarily to others; especially if one takes into consumer population of other sustained sandbxy titles.

I beleive There ARE more immersive mmo sandboxes with greater access to content, game-play breadth and depth, community interaction within a mutable and persistent world, and which requires community dependence across access to far greater character skills and actions; Xyson is one of them, but I'm not playing Xyson now because of the sluggishness of the development team.  As one that has been watching, and at one point played them all, Salem is another that will appear to give the sandboxy genre a run for its money.

So, be sure to try Wurm, and try others that are on-track this year http://sandboxer.org/?p=409

Just be informed.

I didn't find the graphics to be that bad actually.  The only thing that really bothers me with some of these lower end MMO's are the top down non 3d games.  The world was very immersive and the first person playing was nice.  I haven't had much time to dig into the game but if graphics are the worst thing about the game I would say it's in pretty good shape.

Originally posted by XallozZ
Xsyon has worse graphics than Wurm, in my opinion. Once the newer customizable player models come out, it'll be even better.

I wouldn't say that tbh . although i don't really like comparing graphics when the platform they are built to run on is so different .

Xyson as it stands graphically wise ( not going to go into gameplay ) , is pretty damn impressive , but , it doesn't run on Java .

Wurm as it stands graphically while running on Java , is pretty damn impressive with what they have accomplished , especially with the changes over the last year ( compared ot 4 years ago ) .

Personally for me , i prefer the Wurm gameplay over Xysons or other sandbox mmos .

I can appreciate that it may not be to everyones tasts , but i would urge you to give it a try if you like sandbox MMO's and don't want your hand held every minute you play :)

I played Wurm last year and did a solo deed. The people in the area moved away when the new servers opened up. I got lonely and slowly stopped playing. I'm back into it now and joint deeded with a buddy of mine. I can honestly say I am having the most fun I've ever had in an MMO type game. I have played a few MUDs but didn't get into it deeply until Ultima Online. I've played just about everything else out there at this point. Time after time I was disappointed with game after game. The genre has gone downhill since WoW has basically turned the genre into an instant gratification simplication.

Wurm doesn't even come close to fitting in the mold. Games like Xyson try to be a sandbox in a WoW mold. It sort of works but there is something about it I just don't like. Wurm's crafting is wildly deep which always leaves you with something to do. The graphics are not terrible but they are not a modern video game quality either. That is perfectly ok though. If you go in thinking you are going to be playing a game you can buy off a shelf, you will be disappointed. If you go in realizing the game is more of a survival simulator, almost a true graphical MUD, you will be pleased. Graphics aren't everything.

Now, I will admit that at first the game is terrible. Everything you do is painfully slow. You just watch a progress bar at the bottom of the screen. Eventually things pick up in speed and you can do a lot more work in the same amount of time. I admit, usually when I play a themepark is does have my attention and I turn the TV/Netflix/HBOGo off. When I play Wurm, I watch those things and click around in the Wurm world. I love it though. It is not the fast paced, never ending action. It is much, much more relaxing. That does NOT mean it is casual though. To do some of the stuff I have seen in game I would conclude these players are very hardcore. 

All in all, Wurm is Minecraft for adults. It won't appeal to everyone, especially not the hyper "I gotta have my reward now!" crowd.

This is my ending story.

I've got 2 days till my sub is up and decided to stop playing.

I'm going to say some things that others may or may not like but they will be what I remember as truth.

The game is hard the first few weeks if you don't scavenge or hook up with others. Creatures will kill you very easily and you don't fight well. You can get by if you are aware of NPC guards in the areas you roam to run to for help.

The game itself is a bunch of clicking. By a bunch I mean a whole frickin lot. The menus are dropdown types with multiple levels. To craft something you might click the item you want to craft with, then you right click and item you want to use it with, then you choose from that submenu or another level deep what you want to do. Some people have talked about keybinds that you could setup but give no real guide for it. I missed hotbars when playing this game.

The server I was on seemed quite clique-ish. There were about 7 people that always talked to each other. Even when they were in the same local zones they would chat in the kingdom chat for everyone to see. Sometimes it got perverted. There were 6 other people that constantly talked sexual or tossed innuendo around to the point that I had to put them on ignore. Hold onto your seats here, these weren't men but women. Talking about lesbian love and such just trying to get boys excited and any attention they could. Sometimes they got so bad even the GM type people would ask them to curb it. Then the people would huff and stomp as if it were out of line to ask them to act like adults in a chat where kids could be. That's what eventually led to me ignoring them, if the GM tells you to stop and the next day you are doing it again. Well, they aren't getting punished or feeling guilt so I managed it my own way.

Logging in to see the game shutdown. For a good week it seemed like every time I logged in the game was going down for about 30 minutes. I would get frustrated that I had time to game and the time I had it wanted to go down then decide what I'd do for the next 30m since I already set aside time.

Coastal areas... good luck. They have boats in the game and fishing that is really only high end from them. I searched for days for good coastal areas that weren't taken. Nothing. If there were any possible plots they were tiny. All I wanted was to be on the coast and I can see that it wasn't going to happen. I came to the server too late and no one was giving up their plots.

Land hogging. So many places I would go past had hundreds if not thousands of undeveloped tiles. They weren't going to give any of them up for nooblets. The person that lived behind me was a one person village that never took the meat from the kills their guards made, never did anything for their trees and had a forest large enough to hold 2 plots on 2 sides of them.

Alliances. They have such bad policies on sharing. I settled in an area that had 2 neighbors. One neighbor tries to ally with me. I read about it, said nah that's too much permission, you can take any of my stuff. That neighbor btw had houses and locks on everything. My place had no locks because I didn't want to deal with them. Eventually that other neighbor wanted to ally too. I agree under the assumption that we are using it for group chat and that we all agree not to touch each other's stuff. Neighbor 2 also locks down everything they have. Neighbor 1 stops coming online very much. Neighbor 2 decides to let in about 5 travellers to their village - the travellers said they were making their own place and didn't plan on staying. So now I have to trust 5 new ppl to all my crap. I'm willing to give them a chance because that's team play. ONE of the five people talked the entire time I was allied. They then talk Neighbor 2 into going on a vent server and Neighbor 2 stops talking in alliance chat at all. That about sealed the deal for me to leave the alliance. I don't open up my doors and stuff to ppl that can't even frickin' say hello. It all felt like bad security. Neighbor 1 still wasn't coming on so I figured they would understand after knowing my initial concerns about security.

Rares. What a worthless implementation. You get a rare material.. does it promise a rare end result? No.

The hardcores. Each day there would be someone in chat talking about how easy the game was and that it needed to change. They would tell you about how each change was going to wreck the economy and how it will devalue all the work people put into gaining something the "hard" way. One morning I was really tired of their elitism and started railing against them saying that new people should spawn without any tools because they were easymode. I once read something by the makers of civilization (one of the most popular games ever, yeah that guy) and he said that you can never over reward a player in the first few minutes of gameplay. Did this chatter ever read or learn at all about a game, no they just had a theory that games should be hard and went with it. They had followers of course.

Help! Their help system is great. They have lots of documentation and will answer any questions in a specific chat channel but beware, the majority of the answers you get are spewed directly from the wiki so when you ask complicated mechanic questions people normally can't answer them.

Fighting. I lurve pvp and fighting in general in most games but I didn't like it in this game. It wasn't so bad that the creatures didn't have animations but the log was too wordy and hard to read, there were no values and I had no clue how close the mob was to death without a hitpoint bar. Moving slow was also something they do when you are close to dying. Imagine moving at a snails pace just knowing you can't do crap with an enemy that looks like it's staring at you and nothing else. Fighting was just not fun in the game so I avoided it.

I did meet a few good ppl but we were so far apart that I wasn't going to be travelling to them all the time just for decent play and moving closer to them would have been impossible - most everyone has all that coastal land taken when it's over about 20x20 squares. I think after the playing the game that the people you are around greatly affect how much you like it or don't in the end. The game itself was very grindy so you have to do other things to engage your mind. I often ran videos and was on other sites because so many people were distasteful in the general chat. 

For that reason, if you went to play the game with friends you would probably like it better. In the end, I don't think I fit in there.

Originally posted by Silver443

The game is hard the first few weeks if you don't scavenge or hook up with others. Creatures will kill you very easily and you don't fight well. You can get by if you are aware of NPC guards in the areas you roam to run to for help. Should have joined a village, most villages either have a templar or members with high fight skill to look after you

The game itself is a bunch of clicking. By a bunch I mean a whole frickin lot. The menus are dropdown types with multiple levels. To craft something you might click the item you want to craft with, then you right click and item you want to use it with, then you choose from that submenu or another level deep what you want to do. Some people have talked about keybinds that you could setup but give no real guide for it. I missed hotbars when playing this game. Keybind guide was on the wiki, and good luck finding a crafting based game without having to cycle through a million menus

The server I was on seemed quite clique-ish. There were about 7 people that always talked to each other. Even when they were in the same local zones they would chat in the kingdom chat for everyone to see. Sometimes it got perverted. There were 6 other people that constantly talked sexual or tossed innuendo around to the point that I had to put them on ignore. Hold onto your seats here, these weren't men but women. Talking about lesbian love and such just trying to get boys excited and any attention they could. Sometimes they got so bad even the GM type people would ask them to curb it. Then the people would huff and stomp as if it were out of line to ask them to act like adults in a chat where kids could be. That's what eventually led to me ignoring them, if the GM tells you to stop and the next day you are doing it again. Well, they aren't getting punished or feeling guilt so I managed it my own way. Did you try moving to another server?

Logging in to see the game shutdown. For a good week it seemed like every time I logged in the game was going down for about 30 minutes. I would get frustrated that I had time to game and the time I had it wanted to go down then decide what I'd do for the next 30m since I already set aside time. I fail to see how the servers getting maintained and updated is a bad thing, sounds like you're just complaining because it happened when you decided to log in. If you can't go watch TV or read a book for 30mins, you really have a problem

Coastal areas... good luck. They have boats in the game and fishing that is really only high end from them. I searched for days for good coastal areas that weren't taken. Nothing. If there were any possible plots they were tiny. All I wanted was to be on the coast and I can see that it wasn't going to happen. I came to the server too late and no one was giving up their plots. Every server, regardless of age and population, has dozens of coastal spots to settle in. You're not going to find land pre-made for you in most cases, so you might have to get out your shovel and pickaxe and terraform it yourself

Land hogging. So many places I would go past had hundreds if not thousands of undeveloped tiles. They weren't going to give any of them up for nooblets. The person that lived behind me was a one person village that never took the meat from the kills their guards made, never did anything for their trees and had a forest large enough to hold 2 plots on 2 sides of them. If someone pays for the land, that's their land. This is good for Rolf's bottom line, as well as being realistic. It's not like there is anything remotely near a shortage of land on any server.

Alliances. They have such bad policies on sharing. I settled in an area that had 2 neighbors. One neighbor tries to ally with me. I read about it, said nah that's too much permission, you can take any of my stuff. That neighbor btw had houses and locks on everything. My place had no locks because I didn't want to deal with them. Eventually that other neighbor wanted to ally too. I agree under the assumption that we are using it for group chat and that we all agree not to touch each other's stuff. Neighbor 2 also locks down everything they have. Neighbor 1 stops coming online very much. Neighbor 2 decides to let in about 5 travellers to their village - the travellers said they were making their own place and didn't plan on staying. So now I have to trust 5 new ppl to all my crap. I'm willing to give them a chance because that's team play. ONE of the five people talked the entire time I was allied. They then talk Neighbor 2 into going on a vent server and Neighbor 2 stops talking in alliance chat at all. That about sealed the deal for me to leave the alliance. I don't open up my doors and stuff to ppl that can't even frickin' say hello. It all felt like bad security. Neighbor 1 still wasn't coming on so I figured they would understand after knowing my initial concerns about security. Lock your doors and your gates, it only takes 5mins or so, it's really really easy.

Rares. What a worthless implementation. You get a rare material.. does it promise a rare end result? No. Rare tools are 0.1sec faster to use, and have a secondary action. E.g. a rare butcher knife will ALWAYS give one extra meat, even from a starving animal. And rare materials can bee sacrificed for a Refresh, which fills your food, water and nutrition to 99%. You could virtually live off sacrificing rares if you were a bulk goods manufacturer

The hardcores. Each day there would be someone in chat talking about how easy the game was and that it needed to change. They would tell you about how each change was going to wreck the economy and how it will devalue all the work people put into gaining something the "hard" way. One morning I was really tired of their elitism and started railing against them saying that new people should spawn without any tools because they were easymode. I once read something by the makers of civilization (one of the most popular games ever, yeah that guy) and he said that you can never over reward a player in the first few minutes of gameplay. Did this chatter ever read or learn at all about a game, no they just had a theory that games should be hard and went with it. They had followers of course. Wurm is not an instant gratification game. If someone took 3months to get to 90 in a skill, and then it was made easier and people can get 90 in 3weeks, then they are justifiable to get upset. Imagine if the new person at your work was promoted to the same rank as you even though they hadn't been there anywhere near as long. Not exactly fair, is it?

Fighting. I lurve pvp and fighting in general in most games but I didn't like it in this game. It wasn't so bad that the creatures didn't have animations but the log was too wordy and hard to read, there were no values and I had no clue how close the mob was to death without a hitpoint bar. Moving slow was also something they do when you are close to dying. Imagine moving at a snails pace just knowing you can't do crap with an enemy that looks like it's staring at you and nothing else. Fighting was just not fun in the game so I avoided it. Now this, I kinda  agree with. Fighting is hard when you're doing it wrong. If getting slowed when you're bleeding profusely is a problem, ride a horse. You can rclick > look > equipment on an enemy you're fighting to see the wounds you are inflicting, so that's close enough to a health bar without being unrealistic. Animations are being implemented, and an animation company has been hired by Rolf to work on those.

I did meet a few good ppl but we were so far apart that I wasn't going to be travelling to them all the time just for decent play and moving closer to them would have been impossible - most everyone has all that coastal land taken when it's over about 20x20 squares. I think after the playing the game that the people you are around greatly affect how much you like it or don't in the end. The game itself was very grindy so you have to do other things to engage your mind. I often ran videos and was on other sites because so many people were distasteful in the general chat. This happens, but either you find a group of friends and stick with them, find a server full of nice people and stick with them, or go the Hermit Path and solo everything. If you're really immature enough to have this much of a problem with a chat as mature as the one in Wurm, you might want to reconsider playing MMOs at all, seeing as Kchat on pretty much every server is orders of magnitude more civil than, say, Barrens chat on World of Warcraft.

Originally posted by Silver443

Fighting. I lurve pvp and fighting in general in most games but I didn't like it in this game. It wasn't so bad that the creatures didn't have animations but the log was too wordy and hard to read, there were no values and I had no clue how close the mob was to death without a hitpoint bar. Moving slow was also something they do when you are close to dying. Imagine moving at a snails pace just knowing you can't do crap with an enemy that looks like it's staring at you and nothing else. Fighting was just not fun in the game so I avoided it.

Please don't judge PvP on your PvE experiences, it's entirely different.

Wurm is that kind of game you just need to give its time. You are not sucked in in the first 20 minutes and probably even not after your first 3 days (most modern commercial games wouldn't survive that and wurm *is* a commercial gamel) But - and that I can assure you - once you actually get into the game it's getting more and more amazing and exciting.

Some of the rants I did read here are all too familar to me and unerstandable, it wasn't much different when I started playing. One of the things that scared me away the most at first were (and still are) the ridiculous "standing riders" animations and avatars, just looks pre- alpha no doubt. But as the stubborn and curious sort of player that I am I got behind these ugly obstacles and now after about 4 month of playing I can say this is w/o any doubt the MMORPG with the best long time motivation and most dense immersion I've ever played. And this even stands true despite the standing circus riders and non customisable avatars. After a while wurm feels just "alive".

@brash: as a funny sidenote the last 2 games I've played before coming to wurm were also Asheron's Call and Morrowind that you mentioned earlier. And still keeping them in best memories... o/

i dont mind the low graphics quality, not at all if the rest of the game is intersting. But no animations? really?

And a monthly fee, even low? no way. If this is a project far away for been finish, it should be F2P with donate options connected with some kind of in-game reward.

If its finish, then dont diserve any money in my opinion. I dont get it the "no animation" thing in a 3D world, i really dont.

Xsyon at least have animations, bad ones, but at least have it. Other game that should be free to play and then with some donations system so devs could improve the game, with monthly fee no way.

Originally posted by Jabas

i dont mind the low graphics quality, not at all if the rest of the game is intersting. But no animations? really?

And a monthly fee, even low? no way. If this is a project far away for been finish, it should be F2P with donate options connected with some kind of in-game reward.

If its finish, then dont diserve any money in my opinion. I dont get it the "no animation" thing in a 3D world, i really dont.

 

Xsyon at least have animations, bad ones, but at least have it. Other game that should be free to play and then with some donations system so devs could improve the game, with monthly fee no way.

There has to be a fee in Sandbox games. In a game where you can change the world there needs to be some checks and balances. Without fees everyone in the game could deed lands and wreak havok. It would be an absolute mess. The fee keeps the players honest instead of endless, childish BS. You still can be a douche, but it will cost you, therefore it thwarts a good bit of it. Rolf lets you in and gives you a taste for free. Some people apparently never go premium. They also never get to deed land or get their skills high enough to sell for silver. The game costs money at the start but you can make enough in-game to pay for your subscription. It equates to about $5 a month. I would much rather "donate" to an indie project like this to see where it goes rather than give a sub to these big game developers that have lost touch with truly innovative gameplay in attempts to appeal to the lowest common denominator, aka the biggest, easiest pay day.

Wurm on paper is the best game concept ever, in my opinion. In execution it leaves a lot to be desired. Once you get hooked though, you buy more into the concept and less into the crap graphics, context menus, or poor animations. If you play Wurm like a game, you won't like it. Most of the kids now days won't understand that. If you play Wurm like a graphical MUD where you just try to survive, you are likely to love this game. Oldschool, and loving it.

I used to be interested in this game for the sandbox experience. But then I discovered Minecraft multiplayer. With a good combination of mods it trumps any sandbox experience from any game I played (even SWG).

Originally posted by Maxipad

I wouldn't advise playing this game at all.

Ok, I'm listening... Whys that then?

It has a small development team, limited resources

Well, ok, not enough to put me off because I like to support indie gaming and have a tolerant approach to games that have ambition and scope.

What else?

and an absolutely horrible community, despite what you might see on these forums from the fan boys and girls.

Hrm... so ignore the positive and friendly guys here, disregard them as 'fannboys', and listen to you?

ok, moving on past that...

Most people get tired of the text based nature of the game, and in short order. I suppose if people wanted to read all night about the things they do in game then it would have more than a thousand subscribers.

Reading is not an issue to me... In fact I do it for pleasure with actual real books.

What else?

Animations in game are about as varied as those found in the original Final Fantasy for the NES. Maybe if you are feeling nostalgic for the old BBS MUD games from the 90s you should give it a try, otherwise it's not worth the time wasted on going through the primitive, yet long winded, tutorial.

So old graphics? Still not a game breaker for me, must say... I put gameplay way over GFX. 

There is no roadmap for development. Documentation is extremely limited and supplied by a player run wiki page.

Community supported information sharing?

Sounds great.

Any contact you can hope to have with the very small development team is usually done in IRC where whoever cries the loudest gets attention. All this does is add to the chaotic nature of...

ok ok, I get it... you don't like not being treated like a special princess. I'm ok with that though, personally.

 These are simply hard facts.

Well, I would say more here is opinion then 'fact', but ok!

Thanks for the info.

I think I will try it when the new server opens :)

I played for about 2 months and quit because I was tired of right clicking. I spent literally a month building a rowboat. The environment is tolerable, but the lack of animation is not. Combat and social mechanics obviously need a lot of work. And in a sandbox you need A LOT of sand, as people quickly get tired of the same thing, especially in a game with so much work, and so little action.

Over an hour to mine one section of wall... No thanks. Game is waaaaaaaaaay to slow paced for me. If you wnat a good sandbox and only care about building then go play Xsyon. It is the most extensive sandbox, but it just has no actual gameplay to it. Though if you like to toil in the Earth and build collosal bases to defend against the nothing then I'd give it a shot.

[mod edit]

Not really, just someone with an open mind. All of the complaints I see about Wurm are the same and usually from the "I have to have instant gratification" crowd... Wurm is not flawless and it does need a lot of work, though you can easily see past most of the bad stuff with an open mind. I think Wurm attracts the oldschool MMO players. Sadly most of the genre's population started with WoW and are too narrowminded to think outside the box. I wish most of these new-age gamer kids could go back to when MUDs and Ultima Online were the rage. You didn't just do what the game mindlessly told you to do. You decided what to do. You had freedom.