Wurm Online finally hit "gold" status about a month ago and necessitated a re-review of the game in its more complete state. We've been chronicling our adventures for the last several weeks and now present the official Wurm Online Gold Review. Read on!

Over the past month I have been enduring  the realms of Wurm Online. Eking out a living by chowing down on berries and salves made of nettles and garlic, I've crafted fences; fletched arrows; and even bested a mature, diseased lava spider. And so without further ado, here is MMORPG.com's definitive opinion on the Swedish sandbox.

Read more of Adam Tingle's Wurm Online: The Gold Edition Shines.

Overall I think it's a fair review, including the final score. Personally I would have given a slightly better score for gameplay and longevity, but a worse one for polish, thus it's a wash. :)

I did enjoy reading the three parts of your article. Thanks.

Kinda curious as to which game you were reviewing, considering that I play almost 12-15 hours daily (other than weekends when working)  and it's very rare for a "i'm stuck"

The graphics compared to A hell of a lot of games are beyound amazing considering their mainly done by Volunteers, I go through testing new mmo's, old mmo's, trying all sorts of games for the past 11 years and the graphics for this with such a small team is beyond those of a team of 20-30 in other games..

I really think you should play Wurm Online not a random game and then judge on the graphics, disgraceful review of Aesthetics and Polish, I can name many games with worse Aesthetics which you would probably rate higher just because it's a more popular game / to your liking.

____

A Wurm Veteran

the graphics aren't the issue though, it's almost like you've just played with all settings low and trees models off pretty mode and then gave it a 5 for it, as a sandbox mmo type game it's not in a category of its own, if it's against guild wars, everquest etc then you should note that some of the graphics are beyond that of guild wars and everquest in terms of detail and textures.

It does look great, even on low settings, if you think it doesn't look all that great compared to a lot of other games, you've clearly got an impossibly high standard or you just favour other games on a personal note rather than a reviewing note.

your comment: "At best, it looks like indieware; at worst it looks several years out of date."

It's no where near out of date, some new games / popular games that released in the last 2 years have worse textures and have better ratings for their graphics.

animations for quite a bit of stuff were only introduced recently and some of them didn't make it into launch as stated recently in the blog,  but there are still animations which are decent.

Originally posted by Czanrei

The pics in this article are misleading because they don't show that everyone under that nearly unattainable armor looks exactly the same and there is no animation worth mentioning on any level. It is contradictive to rate the game as a great sandbox and having great immersion if it doesnt even have any kind of customisation or animation.

 

You clearly have not played lately. They recently added in appearance customization, while not infinite in choice it does allow people a chance to look different.

Originally posted by Ozmodan
The economy, what little there is, badly needs some major love.  Not sure how any developer can make a sandbox game without allowing a decent monetary system.

I'd have to say my own personal issue is that the game allows you to do any and all things on a single character and while that can be a good thing. It also can make it difficult for the average player to have anything of merit to trade because why buy or trade when you can just do it on your own?

Played this game for about 10 hours with my friend. Seemed pretty fun at start but the game is just so sluggish and bugged in many ways. It's like playing an alpha edition of a game back in 2004. The game is dominated by high level players who aren't really helpful in helping anyone out, let alone a noob. Furthermore you have to subscribe before you can do most basic stuff like riding a mount or rowing in a small boat.

Talking about rowing, the animations of this game are terribad. The only average animations I've seen so far are from monsters but that gets quickly compensated by them being stuck in a wall or killing you while you weren't even in range. Then you have the guards. They have no animation at all. When they aid you in killing a monster they just look at it and you have to read in the combat log how they are doing.

Btw don't ever log out in this game or you will have to reconnect up to 6 times to get connection to the server again.

Originally posted by SophusVir

Originally posted by Ozmodan
The economy, what little there is, badly needs some major love.  Not sure how any developer can make a sandbox game without allowing a decent monetary system.

I'd have to say my own personal issue is that the game allows you to do any and all things on a single character and while that can be a good thing. It also can make it difficult for the average player to have anything of merit to trade because why buy or trade when you can just do it on your own?

yeah thats the problem with long time existing characters, otherwise not that much, because it take quite a lot of time to level up even 1 skills, much more less all of them

Originally posted by SophusVir

Originally posted by Ozmodan
The economy, what little there is, badly needs some major love.  Not sure how any developer can make a sandbox game without allowing a decent monetary system.

I'd have to say my own personal issue is that the game allows you to do any and all things on a single character and while that can be a good thing. It also can make it difficult for the average player to have anything of merit to trade because why buy or trade when you can just do it on your own?

just so you know, there is always a market, i've been playing since 2009, many veterans have played since 2004, 2006 time and still buy bulk stuff purely because they just can't be bothered making it themselves, it also funds the market.

Never had a problem selling bulk materials such as planks, nails, floorboards, bricks, mortar, dirt etc.

I develop Wurm and I'm very happy that Adam and MMORPG made this review. I think it's a good and fair review. I'll try to give my feedback on some points raised while still trying to be objective.

Wurm is such a.. I'll dare call it "huge and complex" game that people who have played it for years often haven't been in touch with some pretty interesting functionality and it's very easy to misunderstand things like the economy in the beginning.

For instance, your main source of income in the beginning is probably as work force for other players. You just can't create valuable items yet and often the traders don't have money because they are quickly drained. It doesn't mean there's not a working economy.  People have a lot of money invested in deed upkeep and sell land and items to eachother for pretty astounding values. Money circulate from land upkeep to traders back to players when they sell stuff to them. We have virtually no inflation since every coin is tied to the Euro and we don't produce ingame coinage.

The only thing I have to say about the graphics verdict is that since we have a fully terraformable and modifyable world with possibly gazillions of items on the ground and customized structures in view I think we start out in a harder place since we can't prepare rendering as well as other games. There seems to be a misconception from players that tried the game before the launch that we still don't have customizable characters.

Regarding the comments on old power players: We opened two servers where everyone starts out fresh - "Pristine" and "Release". These won't be connected to the main cluster for.. well we have no ETA for it even. Playing among the old population usually means more work opportunities and income though.

We don't push it a lot but there is a pretty strong end game mechanic in Wurm on the Epic cluster. You are urged to strive for demigod status by helping out the deities to fight eachother through scenarios by doing randomly generated unique serverwide missions. When a deity wins a scenario (which may last for days or weeks depending on how well you perform) it may receive the opportunity to elevate a follower to demigod status, joining the scenario map. Actually, if the same thing happens again your demigod will be raised to Deity status and you will form your own religion with a unique spell set. Haven't happened yet though - extraordinary things are supposed to be rare in Wurm.

And yeah, quite a lot of experienced players dislike tutorials. We did have a lot of players quitting because they couldn't figure out pretty basic stuff so I think it helps a lot with getting people started.

I mainly write this for those of you who still are looking for "that game". It's what we aim for and quite a lot of our players think they have found it. I don't want you to miss out on something you've been looking for because we lack in the graphics  area or polish right now. In any case, we're improving and the pace and quality will probably increase in the future since we're growing with the recent multistorey features so you can wait and see. But do keep us in the back of your head:)

Rolf

Originally posted by ronsson

I develop Wurm and I'm very happy that Adam and MMORPG made this review. I think it's a good and fair review. I'll try to give my feedback on some points raised while still trying to be objective.

Wurm is such a.. I'll dare call it "huge and complex" game that people who have played it for years often haven't been in touch with some pretty interesting functionality and it's very easy to misunderstand things like the economy in the beginning.

For instance, your main source of income in the beginning is probably as work force for other players. You just can't create valuable items yet and often the traders don't have money because they are quickly drained. It doesn't mean there's not a working economy.  People have a lot of money invested in deed upkeep and sell land and items to eachother for pretty astounding values. Money circulate from land upkeep to traders back to players when they sell stuff to them. We have virtually no inflation since every coin is tied to the Euro and we don't produce ingame coinage.

The only thing I have to say about the graphics verdict is that since we have a fully terraformable and modifyable world with possibly gazillions of items on the ground and customized structures in view I think we start out in a harder place since we can't prepare rendering as well as other games. There seems to be a misconception from players that tried the game before the launch that we still don't have customizable characters.

Regarding the comments on old power players: We opened two servers where everyone starts out fresh - "Pristine" and "Release". These won't be connected to the main cluster for.. well we have no ETA for it even. Playing among the old population usually means more work opportunities and income though.

We don't push it a lot but there is a pretty strong end game mechanic in Wurm on the Epic cluster. You are urged to strive for demigod status by helping out the deities to fight eachother through scenarios by doing randomly generated unique serverwide missions. When a deity wins a scenario (which may last for days or weeks depending on how well you perform) it may receive the opportunity to elevate a follower to demigod status, joining the scenario map. Actually, if the same thing happens again your demigod will be raised to Deity status and you will form your own religion with a unique spell set. Haven't happened yet though - extraordinary things are supposed to be rare in Wurm.

And yeah, quite a lot of experienced players dislike tutorials. We did have a lot of players quitting because they couldn't figure out pretty basic stuff so I think it helps a lot with getting people started.

I mainly write this for those of you who still are looking for "that game". It's what we aim for and quite a lot of our players think they have found it. I don't want you to miss out on something you've been looking for because we lack in the graphics  area or polish right now. In any case, we're improving and the pace and quality will probably increase in the future since we're growing with the recent multistorey features so you can wait and see. But do keep us in the back of your head:)

Rolf

Out of all the sandbox games, how did Minecraft become so popular? It's because it's more about adventuring and exploring and building, and not grinding. There were no skill levels to worry about. While I don't think Wurm should be like that, I feel like it should require a lot less time to level up skills and a nicer success rate in crafting because people like erecting castles and houses, but don't like spending a ridiculous amount of time looking at a progress bar.