Wurm Online is a game that hearkens back to the "good old days of MMOs" so much so, in fact, that players are clawed, mauled and otherwise brutalized. Success is success however and hard fought brings pride. But is Wurm Online fun? Find out in our official review!

Wurm Online is a throwback MMO that harkens to the days of the MUSH and the true sandbox environment. The world is mutable, the experience is entirely player-driven, and it is unashamedly unforgiving. Given the calibre and passion of a number of messages on this website, it might just be the perfect game for a number of you - that is if you can survive a savage butt-whipping by a disgruntled rabbit.

Read more of Adam Tingle's Wurm Online: The Official Wurm Review.

Those cons are enough to make me rate this game as a 1 across the board.  I couldn't stand this game past the first 10 minutes of gameplay with consisted of fumbling with my controls, UI and general wonder at what the hell I was supposed to do in this UGLY world in front of my eyes.

For the record, I like sandboxes, IF they have some modicum of direction or pinache.  

nice review.  If i wasn't so combat oriented I would definitely give it a shot.  Maybe I will anyway.

An enjoyable read.

To be open from the outset, I'm a WurmOnline GM and wanted to agree with more or less every point including the negatives - trading does indeed lack a certain polish, and animations are more or less non-existant. Having said that, a new animation system is being brought in as we type, and new character models with visible armour, animations and remakes of all the mobs will be coming in over the course of the next few months. If you run the unstable client with experiemental packs on, and come off the default 'no animations' and you're able to find a hen, you will see the first example of such that was implemented to test the system. Quite a staggering improvement. You can see snippets of what the team has been working on in this thread of the Wurmonline forums.

I also wanted to clarify payment for being a premium member, there are a variety of options, one of which is the 10 Euros for 1 month and 5 silver (the in-game currency) that you mentioned, but if you don't require any silver, you can also purchase 2 months for 10 Euros. Due to paypal charges etc there is not option for anything costing less than 10 Euros.

Hopefully you'll be able to add a postscript about graphics and animations in a few months time!

OMG Ninja Review!

I'm the server developer and I have to say I agree with the review but it's too early:) 

We just released a new graphics engine but we still haven't added the new models or character customization ack ack! We were planning on starting to make more noise once we've got the new models and animations in.

Nah, it's great really. Thanks loads. It's a good score and any explanation about what we do is positive.

We've tried to make Wurm have most of what we think an MMO should be.. huge, open, "Massive" compared to single player MMOs, full of personal adventures where even the smallest peasant should have impact on the world. Not to mention real heroes. 

So yeah, anyways. Graphics will shape up:) Luckily.

Good read. It makes me want to give it another shot!

I've always enjoyed Wurm and at times it's been a downright blast. There are some things that annoy me and I hope they get atention, but for the most part it's a great sandbox from some great folks.

I'm very thankful that this game exists, it's one of a kind!

The game has a ton of potential, BUT it is NOT worth my money until they put some kind of effort into character models and animations. It is absurd that any gamer would tolerate everyone having the same character model with no differentiation at all. 

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

Nice review - great job - the fact that the GM and Server developer popped in and gave us the heads up on the new graphics = sub. I've tried the game a few times, but couldn't really get past the looks. The mechanics are awesome. The whole time I was reading the review, I was thinking - "if only the graphics were better" and "I wonder if it's even possible to add new models while keeping the same mechanics" - great answers and I'm super excited this is getting a make-over!

Thanks for the review and the comments from Wurm's staff. I am an old player and I think am pretty interested in the graphics update.

the game is quite nice altho without the premium you will be treated like someone worse... that was the last nail to the coffin in my case.

Originally posted by Mithrandolir
I'm very thankful that this game exists, it's one of a kind!

+1 to that - what Wurm tries to do, it does better than any other game in the genre at the moment.  

True, the game isn't as pretty or as polished as a title from one of the big names but I've played no other game which gives me so much freedom of choice and freedom to alter the game world.  Plus the dev team care more about making a good game than maximising profits at the expense of gameplay.

A solid vision of what the sandbox should be, true innovation, opportunities for emergent gameplay, no desire to nickel and dime or mislead the players and masses of freedom of choice.  These far outweigh any of the drawbacks in my mind.

Don't forget that you don't have to pay a cent out of your own pocket for premium time if you really don't want to, you can buy premium time WITH IN GAME MONEY. That's right, you go and work for someone, helping them dig their plot or somesuch, they pay you, you pay for premium time, and now you have no skillcap without even touching your credit card. What other game offers that?

 People should do more research if they think this is a F2P game, unless you spend REAL money you can't own land and alot of other features are only avaiable to paying members which i get they gotta make money, just pointing out since some think this is a F2P game that it is only to a very small limit. No cash shop so either you pay the monthly fee or you play F2P and are basically like the landscape and trees to paying players.

Originally posted by Aetherwalker

Don't forget that you don't have to pay a cent out of your own pocket for premium time if you really don't want to, you can buy premium time WITH IN GAME MONEY. That's right, you go and work for someone, helping them dig their plot or somesuch, they pay you, you pay for premium time, and now you have no skillcap without even touching your credit card. What other game offers that?

 

 Eve online.

From my faint memories in the early years of wurm (5 years ago or so) it took *ages* to accomplish even the most basic goals (like crafting a log). This and an extremely sluggish graphic engine was what kept me (edit:) from playing. The graphical quality what so many seem to complain about was never my problem and as a special plus it keeps the tourists and morons away from the game. If it only wouldn't be so slow paced (and I can asure you, if I'm good in anything than it is patience) I would give it another shot. But I'm glad to hear the devs didn't went for the easy dime, something I was predicting from my early impressions.

Great reveiw. I am going to download this game and play it later now

Originally posted by ronsson

OMG Ninja Review!

I'm the server developer and I have to say I agree with the review but it's too early:) 

We just released a new graphics engine but we still haven't added the new models or character customization ack ack! We were planning on starting to make more noise once we've got the new models and animations in.

Nah, it's great really. Thanks loads. It's a good score and any explanation about what we do is positive.

We've tried to make Wurm have most of what we think an MMO should be.. huge, open, "Massive" compared to single player MMOs, full of personal adventures where even the smallest peasant should have impact on the world. Not to mention real heroes. 

So yeah, anyways. Graphics will shape up:) Luckily.

I wouldn't worry too much.  The staff here tends to rereview games at regular intervals.

The game is a borefest that requires hours, days, weeks, months, and sometimes years to see progress. Rolf is the only server developer so development is slow not counting the brainless updates he does that break ten other things or impacts years of work that he made useless in just the click of a button. This game is heavily still in development and should be considered a paid beta nothing more, nothing less.

The staff are not paid except for two people he finally did hire after several years of trying to get free work out of volunteers who receive no financial profit all the while Rolf pockets the bulk of profit which he now has to put towards two pay checks for his small crew who still rely on free help. I would steer clear of this game and find more polished mmo sandboxes out there.

The skill set is very basic and requires you to pump months of your free time in to one skill to accomplish another after you've gotten the one high enough to benefit the other with materials. The stuff you make is only useful to you the person making it as everyone else has the same skill and can make their own. Epic has a faster skill curve and people already have max skills in several things but that is a good example of why the game is losing players atm. Rolf even posted saying that he knows he's losing people but continues to blame it on other games and not his own short comings. http://www.wurmonline.com/blog/gamedev/roadmap-for-the-upcoming-weeks/ His failed vision for the game is the major blow that the game has taken recently and he's rushing other things to try and counter his losses like animations which the game does not have.

The game is strictly java based which is very laggy at times but all in all it runs good on a capable machine. Dual core specs even with a decent card will have trouble with framerate at full settings yet you can run games like crysis full settings without a glitch but wurm is a whole different animal, it seems really bloated at times e.g. resource hog.

I would advise people to play the game for free for a month and I think you can make a good assesment that the game is for you or not but do not have hopes for pvp or instant gratification as pvp requires the skill set and gear and those take a ungodly amount of time to acheive. The starting tutorial is a bore and there is no option to bypass it so be warned and prepared to spend 3 hours doing nothing but failing a lot and running through something that will make you want to pull your hair out in short order.