In case you're wondering what Wurm Online is, Brian Gold has created a great game trailer explaining the basic concepts:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cxSN5zRarI

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 remyburke

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.

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.

While you're waiting you could try Wurm Online for free. It has quite a lot of these features alredy in place including terraforming, mounts, boats and player built settlements. What it still lacks is better graphics. Just saying some of you may have missed it. If you waited 15 years it might be worth an hour or two of you time.

Not sure what or who you refer to Bobbler. The GMs are very restricted and supervised and they discuss a lot internally about pretty much every sensitive situation. But yes we've had to fire GM's as well as the head GM once for various reasons.

Yes it does, doesn't it?

I haven't found any proof of that though. In any case the magazine writes quite a lot about Wurm and have a pretty active community in the game. And of course, every game with different versions and expansions had their own vote which spreads it out.

The readers of PC Gamer recently voted Wurm Online to be the top 20 game ever on their top 100 game list. The MMO's that got better ranking are Eve Online (3) and WoW (14).

My name is Rolf Jansson and I am the main developer of that game and am very interested in your thoughts about that rank.

I know some of you have tried it out and of hate it for various reasons but we also do have a score of 7.4 here which means quite a few here also appreciate it. Many of those votes are from years ago when the game was a lot less developed.

Also, welcome to come see why it received that spot. Free download, free to try out for as long as you wish. Excuse the unpolished tutorial. Also please do rate it here. Maybe keep in mind that I don't consider us to be at version 1.0 yet.

In short:

Large interactive, living breathing fantasy world where plants and trees grow. You can terraform most parts of it.

You mine tunnels and caverns where creatures spawn. You build roads. You build settlements and can form alliances.

You can become ruler of a kingdom and appoint a court. Mysterious deities and religions you can join.

Optional full loot pvp in the kingdom versus kingdom wars. Basically trying to be all you ever wished for:)

Most interesting.

I only played it for a couple of hours in the first months of release when it was called Project Entropia and quit because of ginormous rubberbanding issues. Like many others I didn't understand what the game was about and didn't find any goal with playing.

From this thread I understand that it is indeed designed as a casino and it seems everyone agrees that it's all about making money. The players who understand the game fully accept and appreciate that.

I think it is a lot better than a scam but they should probably be more open about it.

Yes or Wurm Online. Free trial for as long as you wish. Sandbox with magic very much toned down.

You could also try Wurm Online for free. Incidentally I am one of the developers:)

Same sandbox approach like the other games but you can download and try it for free for as long as you wish.

The big thing with Wurm is that the players create virtually everything, and you can also terraform so if you want to dig a huge crater or mine your own cave system where monsters spawn just go ahead. You are also responsible for building the roads and walls in the world. You can purchase land anywhere, terraform and build your settlement.

We have a server with full loot (kingdom vs kingdom) PvP with a ranking system. Just like in Darkfall we have penalties for attacking your own kingdom but you will be outlaw for a longer time.

Virtually all items ingame are created by players and sold for coins purchased in the web shop so there are no fake money, no inflation or money harvesting.

Just like Mortal Online and Darkfall it's still being developed and lack the customization options the others have. In about a month we are finished with version 1.0 of the back end server stuff and will start working more focused on the front end.

There are loads more features like alchemy, religion, kingdoms and courts already fully developed and balanced.

So I'd say this could be your game. Welcome to try it out!

SO.

I have been trying to assess what DFO actually delivers for a few days. I don't want to try it out myself at the moment since a) I have no time b) I hear that only preorders work  and c) they seem to have a lot of bugs making it hard to play at all.

Has anyone tried? Didn't they promise like hundreds of skills? What did they actually deliver? All I hear is "just run around and kill every player you can" and "it is possible to build a settlement". Can anyone here sort things out?

Hugs etc,

Rolf

Yeahwell. In Wurm Online it is actually kind of central. It slows down item decay, and the bank is small. Only five items can be kept in the bank so you have to put your items somewhere.

If you put it in a house and lock it up the items are better protected from theft and decay. And if you put them in a chest that is also locked you increase protection.

Wurm doesn't have a lot of decoration yet but you can paint the walls of the house.

Not sure you understand but items on the ground don't decay instantly in Wurm. The reason is that you should be able to find old items lying around in hidden places so it is kind of a big deal.

But sure, player housing in other MMOs work differently so maybe this post is off topic in a sense. I don't much see the reason for it in those games either

Yeah, that and the food situation for newbies are two of the biggest turnoffs so we are thinking about what to do about it. I know food will change for sure pretty soon at least since I am about to code it.

Today is the day that Darkfall releases. A thread was created by a beta player showing the draw distance of players and creatures Darkfall. It was pretty good. Better than say Wow or Lotro:

Link to screenshot (There is a player at the light beam I think)

The game looks pretty good as well. In general I wish them luck even though a lot of our players will disappear for a while to try Darkfall. Hopefully they will return of course:)

The reason that I comment on Darkfall is that it is the game that has most features common with Wurm Online. The feature lists sure are lookalikes.

Even though DF is competition I am glad that it gains attention because like Wurm it represents what I think online games should strive for when it comes to player freedom and interactivity.

Anyways, I just HAVE to show the Wurm Online view distance as a comparison. The screenshot is from the test server with a crazy amount of manually spawned boats. If you can't see people on the boats it is because I don't think there are any. There's a troll down left at least. If you are waiting to play Darkfall you might as well download and try Wurm in the meantime so you have something to compare with. It's free(!)

Note that in order to try the full loot PvP in Wurm you have to purchase premium time in the web shop and head off to the Wild server. It's only 16x16 kilometers of terraformable war lands:)

Here's the screenie:

Allright - I think that Darkfall seems to have a fair drawing distance. It does seem better than in Lotro and Wow at least.

I didn't understand that this was the Darkfall discussion forums rather than some general discussion board so I removed a pic that I posted before.