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.

TOR's model is simple for most people: pay until you experience as many storylines as you want, then unsubscribe because World of Warcraft has your old guild and more end-game dungeons.

I always thought MMORPG.com had a standard for rating games. I guess I was wrong.

The gameplay got a 4 for being grindy and repetitive, yet there are many, many games out there that have gotten better scores - 6s, 7s, even 8s - for combat that is worse than what I've experienced in Dragona, especially since Dragona, a very PvP-centric game just by glancing at the forums, isn't all about PvE.

As for the polish, apparently this game isn't buggy to hell. I guess that's what the reviewer meant when he typed "At leasr it runs well." (seriously, at least have the sense to use a simple spell-check). And what else is polish supposed to do? It means the game runs as intended. You can't fall through the ground and get stuck on rocks. Polish should be much higher than a 5 then, because from playing World of Warcraft, I've gotten stuck in rocks and fallen through the ground multiple times (and any attempt to report this is responded to with "That's why you have a hearthstone.").

I don't know what MMORPG.com is doing. I don't know what this reviewer is doing. The reason I like TotalBiscuit is because when he reviews games, he admits that he has strong biases certain directions, and that's why he doesn't ever give games numerical ratings. He'll even retract videos if people offer valid counters to his claims against certain games because they're not informative enough. And what he never does is what this reviewer here did: take a quick look at a game, make very generic negative statements about the game, and slap on poor scores before experiencing half of anything (especially PvP).

I would have to disagree completely with this lawsuit. If you read closely, you find that DotA is UNDER LICENSE FROM BLIZZARD, which means the DotA community is accepted under Blizzard's license for Warcraft III despite radically changing the game. HOWEVER, this does not mean Blizzard actually licensed DotA; otherwise, they'd be able to charge for it or do whatever they want with it. They're suing Valve because DotA is associated with Warcraft III, which in turn is associated with Blizzard. This is a bit of a stretch, because DotA is not associated with Blizzard directly on a large scale; in fact, a large number of the fanbase for DotA exclusively plays that and not Warcraft III, at least from my experience with it. So I think DotA has grown so big that Blizzard can no longer claim connection with DotA. Of course, judges and most of the jury won't know that, so it all comes down to the charisma of the lawyers.

I tried Wurm Online before, and while I would say that it is in fact a considerably good game, the biggest turn-off (and the reason for all the criticism in the comments, probably) is that it has a RIDICULOUS learning curve. The tutorial teaches you nothing about actually surviving and finding food and water, and gives you not a drop of advice on combat; the only thing I recall is that it taught you how to make a fire before throwing you out into the wide world. I starved to death, needless to say. So while I like the idea of Wurm Online, it has to either be more user-friendly or, like EVE Online, give some serious tutorials on its more complicated aspects.

The art style looks great; looks somewhat like Bastion, probably because they're both hand-painted. The problem is that a lot of stuff in the game doesn't feel fluid... maybe it's the lack of animation, or the combat that is definitely not original in any way (lots of Flash games used this kind of combat in the past), but... as TotalBiscuit would say, the attacks don't feel like they have power behind them.

Originally posted by Fadedbomb

Originally posted by GrayGhost79

Originally posted by Fadedbomb

Originally posted by kakasaki

Originally posted by GrayGhost79

WOot, congradulations to Bethesda. We may actually have a chance at a decent FO MMO. 

If it is anything like the FPS crap Bethesda has done to the series, count me out. 

Don't forget that ANY Fallout MMO created by bethesda will be HIGHLY instanced. Meaning, a horrible Fallout MMO.

 

Hey Bethesda, how about ACTUALLY learning how create a HALF DECENT Fallout singleplayer.

 

 

OH, and Bethesda doesn't believe in MMOs. So we'll never see ANY Fallout MMO before a Morrowind MMO. Just saying...

oO! Umm....... considering Bethesda is known for their Sandbox and open world approach why would you go way out in left field and assume it will be highly instanced?

 

And yeah.... what are you basing the last one on? Why make baseless claims that make no sense whats so ever? 

Were you rooting for Interplay?

What do you mean "baseless" claims? The lead developer for Bethesda said NUMEROUS times that they do NOT believe in Online play, and are more interested in concentrating on making a GREAT singleplayer experience. This is nothing new to anyone who knows Bethesda.

 

That being said, I say it'd be instanced because thats where almost every single "SinglePlayer" gone MMO developer has gone with. They look @ "OpenWorld" sandbox and immediately think "fail". I'm not really sure what you're confused about?

 

So you're saying that NOTHING revolutionary can come out of this? You're saying that Besthesda has NO CHANCE of figuring out some new way? Sure, it's too early to get hopes up, but think about Guild Wars 2. People who have played it have already enjoyed it, and it's considerably more sandbox-y than most other MMOs, at least according to the information we have and the demos at conventions. Innovation is not dead yet in the MMO industry.

Anyway, I actually think it's ridiculous Besthesda had to pay Interplay $2 million. Considering that Interplay didn't meet the requirements set by Zenimax on keeping the IP for a Fallout MMO, they really shouldn't have gotten a cent in legal terms.

I saw this coming. Most people interested in this game found out about it, probably through the internet. That's why sales beat expectations by a long shot for the first few weeks. But after that, people who wanted it got it... and people aren't going to really find out more about it. Unlike World of Warcraft, which spread through word of mouth due to the relatively low (I mean relatively) amount of internet users in 2005, SWTOR doesn't have the benefit of attracting gamers not connected to the internet because that demographic is now almost non-existant.

I read The Hobbit when I was 9, and read Lord of the Rings when I was 11. I want to say that this game, while the setting and geography are ridiculously accurate for a video game, does not stay faithful to the meaning of the book at all. Lord of the Rings was not about people having to mow down hundreds or thousands of enemies to get a bit stronger, nor did this game make it very fun. The main story and side stories for the most part have no meaning and not much relation, and makes you wonder how people are losing the war if everyone is so amazing until they get a scripted death. Between linearity when they could add freeroaming in the main story, and freeroam when linearity is often better in class quests and side missions, I hated this game for its poor representation and lack of any meaning.

Originally posted by Scot

I am a little puzzled; these companies don't make these games so you can have something to do. They actually do want to make money, when posters sound surprised about that, it is a bit odd. It is as if you believe the MMO should actually be free to play. F2P is just a marketing name to make it sound less expensive.

Anyway, I am not a fan of the F2P payment method, if tokens are not needed they must be making their money another way, any ideas on how?

Yes, they will make you pay for something. Or try to. But games in general and especially cash purchases for F2P games are called "normal" goods. That means if people have a lot of money to spend, they will buy more of it, but if not, they won't bother at all. Now, considering most people who want to play F2P games aren't going to dedicate a monthly fee or plan repetitive fees to that game, this isn't exactly a very good business models (hence why it was removed), especially for a game that can be played for hours on end (unlike more casual games with similar models, like Spiral Knights). With average income going down overall in many, many large countries, any subscription or more-than-one-payment game is making less money than it did before. Thus, games like World of Warcraft are losing profit, and games like Lord of the Rings Online, DC Universe Online, Guild Wars 2 (even the pre-orders) are making more money (or projected to have high profit).

Honestly, I don't think WoW is making players leave the MMORPG genre.

They're simply switching over to other games. Now that DC Universe Online has gone F2P, it's gained a WHOLE TON of players. Also, I know people who have quit WoW for games like Skyrim, under the assertion that Skyrim will keep them occupied until Guild Wars 2 or SWTOR comes out.

Lord of the Rings Online is also doing pretty well, especially with its new expansion.

Honestly, I was extremely disappointed by Dragon Nest.

The characters are all jailbait, and the classes are terribly unbalanced in PvP. Never in a game should there be classes that do better in PvP and classes that do better in PvE.

Furthermore, I was disappointed by the gameplay. It just seems like a less fast-paced and mroe hotkey oriented version of Vindictus, and with more of a focus on trash mobs instead of boss monsters. When I first played it, it simply seemed like a 3-D version of Dragonica (as opposed to 2.5-D).

I uninstalled it pretty fast.

Oh no, a capitalist company only cares about how much money they make, This is news to me.

Wow, the developers of a free game don't know how their own game work.

This is amazing news to me.

(this post was sarcastic, by the way)

I think microtransactions are the way to go. Let's take a big example: World of Warcraft, which is rapidly losing subscriptions, and keeping few new subscriptions for anything more than a short period.

In today's market, when people are keeping their wallet close, and their checkbook closer, who's willing to shell out $20 to buy the box game, and then after that, $15 a month? And don't forget about another $20 for an expansion, and $20 for another expansion, and $30 for another expansion. It just doesn't make sense, unless the buyer seriously thinks he or she will be playing for a very, very long time (but if they follow MMORPG news, they probably don't). I mean, I thought I'd like World of Warcraft when I was younger, but after using one trial, I decided that I liked other MMOs, particularly Guild Wars, infinitely better. Good thing I didn't buy the game. Also good thing I waited until trials became boxed with every Blizzard game (got mine when I got Starcraft: Brood War, which I got later than everyone else).

Originally posted by Deleted User

I've been playing the closed beta here in europe and so far i'm not enjoying it due to the fact that the game isn't free roaming instant like Guild Wars and it is only mission base like RYL Online.

People's tastes to instanced games have been spoiled by Guild Wars. I didn't enjoy Vindictus or Dragon's Nest because they were all so linear.

After playing Free to Play Grinders like MapleStory and Rappelz, Guild Wars caught my eye. I ended up buying it and loving it... one campaign for four years, since money became tight for me after a little while. Now that I have enough money to get the other campaigns, Guild Wars 2 is right around the corner, so I think I'll save a bit.

I hope Blizzard realizes this is because they re-release old content and dailies all the time... and when they release something new, it offers little or no new mechanics that people have not seen before.

This game is old. Very old. Full of memory... and anger.

But seriously, what'd you all expect froma  game as old as this one. A handful of people still play Asheron's Call, and that game doesn't even have a skill system. Let that little community be... it's not like many people would even think of trying this game after seeing some screenshots.

I have to disagree about TV shows and movies. I heard some people got to meet the Hobbits at Comicon!