f13.net

Also, boating was added recently.

Linky
 (http://www.wurmonline.com/Game-News/a-new-land-is-discovered.html)

Yea, you really follow some Shit.

Anyway, we covered this game a Long Time Ago: http://f13.net/index.php?itemid=151

Edit: Note, we covered it, don't follow it. It was actually good coverage also. But man it's been a while. How do you even, you know, I don't want to know.

Yeah, i did a search and read that article, really good take on it all. Thats why i figured that they may be SOMEONE here that would appreciate a new untouched land. I would assume that the experience would differer greatly from the land thats been developed for a while. But it seems to take a premium account to use this new land, free to play players still need to go beyond the urban sprawl.


What are you trying to say to me? lol.

I gave up on this game when the stick I was using to make a campfire kept burning up. 

That game is like what happens when you add a levelling treadmill to every skill and every tech in A Tale in the Desert.  :ye_gods:

Foraging crushed my soul.  :|

This is the game where one had to make a vessel to drink out of before dying of thirst, correct?  It's bizarrely impressive.

Actually now that ATITD has stuck with those levels and those ugly garages, I'm tempted to give Wurm another try. It may not have the politics built into it, but damn if I like me some frontiersman action.

Nah, if I recall right, you couldn't actually DIE from hunger/thirst, you just got reduced to a crawling wreck unable to do anything but move until you got some food and water. And I don't think you needed a cup to drink, you just needed to find fresh water, which generally wasn't that hard.

The bit about taking an hour and a half to make some soup that was worth 2% hunger killed any interest I had.

Making every item need for soup from scratch (bowl, spoon, meats, fire, wood ETC..) is not the only way to do things. But i hear you.

I play Dwarf Fortress for my fix of bizarre autistic game fun and I get to do it for free.

Remember kids, sandbox is far superior to gaming worlds in every way.

Don't be a chode. There's examples of going too far to the extreme in either direction.

:oh_i_see:

So how many people are playing now and does it still take 10hrs+ to get self sufficient?

I gave it another try yesterday. There were a few newbies around, and a few established players. It wasn't dead, but it wasn't swarming either. I spent four hours and had gathered some nuts and berries, wood for a fire, and was just about to find some clay to make my pottery bowl. Four hours, and most of that time was spent watching myself fail at my skills.

It was still kinda fun, and it looked good, with some good ideas. I just wish there was quicker feedback. If we're to be struggling at the beginning, I'd like it to feel like a struggle, and not like a failure.

I was automatically put into a fairly developed server. I guess the new server is for paid accounts?

I think this is correct.

Link (http://www.wurmonline.com/newsmenu/game-news/128-wurm-gets-a-portal-server)

I genuinely belly laughed at this pic, especially the last line of the chat box

http://wurmonline.com/forum/index.php?action=gallery;sa=view;id=187 (http://wurmonline.com/forum/index.php?action=gallery;sa=view;id=187)

That is the best thing I've read all day.

That pig is hardcore!  :grin:

4chan folks tried joining last week.  JK server went Tango in Uniform with 425 users.

[20:42:41] You are halted on the way to the netherworld by a dark spirit, demanding knowledge.
[20:42:41] The spirit touches you and you feel drained.

You'd hope the spirit would at least call or something.

I'm kind of glad this game still exists and terrified of the people that allow it to keep existing.

Edit: Oh, and I edited the title of the thread to be a little clearer about what game this is concerning. Sorry Bloodworth, it just saves people (e.g. me) some confusion.  :grin:

Np!

If the GUI was less atrocious, it could be fun. I'm wearing out my right mouse button.

I still have the odd nightmare about trying to build a campfire and having all the sticks I worked so hard to get burning up before I could start a fire with them.  I was distressed!  This was just about the first thing I did, too!  It traumatised me.

I'm not playing WO because I'm too afraid my main will sneeze and incap himself.

Or that I'll get chub-rub from all the running around I do and DIE.


more power to these guys. I just find the learning curve too steep and wonder about where the fun is in all the simulation.

I tried before they had the starter area, and I just tried it again in the starter area.

I have to say, the starter world is a really good idea. The game is basically impossible for a new player without it because everything is so built up arround where you start in the older worlds that you can hardly find anything to do. (all the land is fenced off and what not)

But the game still has a fatal flaw... it sucks... hard...

You need to be able to have the basic means to  sustain yourself right off the bat. And you don't. You have 24 hours in which the bartender dude will feed you. After that you need to get food on your own. But, to get food you have to kill and butcher animals. Killing them is hard enough, but to butcher them you need a butchers knife. Which you do not start out with. To make one you have to mine. To mine you have to first look for an ore vein (dont even ask) then you have to start a tunnel... which takes 50 attempts at 30sec per attempt.

Then you have to start mining the vein for ore. After you have 2 ore, you are so encumbered that you can barely move... So now you have to smelt the ore. So you cut down a tree... cut it into logs... shave kindling... start a fire... put the ore into the fire... and an hour later you have smelted the ore. No kidding... you stand there for an hour feeding logs on the fire.  A real life hour...

Now, remember I said how this area is nice because it hasn't been totally taken over by the regular players like the other worlds. But this wont last long. Despite the fact that those players pay for access to the other servers, they have all descended on this one like locusts because it's undeveloped. There are already roads and villages going up. You'd think they would at least be helpful, but to be honest they were some of the snottiest people I've met in an MMO (and that's saying a lot) They would either flat out refuse to answer any basic question or would refer me to the wurm wiki which is about as helpful as... well... here's an example, I asked how to find clay, and they got annoyed, told me I was a noob and refered me to the wiki: http://wurmonline.com/wiki/index.php?title=Clay

yea...

There are no animations for your actions... except for walking... which, well it just sucks
They've gone out of their way to make even the most basic tasks has horrendously annoying as possible.
Their community is terrible. At one point I started mining in a tunnel that was already started and someone called a GM on me for mining "wrong" the GM said I wasn't violating any rules but maybe I should move along.
The death penalty is huge... you lose most of your items, and 1 point from every skill. (thats a lot)

I like the premise, but the execution is terrible.

oh, the sky looked nice.

I quit playing after I realized it would take me 10 hours to build a wall for my house. My life isn't so bad that I'd spend almost my entire day assembling a piece of wood.

Sounds like ATITD. You could try the erroneous information trick. Ask a question, and if nobody answers, say "Aha, figured it out," then make some shit up. I'll bet the whole server will jump correct you.

From what CharlieMopps said...

No. Just Fecking Fracking Fucking Hell no.

EQ just became the most user friendly MMO I've ever played.

Is this thing for MMMOO? (Massively Masochistic Multiplayer Online Only)

I actually left a lot out, there wasn't a moment of playing it that I ever thought that it was anything less than total crap. The only reason i kept playing was out of anger... I didn't want the horrible mechanics to defeat me.

But playing its like juggling hammers... just when you think you figure it out, you get smacked in the forehead again. After a while you're just too damned dizzy to keep trying.

Hilarious. Most games get easier to play over time. This one? Apparently it got harder.

I tried this game.  Spent an entire Saturday foraging for food and trying to cut down trees and fashion the wood into kindling.  Then I had to go dig up some clay from a nearby riverbed and try to create a bowl to eat from.  Making the bowl took most of a Sunday, because the fire needs to be really hot for a very long time in order to turn your clay into pottery.  This necessitates of course a certain amount of wood on hand, which I didn't possess the first time, so then was forced to restart the process from scratch.  Keep in mind all your skills start at 0 so there was a great deal of failures for even the simplest task in every chain.  Even completing something as simple as a "bowl" with low skill ends up being a very shitty bowl that negatively affects its use.  When I tried to log in a few days later I discovered that the innkeeper had decided to stop subsidizing my rations.

This means that you have a window (72 hours I think) with which you must become self sufficient with regards to food or you're finished.  I don't think you actually die from hunger and thirst, but it will make it all but impossible to complete any tasks.  That window must be wisely used, as even a veteran newb such as myself doing a modicum of internet research couldn't quite manage to feed myself with anything more than some shitty nuts and berries soup that restored my hunger levels by 1%.  This means that for your average new player, your first week of playing will be dominated by simply trying to feed yourself.

Growing bored of trying to feed myself, I started mining into a hillside, and accidentally tunneled into a pre-existing mineshaft.  Thinking it was abandoned, I quickly annexed all of the worthwhile belongings until a rather angry chap demanded his goods back, which I obliged.  He then gave me some words of advice, namely stay the fuck out of other people's mines.  On the way back to the starting area a young bear cub attacked me and despite my best efforts, I was thoroughly savaged, and died.  


So yeah.  It's a pretty fucking hardcore game.

Your first mistake was probably giving the miner back his shit.  You should of ran since you were starving.

owned

That would be why we added the fasting system, once you reach zero in food, you will begin to fast, at that point your food bar is full again, and all actions go at a normal pace again (down side it this eats away at your fat layer). We also removed bears from the Golden valley server, as most could not penetrate the bear defense rating. We have been having talks of removing the golden valley server and putting new players back on the premium servers, the main reason is our older player base works better at helping new players, than a server of new players attempting to solo the game :)

My best advice for any new player is, to hire yourself out for food and a fishing pole (something we may add to starting equipment). Many players will feed and pay you for some of the more menial tasks, such as ditch digging or wood cutting.

I also happen tot think a lot of new players get very confused at the pace of this game, most likely you should have made the fire, then gathered wood, made the bowl tossed it on the fire, then set out to gather more wood and forage some more. I see to many players gather everything, then attempt to sit there near the fire, starving, doing nothing while it cooks. The game is designed for multitasking, done right, you never run out of things to do.

However, new user experience is something I have personally been advocating change for internally.

Ditch Digging Online? Fuck yeah sign me up!

lol.

We have many activities for many people, however you would be surprised at some players love of Terraforming.

Terraforming in Wurm Online (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9NaxiE2y5Q)

You keep saying "we."  Are you affiliated with the developer in some way or do you just mean it the way people say "we won" when talking about their favorite sports teams?



Edit:

Also, it's all fine and dandy that if you're an expert at the game and you know exactly how to proceed to make things that multitasking is an option (although this does assume no one will steal your shit as you roam around doing other things and leaving it unattended--newbs don't exactly have fenced in enclosures) that best presents itself.  The problem is that making your own tools to make your own implements out of natural resources to cook your own food in a virtual world with a crude interface isn't exactly obvious for the un-initiated.  There should at the very least be some sort of encyclopedia (think Civilization) and preferably a guided system of quests/tutorial/etc. to get a new player on his feet.  Otherwise I dig the concept of the game.  It's just that trying to play it feels like studying or working rather than playing as you're immediately forced into subsistence foraging just to survive.

I am for about 6 months now, a developer. Specifically, I now have the role of lead artist and content manger. Other than that, I am currently helping to design the tutorial server that will replace golden valley. I hope, it will be a much better introduction to the basic mechanics.

That's cool.  Let it be known when the new tutorial server is up and I'll hop on and give it a try.

I would appreciate it. Currently though, we are reworking rules for things like deeds and such so that the potential for grieving is minimized when we start placing new players on the "live" server.

If its any consolation, your experiences is the same as my own, before joining the team I spent about a month playing as a normal user. Most of your complaints are also my own. But I will say, if it was not for other players lending a hand, I would have never made it very long as well. This is the main issue with the separate free to play server, almost all users are trying to go it alone, in a very community based game. With exceptions.

My brother played this game and he lasted a couple weeks instead of the weekend I managed.  He had himself a little hut surrounded by a fence with a gate.  He even had his own mine replete with its own gate.  He was really excited about the particular way  he had terraced his land that overlooked a bluff, with the mineshaft going down into the rock.  I think he quit because he felt like he had poured a substantial effort into the game and was rewarded by still only managing to produce shit-grade items.  

I think getting the newbs corralled on the same server as everyone else is a good idea.  I only ever encountered one other person in my time playing, and he wasn't very happy with me (I had no idea you could tunnel into other people's mines! I swear!)

The best thing about this game is probably that I never heard anyone talk about things they did in a game with such a sense of ownership.  It was as if he daily surveyed what he had wrought and was moved.

Something I have been addressing on the visuals side is visual distinction in items. A good number of wood items now reflect the wood used in its construction, they also now have visual aids to identify decay. Its been a reward unto its self for many. I also have been going through and improving many models and textures, and addressing some use issues, like items to small they go under the terrain.

Samples:




The main reason though, for placing players with those that are, well, invested, is because our stable player base is generally more helpful, they will throw high quality meals at you, give you tools and advice. Its best to return the favor in work, or some other means. Yes the life of a hermit will increase the difficulty ten fold.

You should of made that bigger.

You should learn how to use contractions and stop fagging up the thread.  Deal with your shame on your own time.

That's good shit.  It did seem there was a dearth of art when I played, and not nearly enough unique graphics.  I also like idea of visual decay aids and so forth.  If any game needed stuff like that this is she.


Edit:  Do they have different models for avatars now or are all males and females still identical?

Just read your edit. I completely agree with you.

When ever i can get some programmer time, I attempt to add helpful things, one such thing is the in game wiki search. Pressing F1 (i think) will open a small text field that will allow you to search for any item in game. Also, right clicking any item in game and pressing "whats this", also helps. This is the kind of thing i want to empower the player with in the tutorial. Instead of "Spawn in bear den, good luck!".

But, I agree. The GUI is something I have been wanting to address, visually and function wise. But its a small team, and we don't always agree, and something take priority.

I would post my GUI concepts, but I haven't made them public to anyone yet.


I will say. They are currently basic. However there is a male and female for each kingdom. Engine limitations stop/slow me from tackling that subject. Thankfully our client guys are looking into it. Keep in mind, this is a home brew engine, that is missing many, MANY things I would have taken for granted in a more modern engine. Its been an adjustment for me.

They didn't even really have a test server until I showed up.

...

I don't mean to come off dismissive of your efforts guy.  It sounds like you've already made great strides since last I played with such meager resources at your disposal, quite impressive.

dusematic, its not a problem, really. I have had to deal with worse during my time on this project, trust me :) I also didn't take it that way at all.

I like the new stuff. Big, fat, and warm. Wurm always looked sorta bleak to me, which isn't fun to play in.

Count me among those who didn't stick around because of unforgiving newbie experiences. I love survival-based games, love resource management, love frontiersman style gameplay. This just frustrated me because I failed and didn't understand why.

Thanks, the game does have this "Chubby" aesthetic I'm trying to maintain. I have gotten a few more contributors as well recently, so more good stuff other than my own should be coming down the pipe.

Also, if anyone is a java coder, we have need of a COLLADA loader and render, I hear the gig pays, unlike my position :)

And you can promptly go fuck yourself.

Why are you working on Wurm?

For a few reasons, to add to the list of my published games. To pad my portfolio with models and such. To gain more experience with a live playerbase. To further my hobbyist career. To practice my modeling skills while having a purpose. To gain more experience working with online collaborative environments.

hobbyist career is an oxymoron

I know right.

Actually in this case, updating the graphics and working on the behind the scenes may well be more fun that the "game" itself  :oh_i_see:

More power who want this level of sandboxing but the older i get the less time i have to pore into something this intensive.  If the bulk of the time spend in game is not an actual fun activty of some kind no thank you.
i.e. if things like foraging, digging holes,smelting and such were mini games ala puzzle pirates type rather than just watch and wait, that i could get behind. 

The first telling of ATitD was one of my favorite gaming experiences ever despite the hardcore grind.  I really wanted to love Wurm, but you all nailed the shortcoming of it.  You can't seem to get ahead and there just isn't any feedback to help you understand why.  I'd like to go back and give the game a second try, but the thought of wasting countless hours on a failure just seems too much like another job.

Stop.

I tried it just now, and the kindly NPC told me to go chop down a tree, which I dutifully set out to do.

Except every tree I tried to chop down, it told me would hurt my karma, and that wasn't allowed on that server.  New land speed record for removing a game from my computer.

Seriously. Of course, this game would make my real life seem downright blissful by comparison. I have hard enough time with real life and all its electric power, gasoline engines, running water, and grocery stores... I could not even imagine lasting an hour in this game. That said, it does sound VERY intriguing - in the same way rotten.com used to for me.

Grats Bloodworth, even if the game is an unfocused weird clump of a bunch of outdated design methodologies and other strange decisions.

Sounds like someone Bloodworth'd the whole game.

Good luck, MrB!  I'm very close to being almost certain that you'll make it fun!

lol. Thanks guys and gals. And EEK, red name.  :ye_gods:


Yes, that entire "tutorial" is going to go bye bye, and hopefully replaced by a more focused introduction.

He'd probably do very well making Daily Quests.

We don't do quests.

Hopefully one day middleware and software suites will advance to the point where niche games created by small teams are reasonably able to create content that is not only compelling but also inviting.  Then I could stop playing WoW whenever I got the itch to waste my life in front of a computer and start a virtual wilderness survivalist compound.  Dusetown:  where the Kool-Aid is always free!!

I was making a joke.  :wink:  I should of said repeatable quests.

Trying this out.  While java crashes far too much, I am addicted to pointless terraforming.

I'd ban people for this.

In fifth grade, my English teacher went to great lengths to stress the impropriety of the "should of" construction. "That's stupid," I thought to myself, "nobody says 'should of', they're saying 'should've', a contraction of 'should have'. Everybody knows that."

Of all the things I've become disillusioned of since I was ten, I think this one bothers me the most. Thanks, f13.

Wait till you find photos of the donkey show in yer mom's closet.  Then you can cry about disillusionment.

I like sharp burning sticks in the eye, I am going to give this a try.

Don't try to fight anything.  It's just not worth it.

Edit:  On another note I'm thinking of going for a subscription but I dunno how big and/or crowded the Freedom server is.  I'd like to go out into the middle of nowhere and dig up my fortress of solitude without some dipshit LOLIMINENEXTOU!

I just played about 25 minutes worth of eye gouging confusion. I'm gonna go back for more tomorrow after work.

Are there any plans to update the graphics?
To me, that's the only really glaring fault so far.  It's tough to sit in a world the amount of time this requires when the toons are walking abortions.  I'd rather just have an isometric view or text-based webmmo.

There is lots of room,(Older map dump) (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1725660/Screenshots/WurmMap.jpg) and a decent player count most times. We also just revamped how deeds work, and how much they cost the player.


Most of my time is spent updating graphics, debatable to if I have accomplished that :) However, player models are in the works, but the engine needs some hefty subsystems added before I can really move forward on that.

Are you the only person working on this game?

I'm the lead artist now, and I mange the content patches. I have a few contributors, but for the most part, yes I am the only "full time" artiest.

There is one server developer (also the owner), one client programmer (and one or two contributors) and me and a few contributors. Its a very small team, I also have the disadvantage of being on the other side of the world of most of them, so i have limited time windows to be able to talk real time to them.

Just means you have more creative freedom!

Just did a patch yesterday, though, the server code needs to catch up. One of the side affects of being on the other side of the world. Sometimes we leapfrog.

With a failure rate to rival eq in it's heyday, and subcombines on par with original eqII, and hours tending that damned campfire, I finally made an iron stone chisel!  Yay!  But I am unable to improve it despite having the iron lump "glowing hot" like it says I need.

I'm probably a masochist.  maybe.

I've played WURM several times over the years. I think its an amazing accomplishment for an indie game, and I'm glad to see Mr. Bloodworth improving the graphics, and the tutorial.

I think its biggest problem is that is that Rolf, the creator, isn't letting his creation go where it clearly wants to go. He keeps trying, and failing, to steer it back to his original concept.

He wanted to create a Medieval war simulator, and tacked on a gathering and building simulator to give people something to fight over. The snag is, the war simulation is not very good, but the frontier land simulator is about the best around at the moment. So he has attracted a bunch of crafters and explorers, but keeps driving them away by by pushing them toward his combat world.

Does this game have a high potential for greifing?

I'm not asking because I want to grief in it... I'm... just wondering because it sounds really interesting!   :grin:

Fuck I must be bored (and unemployed) because I'm about to play. I picture myself as Les Stroud ala Survivorman, running around the wilderness trying to survive.

Like I said before, it may be best to start the fire, and find some other things to do. Also, burn a log, many things are governed by wight in this game, and I think the max you can put on a single fire is a 24lb log, that should last a few hours, depending on the quality level of the fire. As far as smelting ore to lumps, of course a forge is more effective than a fire, but you do have to start somewhere. I think you may find other players are quite open to letting others use things like forges, especially if you exchange the helping hand. (Can I use your forge? Ill get you some wood?) Your lump issue may be weight of the lump in questions, OR the lumps quality level is less than that of the item you are trying to improve (Needs to be higher). It should tell you this in chat spam. "Examine" items to find out the quality levels and damage of it as well as description.

As far as Hellinars comments, I can't really speak to that, most is before my time. However I have added quite a few items and systems with Rolfs help that are untypically casual in comparison to other parts of the game (Shop signs, gift boxes, snow men, X-mass tree), as well as improving things like names on items on hover or in lists (IE: "Lamp", is now "Copper hanging Lamp" ETC..). All for the better I think.

I also happen to feel that as we add more items to make, the ramp on time/effort may be decreased, "Grind" wider instead of steeper.


4Chan has been an invaluable tool in testing this regard (  :awesome_for_real: ), and we do have a permanent Bro population. Over the years, Bros have indirectly "tested" avenues for grief and most, have been addressed.  There are still some creative ones out there on our Non-pvp servers but for the most part it is safe, and we do have GM's for the extreme cases.

However on PvP (Server name "wild"), stealing, lock picking, killing, raids, and destruction of land and goods is game play. You should see some of the fortifications players have come up with there.

If you are near a starting area, there are probably public facilities you can use (forge, mine).  Smelting ore and forging from a campfire is terribly inefficient time and fuel wise.

A fire can hold a max of 20 kg of material, whether it is log, wood scrap, or peat.  generally when you start a fire, you should probably add 18-20 kg of material, then when you get the 'wild flames' message when you examine the fire, add another 10.

In order to improve a metal tool, both the tool and the iron lump must be glowing from heat.

As Mr. Bloodworth says, multitasking is key;  if you are waiting for something, why not work on something else you need to do for a bit?  Carve a few shafts or saw a few planks, save your woodscrap, combine em into 20 and 10kg packages, and start a fire/light a forge/smelt iron/mine iron.

Just a warning though;  you need several tools for imping and finishing, and the most annoying thing about imping/finishing blacksmithing and carpentry items is having to possess an animal pelt for polishing.  These are harvested off of various wild animals using butchering skill...but you dont start with a butchering knife.  You may be able to get a low (20) QL one for free, or luck into one.

Two other things:

The wiki can be an incredible resource to answer questions
Keybindings were added fairly recently...use them and save your wrist the pain (check wiki for setup instructions).

Some good to know info there.  I built myself a forge yesterday, so I'm out of the campfire hustle for now (just have to find where I set up camp as a champ goblina dn champ wolf have been farming me and I really don't know my way back well)  I do multitask though.  While tending to the campfire I was mining and digging and basically completely destroying a small section of terrain "re-ordering" it.  And yes, key binding is worth its weight in gold.

I have to say, of all the mmos out there Wurm has the most potential to really change things IMO

the game has 2 major problems:
1. The animations/graphics have to get finished. Seriously, sliding around like that is a joke. I know its a lot of work, but snap to it.

2. Your deed system is your primary source of real money. Yet, in order to buy a deed I have to circumnavigate the globe to some far away vendor. When my deed expired while I was in africa I was done. You need to fix this. You should be willing to take my money and give me a deed no matter where I am in the world.

and a 3rd thing that would really help but is not required: make the whole underground thing better. I should be able to build rooms, dungeons, even monster spawns to protect my resources.

If it is any consolation, I have passed on your feedback. I think you make a great point with #2. Number 3 is something I have thought about for a while.

#1, technically we have animations, though, not many, and they are not the best. Your settings may have them turned off however. Its more of a tech limitation than a lack of want. One of the reasons we want to move to COLLADA.

Have they thought about actually running through the common complaints and giving the reasons for why they exist or how they can be remedied by COLLADA? They may still hate it, but at least they understand why now.

Yep. We want to make the switch, but we need someone to code the loader (with the necessary features) and make changes to the render. As I have said, this is paid work. So, its a matter of time, and getting someone with the skills to do the gutting and implementation. Not a small task.

Keep in mind, this is a home brew engine, its raw openGL within java using an dotXSI loader (Even this is minimal in feature support) and such, also a commercial endeavor, so a good deal of the open utility's we could leverage are not compatible legal wise. The original creator of the engine is has gone on to do the minecraft (http://www.minecraft.net/) project.

Its not a willingness issue anymore, it's a resources. I already made the winning argument :)

 :ye_gods:

I haven't built a house yet, but I've almost terraformed half a mountain.  Digging, mining, paving, building fences.  Love it.  Combat sucks.  Foraging/Botanizing and then trying to get meat to cook also sucks, but at least it gives me several fastings once I've gone through that bullshit.  Kinda wish there was a stone tool option.  I don't see why I couldn't cut up an animal with a flint knife, or find some obsidian where lava meets water (hell I'll drag some barrels to dump on the lava if need be.)  And farm/grinding to make a fishing line seems a little extreme.  Making primitive fishing tools isn't hard.  Spears, snares, even a simple horsehair line on a stick can keep a person fed.

Oh yeah, pelts are suck to get.  Most of the items I've crafted are stuck needing a pelt.   

Not too sure what happened, but I logged on this morning dead, and spawned on the Freedom server.  Everything is gone. =p

We had a database hiccup yesterday. I am not really in a position to detail what happened, its outside my knowledge. GMs and such are working to help people that were affected. We even had some players spawn as zombies, it was amusing. Also the starter town on GV is getting a revamp as well.


Oh, as a side note, we may have new animations coming, so make sure you turn those on.

Let's just say that it's Bloodworth's fault.  It's more fun that way.   

My main question is if this is temporary and we'll be going back to GV world (I'm still not completely done terraforming that mountain dammit) or if I need to start over and look for a new place to set up shop.

Are you sure you are on freedom? Because as a side affect, we took the opportunity to make all players on golden valley part of the "Freedom" faction (instead of any of the three factions). Most data was restored, I think terrain data is just fine. You just may not be where you thought you were.

Ok, I'll look around.  All I know is I spawned in the middle of desolation and my chat tab says freedom.  Thanks.

Yeah, the starter town Glitterdale got hit hard. We have people using this opportunity to remake the starting area better. It sounds like you are still on GV, as we haven't had any reports of GV players on other servers.

Of course none of us are happy this happened, but we are rolling with the punches as is often required with indi endeavors.

On a side note, you should see more aggressive critters, as a good deal of the passive animals were lost (Player cattle and horses and such), so our spawns are once again cranking out critters, both passive and aggressive. So, pelts for you :)

If you can find your place again, I may come visit :)

I have successfully cut down a tree.

Sadly, in doing so, I became absolutely lost, and ended up getting eaten by some sort of wolf.  I respawned somewhere, and found a nearby town-thing.  Supposedly, there's a bar with free food, but damned if I could find it.  So I has a campfire, and a shitload of clay.  I can not eat the clay, though.

Some are a bit old. But perhaps this will help you a bit. (http://wurmonline.com/wiki/index.php?title=Tutorials)

I think the first thing to concentrate on is to find an iron vein and start trying to make a butchering knife.  You're going to need meat before you run out of fastings.  Being stuck in starvation mode turns everything to shit.

Man I know I get taken as a little bit of a virtual world guy around here, and no real offense intended toward Bloodworth, but what the fuck makes someone want to play this? No one has described anything so far that sounds the least bit related to "fun" as I understand the concept.

I like the terraforming and I like the crafting (though the failure rate is kinda masochistic)

I definitely didn't want to demean what you guys have done. The game is INCREDIBLE given the resources you have.

Nah, its ok, I don't take things as such.

I'm still trucking along, just did a test server update yesterday, all the trees have been completed as far as revamps (Excluding some tweaks) and all the log models as well have been revamped. We made some good savings as far as texture use going from 20 textures to 10 and having trees, felled and logs use the same set of textures, though the higher fidelity may nullify that.

I have a new contributor that seems to be skilled, and, able to work with our very proprietary animations system (I have no pipeline from my app *Sadface*), so I hope to see some progress on that front. If he can indeed figure out our system, this removes one roadblock for revamping the player models. On a positive note, it seems our server sends an animations request for just about EVERY action in wurm, so it seems it was just a case of art as to why things are so "stiff" as people say, however our timing system could use some work.

Anyway, animations, its been an adventure figuring out the system, as you can imagine there is very little technical documentation (Read: NONE). If there are any Java/OpenGL programmers here, I am sure we could use more client help. I know I have a back up of features I have requested.  :grin:

All player made.


EDIT: Also, those are some of the new trees, grass and other models changes we have been making. We also have a basic form of occlusion now. Yeah, I know. Some mine, some contributors.

That moon is terribly close. Do you have tsunami simulation?

Please don't give anyone any ideas, the forest fires were bad enough!

The games fun because YOU can redesign the environment. Want a road from your house to town? Mine some cobblestones get your cart and start paving. Want a castle with parapets and drawbridge? Get to work! Want to make a simple farm and raise livestock? Build a fence!

The problem is the game is not finished and doesn't really have lore. It needs history, ruins, etc...
once the Caves are made more usable, the animations are finished and it's got lore written, then this is a commercially viable game.

Still need to make it easier on new players though. It's way to easy to get yourself into an endless death cycle when you start out.

MBW is your Champion then!

In a game where it takes hours just to feed yourself, that is a pretty amazing compound.  If I had fonder memories of my first attempt at this world, I'd almost brave a second attempt. 

That's a small one.

It only takes hours if you are alone and new. The skill system has a rather hard ramp at first, but you do become rather proficient at around 20 (current skill cap of Golden valley). As you can see though, that was made by about 4 people working together, now they have the ball rolling (cattle crops and such) feeding themselves is not really an issue. Just as a tip though, water is more important as far as stamina regain than food.

I am not in any way saying our new user experience is fine, because its not IMO. Just saying Team > Solo, and Social > Hermit (unless you like that level of challenge). We also sell coin in our shop, and its the currency used in game, and is also able to be gained in game from others. So you can offset your starting hardship with a few dollars, or working for others. We have many players that they pay for premium from in game efforts, the opposite is also true.

I'm really not trying to shill here, so if this needs to move to game design and development thats cool. I just post because I am sure someone may be interested in my adventures.

Those screenshots really look awesome, and make me long for the day when you guys get a solid newbie experience set up. I don't want to sour my experience in your world while things are in an unfinished/difficult state.

The way Wurm is, the newbie experience will always be a bit of hell, but joining a village can go a long way toward mitigating that, they will give you nice tools and have good supplies you can use until you become more self sufficient (this will only work once they allow non-prems onto freedom).  Also, multitasking cannot be stressed enough.

Lets say, while wandering, you got some sprouts you want to plant in a certain area.  If the tile is just grass, its a good idea to forage/botanize the tile before planting.  If there's a tree in the way, you cut it down and chop it up.  Once you are done, you get your trusty cart and haul the logs back to your little home base area, make charcoal piles out of the full sized logs and set the partial logs aside to process into planks, shafts, higher Q kindling for making cc piles, etc.  It takes a long time, but it maximizes your efficiency;  even if you are practicing skills you don't plan on using, they still increase your base stats.  In the scenario above, you are working foraging, botanizing, forestry, gardening, charcoal making, carpentry, and woodcutting.

Also, CC piles are a good long lasting light source you don't have to worry about feeding constantly, since night is actually dark. :)  Even if you dont plan on using the charcoal to make steel, you can use the tar as fuel for lamps and lanterns, and the ash to make lye to turn hides into leather, should you come across any.

Holy shit. :ye_gods:

Yeah, basically.  I actually don't *mind* having to do all that stuff, hypothetically, but its knowing what the hell I'm supposed to do that is difficult.  I'm not even talking about people that say "go do this" or quests, or anything of that nature at all, but I don't even know what is actually possible/built into the game mechanics without extensive reading of the wiki.  I probably need to try talking to more people in game, and so on and so forth.

Yeah, that's the impression I got. I was reading through some of the newbie stuff today and realized after about 20 minutes that only twice did I see a key referenced.

The wiki, in game and out, is something we need to clean up. For the most part though, the wiki is player base maintained, with exception of the ones that is read by the client for "what is this" info.

Also:


My art work its technically going to be published in PC gamer. Not sure when they did the review, I wish they would have waited for more updates  :sad: And of course I don't deserve any of the credit, and I did not make this happen, but, hay..thats my grass!

Yeah, this is the third time I've come back to wurm, so I have a bit of an advantage.  The first time I played for a month before I realized I was spending 8 hours a day staring at a rock wall to make a tunnel over 200 tiles in length.  I had joined a small village, and it was interesting, but meh.

Second time, I lasted all of 4 hours before some chat admin muted me for the phrase 'carnal gymnastics' when the topic was animal husbandry and breeding.  That was crap.

This is the third time, and I'm doing my best to do different things depending on what I need to do, as well as avoid the mutehammer.

Congratulations.  That's pretty cool, even if you never make a penny from it.

So far, I've realized a pelt was the biggest cockblock, one I got a shitty dog pelt I managed to boost the quality of all my shit, make some chainmail so the swarm of wolves no longer anally rape me, and my terraforming aspirations have become even grander!  I'll put up a screenshot in a couple days once I finish some roads and maybe a house.

Its the little things.

Another time lapse video. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQptcLy3E8k)

Pro tip:  To combine multiple items at a time, activate one item, then right click on the +/- expand icon of the pile and select combine.  This would have been nice to know earlier

I have to ask.  How much of that person's real life time was spent doing the tasks that were in the video?

Well, time is 8x real time, and that's almost 2 full days (gamewise) so probably 5 to 5.5 hours real time.

Three hours between two people. AFAIK. It was the beginning terraforming for the PC gamer village, and you don't see the areas off screen or any of the other stuff they are doing.

That's a lot less than I would have expected given experience in ATitD.  Not bad, really.  I was expecting something pretty crazy. 

Here is an example of our somewhat steep skill, and QL system.

You, make a forge, this forge has a 10 QL (Quality level), Melting ore, into usable "lump" will most likely take over an hour (Keep the fire fed, two 24 wight logs one every half hour will do) to change or reach the right temperature, HOWEVER, improve that forge, or get a better one that is say QL 80, it will take about 10-15 minutes for an ore to become a lump.

A High QL axe will damage a tree more per chop than a low one, so on and so forth. Skills are somewhat the same way, axe use will increase damage to the tree, and also shorten the time per chop required (The action progress bar).

It is steep at the beginning, but this is why you will see many recommend working with others, because that QL 80 forge has no requirement to use, none. In fact I can't think of one single thing that has a "skill level to use" requirement.

So, my point being, you gotta work as a serf before you can be a lord  :grin:  But working with someone who has good tools and such, will really shorten the skill gain time, because the pay out for actions is the same, if it takes you an hour, or ten minutes. You also gain skill by improving things, not just doing combines.

I gotta question for ya; when I get premium do I take what's on my character with me or do I start "naked" on the freedom server?

Skills transfer (GV is limited to 20 in skills and 30 favor), items: Only what you carry, there might be an item count limit of 100. IE: No carts full of stuff, just what is on your person.

Ok cool, that sounds reasonable.  I want to get some more skills to 20 or so before I head over though, but it's good to know I won't lose my tools (especially the fucking pelt)

That limit on 20 for skills?  Yeah, that applies to your stats as well, they wont be going over 20 and you will miss out on those gains as long as you are capped.

My advice is to start preparing your move kit and go once you are done;  work on your skills on the prem server so you dont lose out on stat gain.

If you want to join a village, ask about freebears, but be warned...we are on the opposite side of the world from samling.  Lost all my stuff trying to get there, bvut they replaced it with better stuff :)

Spoilered for size, but here are a few screens of my work area.  Lots of layers so it's hard to get a good look from first person perspective.

Makes me want to play,  but it was a bit overwhelming when I tried.

Nice site.

Also, it would be awesome to see a Batcounty on the map :) you guys and gals should band together.

Just as a tidbit, our client should be seeing a huge performance upgrade with all the changes we have been making to that ends (client, server, models), we now have hardware occlusion!

Hey bloodworth, noticed something a couple of nights ago, wonder if you could answer a question.

We've noticed that the bulk bin graphics change the more stuff you put in em (a cool touch!).  The other night though, I could have sworn that my rock shard pile was getting bigger the longer I was mining.  Did you guys make art changes so that as a pile gets bigger the graphic changes?

If not, thats too bad, it would be kinda cool. :)

Bins yes ( and thanks :) ), piles not that I am aware of, however the single "shard" looks close to the "pile" version.

I like watching numbers and resource piles grow.

I can go out of my way and totally hook you up with a free trial on our very private and exclusive Golden Valley!

S'alright, I played Wurm. I liked the concept but had difficulty with its implementation at the time. It's very much a virtual world as opposed to a game, and I enjoyed that, but at a certain point spending 5 hours terraforming or building a hut didn't seem fun (though it was rewarding!)

Color coding wounds is a nice touch but holy fuck what did you do to mines. 

Oh yeah, willows look a lot better.

This is almost the end of the major tree overhaul. As far as mines go, I'm going to go with "made them more awesome" unless you want to tell me what you mean.

Also, feedback like this should really go on our Official forums, I think, I mean, unless nobody cares here.

Pitchfork Media: A Portrait of Wurm Online (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/03/24/pitchfork-media-a-portrait-of-wurm-online/)

I enjoyed that writeup right up to the part where the virtual sociopaths took their stuff.

Free for All: A look at WURM Online (http://www.massively.com/2010/04/20/free-for-all-a-look-at-wurm-online/)

Why the fuck isn't there an "everything goes 10x faster" server for all the people who, y'know, would consider playing Wurm if it went 10x faster?

Then it becomes more game and less Survivor: Brittania simulator.

I didn't say 'easier'.  I said 'quicker'.  In the context of Wurm, I think there's a difference.

Also, what's to be lost by having both?  Let people pick the server type that suits them best.

I think how time is treated in a game versus a simulator is lost on you.

Again, even if that would make Wurm more 'game' and less 'simulator', what's to be lost by having both?

Maybe -- just maybe -- in addition to being an interesting simulator, with a bit of rules tweaking Wurm would be a damn fun game.

Why not give that a go on an alt-rules server?

Additional time and resources spent for servers and design decisions, splitting an already segmented population (I think. If not, replace segmented with minuscule) into different play spaces, serving as a detriment to the spirit of the game, as nasty a spirit as that may be.

A server where everything goes at 10x speed wouldn't 'split the population', it'd probably at least quadruple their number of paying customers.

Also, not design decisions... design decision, singular.  10x speed.  Everything else works exactly the same.

Also, the spirit of the game is "an interesting open world where you can do pretty much anything".  The game punching you in the dick if you want to play in their sandbox is not necessarily part of the spirit.

So you want faster dick-punching, not less.

Also, your description of the spirit would be great for a single player game and fall apart in an instant in an MMO setting.

I think, considering the amount of time it would take to actually build a wooden cart, learn to swordfight, or heal even a moderate wound in real life, it is lost on you.

Realistically, the timescale differences between Wurm and a game like WoW, when compared to real life, are a drop in the hat.

Things take longer in a simulator, tuning more towards realistic representation of time to complete an action.

In games, actions are sped up in the interest of fun or arcade feel.

Making things faster in Wurm makes it more like a game.

Keeping things as they are in Wurm makes it more of a simulator.

How MUCH it is a game and how MUCH it is a simulator was something I never stated. What neither implies is how easy the game is, which was the point of my retort.

Yes, and and both Wyrm and WoW are so very far into the game side of the scale that you're basically a few burnt synapses away from playing Quake.

Simulationism can be a nice addition to gameplay. Simulationism for the sake of simulationism, the kind of realism argument you're blathering about, is a pursuit of pure neckbeardery doomed to obscurity.

I don't give a shit about measuring the amount of simulation in Wurm and placing it on a scale of Game vs. Simulation. I don't even know why the fuck you're so pissy. I was pointing out how Captain Rage Suggest took my analogy about games' vs. simulators' management of time and translated that to something about difficulty rather than addressing his concerns about time, as was my intent. The analogy being relative, and my explanation about it to try and get you to understand my intent, seems completely lost on you. You didn't even give me anything to work with in response to try and understand your point of view. You just veered into bugfuck stupid land.

I don't know what baggage you're bringing into the thread but you should have checked it before boarding.

The only thing I'd change about the speed is combat.  It's so uninspiring you'd think they'd want to skim past that.  Let me get to treating my medium wounds a little faster, thanks.

Exactly.  Or, put another way, the time required to play Wurm IS the dick-punch to me.  I don't mind the harsh, unforgiving nature of the game.  I don't mind the game bending me over and fucking me up the ass from time to time. I want a tough game. I'd just rather it didn't take 20 goddamn hours to craft the sharp wooden stick they're going to fuck me with.

Tons of people hear about Wurm and get really excited about the concept, until they hear how much time it's going to eat up to try anything.  They don't want the game to be easier, per se, they just want it to take less time.


Flight Simulator has a hardcore, dedicated sub-community that flies real-time flights across the country with air traffic control and everything.  They sit there for hours at a time. Thankfully, that's not the only option available for how to play Flight Simulator.

This is probably the best summary of Wurm I've seen.

Ooooo, now I get to play how newbie fucked up.   :awesome_for_real:

Wow, ok.

I hate to say it (and realize I have very little involvement in past designs), but at higher skill levels (that simply increase success or creation and or combines) you can make a cart in about a minute (Action timer).

Of course acquiring the materials is a different story, but again, higher skill does in a lot of cases equate to faster completion time, almost literally in some cases (action timer is reduced).

Thing is, we do not block anyone from trying because of skill level in the required schools, you just fail a lot, and materials are lost. There are two principles at work here I think, one, is the range we use, at the lowest levels, you are a bumbling fool, at mid levels its about as competent as a journeyman crafter, at the highest levels its god like (smiting a sword blade in moments).

The second is the reinforcement of teamwork/team play and economy. As with crafting, we do not block you from USING anything as well because of skill level (there may be an exception here, religion and subsequently magic requires you maintain favor with a god, and do no actions contrary to that god, essentially an alignment system, this also goes for champions, the religious fighting class for all intents) My pint in bringing up this, is that you can start day one, and buy anything you need from others and use it, you just may suck if the skill is low.

Anyway.... I personally feel the main issue we have, is explaining things to players (Like sleep bonus (http://wurmonline.com/wiki/index.php?title=Sleep_bonus)). We know this, and are in the works with a completely revamped tutorial (in fact, a entirely new system is being made that reusable and configurable (http://www.wurmonline.com/blog/oddments/rounding-off-mission-code/))

Soon as that tutorial is finished, I will pick it back up and trying again.

I logged in for the first time. I was asked to go find a tree. Apparently there wasn't a tree for several square miles. I stopped right about there.

Could be worse, coulda been 100 trees you cant find

I want a game LIKE this: open world, lots of crafting options, ability to build things and make a mark on the world. The implementation is gut-wrenching and time-consuming though, and they throw EVERYTHING at you immediately instead of easing you in. The game reminds me what Ultima Online would have looked like in Everquest's engine. Everything feels 10 years behind the curve.

The volume of new users tend to makes trees extinct in the area :) But, I am expanding the tree area right now around the start deed.

Just a hint of self promotion. Sorry.

PC Gamer Reader's Top 100:
(http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q217/M_the_C/WurmOnline.jpg)

PC Gamer to Wurm.  Only premium members may have a rating higher than 20! ;)

They actually have two full towns, one on our free server, and one on the freedom server.

Time to pat myself on the back.  I think I'm about done with GV.  The terraforming I've been doing has been attracting new neighbors which subsequently leaves me with less space to bend to my will!

After setting my own place up, I decided I needed to make an extension of the three lane road down towards sepadale

I was originally going to extend it all the way to the coast, but there was too much clutter and a few neighbors in the way so I just decided to make a park.

It's hard to properly screenshot the area as I have a lot of nooks and crannies and hidden paths under trees and large bushes but you get the idea.  
Finally I decided to make something useful for my neighbors, a public park!

I had to go back pretty far to get it all (I found splicing the images doesn't work all that well from the road pics) but you should be able to see most of it.  there's a 5x5 area for most types of crops, and people have flocked to it to get their farming skills up and have a better chance at finding seeds for their personal farms.  I'm pretty proud of the work there.

But I think it's about time to hit freedom and see what I can do about some untamed corner.  This really is more fun than it should be though =P

That's awesome!

Bloodworth - Hey, love the change you guys made to forgaing and botanizing;  knowing that a square has already been picked clean certainly saves a lot of time and is something I thought should have been added when I first tried it out two years ago :)

Also, can we talk about coal piles?  There are some things about them that just don't add up.

That was me. Glad you like it.

Coal piles should be discussed in our forums.

That's hot. 

Great, I'm going to be branded a heretic because I actually collected data on coal burn rates vs. production vs. overall quality. :P

Guess I will give this a shot.  What exact does premium time get us? 

Ya'll need to doll up the sign up page.

its a different, much larger, server
your skills can go above 20 (cap on premium server is 100 but its a bell curve so it gets ridiculously hard to raise it the higher you go)
subbing also gives you a small amount of money you can use to buy a deed
a deed prevents other people from messing with your land and also gives you guards that will kill mobs that wander on

I'd recommend starting on Golden Valley... if you don't like it there you wont like the premium server. Find someone helpful that will answer your questions. you'll have a lot.

Golden valley is also 3X the decay rate of premium servers, and deeds all but stop decay as well.

Can I destroy a fence I created but no longer want on Freedom?

I think thats a deed right, but I'm not 100%.

Gratz on being voted the 20th best PC game of today (http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=243708), between CiV IV and L4D2.

Second post on this page. They just copied the print list.

First Tutorial (http://www.youtube.com/user/abrythenabry#p/u/5/HzgaNCbuq9Q)
Fighting (http://www.youtube.com/user/abrythenabry#p/u/4/Or20FjAYq-s)
Making A Forge (http://www.youtube.com/user/abrythenabry#p/u/3/ilqduqiOmN4)

 :why_so_serious:

haha what

No one should have any trouble doing the tutorial now (finding trees/foraging and such), updated tutorial text is next. Progress.  :grin:

Feedback welcome.

Perhaps I'm rubbing off a bit on others.  :grin:

Anyway, rather major set of changes happened Tuesday, followed by more today.

Wurm online patch notes. (http://www.wurmonline.com/newsmenu)

Also, one of our staff did a small write up on some of the recent graphical changes (http://www.wurmonline.com/newsmenu/game-news/312-wurms-changing-landscape).

Various new object images:

A few changes of note, there is no more skill decay. Also, previously, if you failed at combining two items (say a hammer head and a shaft) one item would be destroyed, this is no longer the case, both items just get damaged now. You need to repair them before trying again, but no longer do you need to start from square one.


Dolled.


"Plans" can now be removed by the owner.


This is no longer and issue. :)

Glad you're cleaning things up to make them more user friendly without making it a cake walk. Has the tutorial been updated? That was the thing that kept me from playing. It didn't work and I ended up wandering off and getting bored because I didn't understand half of the systems.

It has a bit, but the new grand, step-by-step one is ill say 50% constructed, but wholly untested. And considering we have had to make an entire .."scripting" layer (uses an in game GUI that GM's can use to to, almost anything) its going well.

The current start area has been revamped, trees are now auto spawned, we provide forges and ovens as well as a mine I keep stocked with iron to make your basic tools. Its kind of a big, protected confined noob area where you can bootstrap yourself in before heading out. We have also added more PA's (Player assistants) to help with the PA-chat (new user question chat).

So, movements are happening. When the new tutorial is done, players will go through a step-by-step tutorial, in multi-stages, once completed be whisked away to the freedom server, Golden valley will be no more. But having new users mix with old users and premium users has worked well in the past, it also consolidates our support staff.

Ruh Roh.

That was a user poll, blame those that voted I guess.

I gave it another shot about two, three weeks ago.  It was much improved, and I was actually able to figure out what the hell I was doing this time around.  The only thing that kept from tossing them some money was the overcrowding.  I just wanted to build a little tower, or something, out in the middle of nowhere, and then do my thing by myself, but I couldn't find any nowhere to hang out in. 

This might be worth its own topic, but... is there an obivous solution to the UO/Lebensraum problem? Either the world is huge and empty and there's plenty of room to set up your own space but nobody will ever see it, or the world is cramped and there's nowhere for you to stake your claim. Vanguard being an example of the former, and UO being the obvious latter.

In fact I'd go so far as to say both UO and Wurm seem to have reached an ugly middle ground where they feel simultaneously crowded and empty: endless, crowded development with no life and no soul. Like walking around an office park on a weekend, or suburban subdivisions at night. It's understandable why so many other games have chosen to instance personal space.

One solution might be a middle ground: instanced neighborhoods. Each instance of Village X has room for 10 people; every player has control over their own little nook, but they only see (by default) the copy of the Village that they share with 9 other randoms. If they want to visit someone else, it's a simple matter of selecting the relevant instance (with a search-for-players option) when zoning in. Put a minor upkeep cost in mostly as an activity check; players who fail to pay their upkeep are evicted, freeing up space in old neighborhoods for new blood.

The number of players is pulled out of my ass, but you want to share the area with some people so you still the houses of other players, just not the whole playerbase. The reason for that is that if you never see anyone outside your guild/friends, the world feels really empty (See: EQ2 post guildhalls). You could even have villages of different sizes; the small 10 person village, an isolated 4 person hamlet, a massive 50+ player city, etc.

Golden valley is a trial server, it is packed, but its also 1/10 the size of the live (premium) servers. Its also going away and all new users will start on the "Freedom" (PvE) server. And yes, its kind of a wasteland of urban housing, even at three times the decay rate and no deeds or other decay stopping or slowing features.

More new wall shots.
(http://i901.photobucket.com/albums/ac218/Iorail/Wurm/wurm201009142251.jpg)

Hubs.  Easily reachable distant towns where some form of activity is present to draw people, but vast space between them to allow for that emptiness.  That's how I like it, at least.

The trick is making people want to spread out between those hubs.  SWG managed to split people across planets, but they tended to congregate in only a few places on each one.

ATiTD managed this just fine.

Helping The New and The Old (http://www.wurmonline.com/blog/gamedev/helping-the-new-and-the-old/)

Quit talking about the new tutorial and finish it. I desperately want to like Wurm, but it really needs a tutorial for those of us who don't have Aspergers.

ASS BURGERS!

I hate you. Thank god I didn't read that while at work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzgaNCbuq9Q

I registered and will download this to try it out once I get home from the hospital.   No updates in a few days. Ppl still playing?  I'm curious to ck this out.

I am somewhat struck by the notion that MineCraft is Wurm Online with all the bad design and graphics swapped for a good design and art style. Large world + simple mechanics + accessibility + gamer culture art design = massive appeal and money hats.

The only limitation to your ability to create isn't a number but your imagination. Both feature laborous grinds to accomplish big things though.  :awesome_for_real:

I heard that they guy who makes Minecraft used to be on the Wurm team, I have no idea if that is true though.

I really dig the fact that this game is in java and you don't need to download this huge stand alone game and such.  I don't know about others, but I don't expect the graphics to be something like Aion considering its a java game.

Yes.

I registered and payed some money at some point in time, and I would have tried Wurm longer than 15 minutes if it didn't stab me in the eyes with "Red hot pokers of sit around and wait."

I did a zombie event last night on the freedom server.

Image thread: http://wurmonline.com/forum/index.php?topic=42597.0

Best part was, a good portion of it was testing for our new quasi scripting system thats being used in the tutorial and for the upcoming epic* servers. I was able to use triggers for sounds, spawns on actions, transportation of players, and special FXs ETC...

I didn't break the server!




* Epic servers are rolling environments with world events and other triggered goodies that gets reset and has accelerated advancement.

Wurm Online - building a house (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UffeI4MepAk)

Wurm Online - weather time lapse  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oB5IUv4DGJU)

PC Gamer Freedom Village - Flattening (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQptcLy3E8k)

Wurm Online - Timelapse  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXvR6zh-fKY)



Wurm Online Video Tutorial 3: Making a forge and BS (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilqduqiOmN4&feature=related)   :awesome_for_real:

How long does it take to build a house in real time?  Does it require two people? 

Side note: Seeing the people stand on the backs of the horses was painful. 

So basically, this was going to be my exact post.

Not to long if you have all the prerequisite materials and a location. The bulk of the time is getting and refining raw materials. Things like skills and tools also play a big part. It does not require more than one person, but all things in Wurm are better in groups for obvious reasons. I know some villages on the paid servers will provide you with one if you join the town ETC..

Yes, the lack of animations hurt me too. But we are making progress in that department. Keep in mind, our core engine systems were developed well over 7 years ago though, its taking some major re-factoring to update.

Weeks.

Sorry bloodworth, I'm going to have to call you on this one.

First you need your woodcutting high enough so you can get decent quality wood.
Items you make decay based on their quality. Their quality is based on the quality of materials
if you have quality 1 materials the thing you make from them is going to decay really fast and fall apart.
So, at the very least you need your woodcutting up to 20 and your carpentry up to 20
then you need to cut down lots of trees, and make lots of boards
many of those trees will not be quality 20, even if your skill is at 20
so you get to pick maybe 25% of what you cut down as worth using to make lumber
then you make lumber from the trees, and guess what... about 25% of that is worth using
on top of this you also need nails. So your smithing has to be at 20
as well as your mining (you mine to get the ore, to turn into iron to use as nails.)
All the 25% crap from above applies here as well.
So then you take your nails, your boards put them in a wagon... didn't make a wagon yet? Well, yea... that takes a while to
So you take this stuff to where you want your house. To build the smallest possible house (4 walls) you need 10 boards per wall. 40 planks
every time you attempt to attach a board you have a chance to fail, when you fail you either lose the nails or the board... I forget which but I think it was the boards.
In any event. the end result is you need a small forest worth of lumber to make the house and theres a LOT of failure involved.
If you have your skills at 20-30 and ALL of the materials laying at your feet ready to go, it would still take you at least 8+hrs to build the smallest house in the game.

And I didn't even mention the fact that you have to feed yourself, and protect yourself from wild animals while you're doing all this. So your cooking, campfire, fighting and armor skills all have to go up. Along with dozens of other things I'm forgetting at the moment.

This of course is a lot easier once your skills are a lot higher. Most people end up grinding out items that use very little wood, like spindles or something until their skill is a LOT higher so they have an easier time of it. It also helps a lot to focus on one skill like carpentry, and have a partner that focuses on smithing and mining.

Don't get me wrong, it's a fun game... but it's the dictionary definition of grind. There's no game I've played with more grind in it than wurm.

Wow, graphics have really improved since last I checked this out.

I have seen real houses built faster.

You don't need skill 20 to build a house, that's the max on the  ( free ) sever, you can always repair and improve walls.

He said that in his quote, MrB.  Matter of fact, I think he was pretty clear and objective in his response.  I think he also highlights why Wurm will never be anything buy a very small niche game a la Tale in the Desert. 

Aren't there any Amish NPCs that can pitch in and help?

So I've finally decided on what I think is going to be my place in the world. It looks like a place someone left a looong time ago (there was no house there, the fence is partially gone, and a food storage thingy had 75 or so in damage), so I'm reparing a few things here and there and cutting down a few trees I don't like the location of, to make it a nice place to live again.

I need to figure out a way to make steady cash, though. I'm thinking starting to farm something would be my best bet in the long run, but I've no idea what. And I've no skills or seeds to really start this yet, so I suppose it's going to be a few weeks before I've actually got a usable yield out of the whole thing.

You can say what you'd like though, wurm is a damn grindy game. Most of the areas I still can't dig "because it's too steep", f.ex, and I'm not entirely looking forward to trying to put up an actual house, let alone make a lock on it.

What's your farming at?  Last time I played farming only netted a 1:1 crop per seed ratio until farming 15-18 (can't remember which), so unless you have a -lot- of seeds to start a big ass patch, it'll be a good while before you actually make anything of a surplus.

Main reason I stopped playing was the maintenance on everything.  It became a chore.

Yeah, farming is currently at a leisurely 4.18, which is why I'm saying it'll probably be a few weeks before I get a usable yield out of the whole thing. Well, that and the fact I have to build up a bunch of seeds to farm with to start with. I probably need to rummage around a lot around where I've setup shop just to see if I can't find a lot of seeds which germinate quickly. First place I sort of setup shop I put 3 different types of seeds into the ground, and they definitely matured at vastly different rates.

God, I can't remember the times anymore, but I'm pretty sure wemp/cotton are the fastest.  Wurmpedia should have more detailed info.

Thank you all for reminding me why I shouldn't ever try to play/work this game again.  I am only barely industrious enough for a job that I get paid to do.

Yeah it can be with out the use of deeds and the like. Its a problem we recognize, and we hope will be lower with the removal of GV (that has 3x the decay rate). New users going to freedom will open up the possibility to join villages and towns that all but halt decay, and open up and encourage more coporation between players.

I personally have been wanting to change low level crop pay out for a bit now, its always seemed silly to me.


EDIT: And now, it looks like crops will be changed. Thanks for the feedback.

I didn't put much research into the whole deed thing, but I was of the impression it was 10 silver pr month. At some point I'm probably going to go the deed route, but I need to grind up carpentry before that to actually get a sizeable house going, and I'll probably look at what the prices actually are by then.

Deeds can be paid for by the group (You basically donate to the deeds coffers at your own pace). There are no deeds on GV at all. So, its not a good example, and part of why we are doing away with it, that and the 3x decay leaves many with a very bad taste and wrong impression.


Its 10 for the initial purchase, upkeep is based on what features you want and size ETC...

Cost Calculator (http://sites.google.com/a/wurmonline.com/new-deed-system/cost-calculator)

Seems Wurm is just a more overtly aggressive version of A Tale in the Desert with fewer puzzles and more combat.

Is that a fair assessment?

I would have to play more a tale to understand that reference point.

Your development team should take a thorough look at that game.  It will tell you much about how to do and how not to do things in a building/pvp mmo.

Today's update, addressed a few things that you guys brought up here.

Oh, awesome. I kept losing my steel and flint (god knows how or where), and it's just completely fucking me up because everything I was looking to do to fix this (i.e. make charcoal and an iron lump to make steel) requires ... fire.

Also what the christ is this 100 item limit? I'm getting tired of having to go multiple trips just because I try to lug around f.eks cotton seeds or whatever that I found lying about on an abandoned farm. I can agree if it's bulky or heavy, but NUMBER?

Now that I'm done with LotRO for a while, I may give this game another try.  I really enjoy building/crafting games but have my concerns about maintaining a camp.  The daily chores are the one thing that drove me away from a Tale in the Desert.

If you do, try to join up with other F13 people.

I really prefer to do things on my own.  Is this going to make the game impossible?

No, just better working with others.

Whoa, wait, f13 has a presence here?  I might reactivate my character for that, he's a smith/miner/coaler... I think my CC is over 50 at this point, and i did a bunch of work figuring out the best types of wood to use for piles and when, but the research was disappointing.  Turns out wood doesnt matter so long as you finish it with an oak log.

Mr. Bloodworth, do you know of any plans to make different types of wood alter CC production?

Not that I know of, but I do know there is a handful of you playing (From this thread and PM's). My suggestion is do what other community do, make yourselves a f13 village.

Ok then, lets get a roll call going.  my character was a bit of a generalist, but he can make largish wood structures, smaller stone ones, and has decent mining/BS/digging/Lumber skills.  Was a member of the freebears village before I put him in hibernation.  My biggest project there was creating an Oak nursery and a well organized mine layout.  Familiar with terraforming and exploratory mining techniques.  Has some silver and good tools for skill gain and speed.

:wtc: has happened to large carts? I've now seen them either stay right infront of me or to my right, instead of behind me.

Edit: Actually, it looks like it's stopped taking the direction I'm facing into proper account.

Or send me a PM if you want to link up.  Most of the fun is in building this crap;  once you finish that it gets a little dull, so I'd be willing to move to new village project. :)

I'm really more interested in learning the tech trees.  That's why I may go it alone.  I want to start with banging rocks together. 

Bzalthek: Found your old building areas. The second one was pretty darn impressive, and well-hidden.

Stages 1-5 of the new tutorial are open for preview. To see it head to the new dawn castle and follow the instructions there.

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/41161/Images/serioussmiley-1.png)

Talk to me when it's finished.

Only releasing 1-5 initially to support the move to free players on the "Freedom" server change.

Fine, B. I'll try it, but it better be good!

Does this game still stab you in the eyes with a ridiculous wait to get anything done?

Massively Speaking Episode 125 (http://massively.joystiq.com/2010/12/01/massively-speaking-episode-125/)

From about 4:20 for quite a bit he talks about some of the recent changes. Hes got some stuff slightly wrong, but, I'm glad his past and present feelings on the game have been changed for the better.

https://blogs.apache.org/foundation/entry/the_asf_resigns_from_the

Uh Oh... It looks like Java is falling appart. You guys concerned about this at all?

I personally have no idea what that means. But ill pass it along.

Also, still hoping for some F13 brand feedback on the new stuff.

Sure, here's some feedback. It's not on the new stuff, though.

I won't play this game until the first 5 hours consists of more than chopping trees, building fires, and making planks. And I LOVE crafting.

I get that there is some sort of ingrained gaming crafting ideal that you should start off terminally retarded and grind out thousands and thousands of widgets to become barely competent, but the idea that you have to make absolutely everything - combined with a skill system that means most of the shit you produce early is of worthless quality - means you have to play in the dirt for weeks or even months before you can actually do anything worthwhile. Add to that the fact that the time investment involved to actually create something appears to be approximate to the time it takes to create them in real life, well, you can see my problem.

There are ways to make 'newbies' feel useful to an online community, ways to foster enjoyment, discovery, and group accomplishments and ways to make crafting/gathering something other than a mindless bar watchathon, and this game appears to have none of them.

I see no reason to actually play this game, not when the alternative is to load up minecraft and build the parthenon in an evening with a few buddies. You really need to go back to last page and think long and hard about what CharlieMopps wrote, because describing the steps to creating a house in Wurm is a more scathing indictment of the game than I could ever manage.

This is basically my opinion as well.  I will admit off the bat I haven't tried Wurm since...april or may...and that was my second go at it.  That was before I had played Minecraft but I still couldn't manage to get through more than a few hours without just wanting to go do something else.  I understand maybe its better since then. 

I think the difference between Minecraft and Wurm really crystalizes the problem.  I mean sure, maybe Minecraft isn't really going for the same kind of thing, and I'm not saying you necessarily need to be able to make a castle in a day or whatever.  There is certainly room for more progression than that.  But the barrier to entry really needs to be a bit more reasonable.  Maybe make a house something fairly easy to create, but make the higher end...higher?  If I can get into the game and make something neat on day1 even if its fairly simple compared to the high end, there is my hook.  If you want veterans to be able to make a lot better stuff, cooler stuff, bigger stuff, thats ok.  But if you're potential playerbase is only people willing to cut down trees for their first few hours of playing your game, well, its going to severely limit you.

I'll add that having to maintain stuff that I had already built killed my interest in ATitD and likely has the same effect on the Wurm population.  When I log onto a crafting game, I want to build stuff... not spend an hour maintaining things before I can start to build stuff.  Playing ATitD I found it exciting to build a large and functional compound, but was quickly bitchslapped by having to spend hours keeping it functional.  My play sessions became more about logging on and feeding sheep/doing repairs, than enjoying the game. 

I have to wash dishes and vacuum my house in real life.  Don't make me do it in a game.

Was hoping for feedback on the new stuff there.  :oh_i_see:

As for upkeep. Deeds negate decay, but thats a paid option, also note, new users no longer start on the golden valley server (that had 3x the decay rate), you start on the previously paid only "freedom" server. You even have the option of joining some ones deed/village/town/whatever now, where you did not before.

I appreciate you taking the time to note this.  If the crafting is fun, deeds may get me to pay to play this game.  I need a new drug right now and I'm tired of standard diku faire.

I was hoping that was clear from the original announcement. But I guess not :p

The last major update was really all about making life easier for noobs. That was a major part of it that maybe is not communicated well (ability to join, and benefit from paid users deeds). We have not gotten to what you guys are talking about above (houses and such).

With the change, we are having to get new hardware and hosting, as we are reaching capacity at a decent clip now. The amount of work just to get the the tutorial in, was a huge undertaking on a ten year old codebase that started with clients just being dumb terminals.  :grin: Not tooting a horn there, just saying, we are not AAA funded, stuff takes time. I had hoped someone here went through the new on ramp and could contrast it with the old.

I'll give it a try after wednesday when I get a bunch of free time.

Heh, I told some friends on IRC to give Wurm a shot. Best quote so far "All the beauty of Minecraft, with the simple fun of EVE"

Yea, I'd love to test it out for you, but there is no other game that comes any where near Wurm in regards to the soul crushing first few hours.

Actually, one thing that baffles me is how I can't purify lumps of metal, or smelt f.ex tools I really do not need back into lumps of metal (unless I've missed out on something).

Apart from that, the initial thought I had of having to forage for food, and seeing how little that returned, almost had me quitting. Now that I've figured out that I can fish instead, things became a bit better to live with. It's still rather annoying though, but I suppose that's part of the deal.

And just to bolster up under the beginner grind complaint, I was unable to make my very first spot because I literally couldn't dig a 20 inclination hill, or whatever it was. Things like that is annoying. Same is spending literally 2 hours whacking together a large cart because of all the failures.

I haven't tried out the tutorials though, so unfortunately I can't really comment on them.

oh DIGGING.

yeah, digging is very noob unfriendly. given the fact that there is so much dirt around and how hard it is to dig down to the rock layer its kind of a killer.  I had to plan and replan and finally call in a player with 90+ digging to get down to the rocklayer for my mine.

Mr. Bloodworth, while I understand that you want feedback on the new stuff, its kind of telling that the old stuff keeps coming up.  Putting a fresh coat of paint on an ultra grind doesn't make it any easier, and this is coming from someone who LIKES wurm.

Some of what you guys are talking about is old info. For instance, crops now, at a minimum, 2 outputs (IE: two onions). You now get cotton balls instead of seeds when foraging (one less step to making a fishing rod) As for scrap and lumps, you can melt them back down. (the tools idea my be a good idea, but most sacrifice such things to the gods). We even adjusted the skill gain curve at low ends recently, coupled with a decrease in times for many common actions (also has the net effect of faster skill gain over time).

Clearly, we have a communication issue for new users, and that just what we were addressing with the tutorial (and will be with the rest of the parts).

So, recently addressed:

Early Food gain.
Early Skill curve.
Early bootstrap Annoyances.
Unnecessary times for timers.
Decay of non-paying users items.
More verbose Explanation of game mechanics and interactions.


We have not just been painting a turd :p

Some things I have been contemplating adding (if my influence can sway it):

Log cabins, limited in tile size, however do not require planks or nails or high skill.
Wheelbarrows, the smaller, slower, less material required cart.
And a number of other things as well as adding more things to make at the low end, and many more options with those things (Visuals).


Insane early failure rate is something I rally against a lot. So is requiring a hammer, to finish a hammer.


believe me when I say this. When you guys post complaints, you are preaching to the choir. literally.

I think the phrase you wanted was 'polishing a turd' Not painting. And the problem is, people who have already tried the game found it grindy and unfun. Getting those people to try again is a lot harder than finding new people. And the friends of mine I pointed toward it recently found it grindy and unfun.

And 'literally' preaching to the choir? Sing, monkeyboy, sing!

Just trying to make it more assessable, less cockpunchy. No one is under the impression it will magically change to a mass media hit, the niche is fine.

However we do have a new server rule set coming. Scenario based, accelerated skill gain, event driven server that resets.

I would give this a fresh re-tryout except that my registration information is gone from the first time i registered, I was pretty sure I paid for a year too or not but I am sure I paid something. So I say screw a company that can't remember that I am a customer.

We have not purged any users. PM me some info and I can see if I can assist.

The biggest problem I had with the game was the deed system.

Basically it worked like this when I played:
If you build stuff, it decays rather quickly... unless you had a deed (basically like owning land)
The only place to get a deed is at a Trader.
There was only 1 public trader in the ENTIRE WORLD when I played. That was at the noob camp.
Settled land is obviously more dense the closer you get to the noob area.
If you wanted to settle a decent plot you'd have to go really far from the camp, usually the other side of the game world. Hours of travel, literally.

Now, if you have a large village you get a trader along with it. You can buy and sell stuff to this trader.
The way wurm works is, you pay real money on the wurm website for in-game silver. Then you use this silver to either buy a deed or pay rent on your deed.
Another way to get silver is to make goods and sell them to the trader. But the trader gets an allotment of silver every month. When he runs out, hes out.
Village owners want this silver for themselves. So the hide their trader inside a building so other people can't sell them stuff.
But this also means that you can't buy anything from them either.
End result? The only place to buy a deed is the noob area on the other side of the world.
If your deed runs out while your in africa (which in fact happened to me) you have to traverse the globe to buy a new one.

Even if there were traders other players made available (I'm sure there were a few) there was absolutely no way of knowing where they were.

The sole point of paying for wurm was to buy and maintain a deed. But they've made even that part of the game really annoying. You'd think to yourself, I want to give wurm some money and keep playing... but if I do that I'm going to have to spend 3hrs finding the trader to use it. Screw that.

One thing I keep wondering about, and that is how am I supposed to bootstrap myself up to actually having a steel+flint? I can start campfires, but I can't make coal in there, so I can't seem to make steel. Am I missing some magic way of setting fire to a pile?

Also, I think there really should be some way of reclaiming f.ex the metal in a large anvil, also some way to improve on metal quality as well through a purifying processes of some sorts.

The above two issues are something I have brought up recently. I have suggested a summon deed trader ability.

But just off the top of my head. Coal is made using coal piles (http://wurmonline.com/wiki/index.php?title=Charcoal_pile).

Yep, I do have a coal pile ready to be lit, I'm stuck. At least the wiki isn't giving me a nice way to light the coal pile, as the campfire workaround doesn't work.

Actually, I would've thought it should be possible to make fire by banging two flints together as well, not just steel+flint, so that could be one way of giving people the ability to bootstrap themselves.

That's a possibility. However, why do you not have a flint and steel? That's a noob set item. Only way to loose it is if you drop it (It does not drop on death). Drop as in right click and drop it.

Current solutions: Get one off another player (Buy/trade/beg). Check the merchants at a place like freedom market. Make one yourself (the path I think you are on).

I've probably misplaced it somewhere and I'll find it sometime later on, I'm pretty anal about having a clean inventory you see.

Yeah, that item, should never really leave your inv :) Steel is a high end metal. Takes quite an investment to work with it.

I still think it should've been possible to make a poor-mans lighter by f.ex combining 2 flints, because I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who's doing this.

Hell, if worst comes to worst I'll just go to FM and buy the damn thing, but there's literally nothing I NEED it for except to make a new one or to optimize the process of cooking other crap. I'm not playing the game (currently) to make THE BEST QUALITY ITEM EVAR, my skills suck too much for that. I just want to get shit done. If campfire is what'll be needed, so be it. vOv

I don't disagree with this. However short of making the item no drop, its not like we can stop people from tossing out or loosing items. This may sound wrong but, you did it to yourself, somewhere along the way.

However ask others around you if they have a spare, or ask a PA in the PA chat. They have stockpiles of noob tools.

I haven't said I didn't do this onto myself, because obviously I have. I also put the shovel, pickaxe etc down when I'm not using it etc, all I think should be possible to do is to somehow bootstrap yourself up after making a fuckup such as that. It shouldn't be a gamebreaker, because in real life I'd just mash two flints together and make a fire instead. Or use kindle+woodscrap to light up an oven, etc.

As I said, if I absolutely need one I'll go buy one. I just figured I'd point out an area where you as a player will HAVE to either buy or ask someone else for resources if you fuck up and drop things which "shouldn't be dropped", and it's either stolen or you just misplace it. Or, actually, aren't the noob tools destructible if they reach 100dmg, as well? I've had a few spades lost because I've gotten lost in f.ex digging or fishing.

Yeah, we addressed the others base tools a bit ago. We should look into something of that nature for flint and steel, I agree.

curse you wurm!  Why do I keep coming back to you!  :)

I just started playing this last week for the first time, I'm hooked.

I'm pretty much at the point now where I'm ready to get a deed and start building something that won't disappear on me once I log off.  The only problem I'm having is how far do I have to travel before I find an area that isn't taken?  I walked around for the better part of two hours the other night and never found an area that wasn't either settled or a cliff face that I had no hope of climbing. 

I guess I just need to buy a deed and then wander around until I find something.

Here is a community made map that may help.

http://gmapuploader.com/iframe/LjA1NmOy52

Gave wurm  a try last night,  it stuck in tutorial at compass part. Poked around for 30 min or so to see if I could get out  of the tutorial area -to no avail. So I gave up.


Anyways it looks much nicer than I expected . On the downsides - UI is very sucky though (and no key rebind options?), no jump also makes for bad first impression. And of course broken tutorial lol

Real question I have is what you guys using for server back end? Network stack?- Client I guess is jmonkey or something?

I actually just went through the tutorial, and it worked fine for me. Well, fine, except for the fact the popups were annoying and the fact I couldn't skip it was annoying.

Broken how? How were you stuck?

Here is how to do keybinds. (http://wurmonline.com/wiki/index.php?title=Keybind) We are working on a fancy GUI for it. Also if you ever have an issue use /dev in the chat for ticket submission, its cross server so someone will be with you when they can.





Also, we have some brand new server hardware going up today ( maybe ) 3 Dell R410. They will have two E5620 processors, 64GB RAM and SATA disks for the OS. Then we’re adding SSD’s for the database. We expect vaporize pretty much all lag with the SSDs. We have had a rather big influx over the past few months, and are constiantly hitting the free player cap (Premium gets priority)

(http://www.wurmonline.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/IMAG0070.jpg)

A user made a nifty video of the game.

Wurm Online  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URY9OrUv1sU)

Not to be harsh, but that video would only be interesting to someone that knows the game well.  As someone that dabbled in Wurm, it struck me as "stuff you'll never have the time to make and upkeep".  Is there a video of footage that shows how fun and engaging the building is?  Combat?  Exploration?  THAT's the video that I want to watch.  

Yes I know. I was happy it showed some of the new tutorial however.

 Stuck at compass section .didnt do anything - didnt let me go anywhere or advance tutorial

I  created new char afterwards and played it. Good things  - reminded me of URW with survival and crafting elements. Crafting system is pretty solid.  It is not buggy. Graphics and world are pretty atmospheric

bad things  - combat is complete meh. UI is  #$&#*&% . Nothing going on in game besides building stuff (but I not gonna spend 2 month to dig a tunnel with statues  just for show).

So my suggestion is really to polish the obvious  (UI -there are open source LUA UIs - USE THEM) . and more imporatntly polish gameplay. If you making survival style crafting mmo  polish the survival part (it does not feel very survivalist compared to URW for example). Imho good combat system is a must as well more stuff to do part . But really a lot of things good combat would solve  (heck I would love play wurm if it had wow combat and the rest just like it - would sub right there )





I  was more interested in the software /framework side. Did you guys use java for server? Any  existing libraries /frameworks? What about client? What about network stack  (custom made, java nio, something else? What about db backend? sql+hibernate? straight sql? memcachd layer?

Yeah, OK I figured that's where you got stuck. We are working on a solution. I agree, much of our stuff is exciting if you like MUD's :) Its all slated to be improved. Our client and server is java, the DB I'm not sure, net code is custom. AFAIK. Im currently focused on GUI re-skin (We need a programmer for this slot really) Player models and new animation system ( We have a New model format ), and we have been filling in the spell effects.

Thanks for the input.  :grin:

Hello, I am the video's author.  Noticed on my statistics I had some views from this forum, thanks for the crosspost MR B  :awesome_for_real:

Anyway, thank you for your criticism.  This is the first of hopefully more videos that may showcase more in-depth features of Wurm.  This video was just meant as more of an over-arching tribute to the game and a story of my journey through Wurm the last 6 months.

I had originally wanted to include more but quickly realized that if I wanted to stay with the timing of the song I couldn't pack much in.  Also I am in no way a pro at video editing.  This is entirely self taught through 'click menu, see what happens, press undo'.  All feedback though helps me improve.  ;D

You did a wonderful job of displaying the best aspects of the game.  My comments were more about my selfish desires as I love building games.  I'd love to see how all of that was created, under what circumstances, and the pains it took to both maintain and protect it. 

Np, I enjoyed it :) Especially showcasing the tutorial, something I was heavily invested in making. I'm biased  :-P

Jesus I wish I didn't think that fiddling with things like GUIs were mindnumbingly boring, or I would offer some of my time. This whole rightclick to do anything-interface has to die in a fire. I'm getting pretty sick of having to schedule 3 dig actions, only to have the third action be flatten, because the menu decided to move up one notch.

Too cool not to share.

Pitchfork Media: A Portrait of Wurm Online (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/03/24/pitchfork-media-a-portrait-of-wurm-online/)

Hey mr. bloodworth!  come back here and tell us about the new update!

PS - like the toolbelt look now :)

I do like the spawn changes so far.  It's been nice having things actually around in the woods and not needing to wander for 3 hours when I need a fur or something.   It seems like hunting is actually viable now as a food source for meals rather than having to fish all the time.   I'm not sure how the bears got into my mine through the mine door but that was a fun surprise.

Also the new item models look great.  The weapon racks in particular are a really nice addition.  Here's hoping for armor/shield racks ;)

Heh, notch caused our web server to suffer with his tweet powers.  :awesome_for_real:

Has fun been patched into this worldy builder game?

Rather proud of this, we have a New particle system, as well as some lighting FX now!

Candle and Candelabra FX (http://youtu.be/KbmLy--3tCw?hd=1)

Torch Flame FX (http://youtu.be/pNfftHYIz7A?hd=1)

The new tutorial seems to be a hit ( As evidenced by the new population numbers, and failure to complete rates as well as the number of common questions going down for new users ) we clearly have more work to do there though. The Server upgrade went really well. I am currently in the middle of revamping all consumable crop items, leading to 3d crop graphics in the field later. Recent Adjustments to MOB spawning rates and caps have lead to a much more varied wildlife and many more things to hunt.

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1725660/Produce.jpg)

Nice work. Maybe I'll have to try it again with the new tutorial.

So I'm assuming that if I try this on the PvP server I'm going to get a beatdown? 

I would not recommend it. Not right off the bat.

Looking great.  I need a new PC, but I plan to play this.

Looks very nice.  I'm curious, though, what are the plans on upgrading the character models?

We are developing the tech to be able to do so, like the particle system, it needs to be written from scratch or at least example.

So if I start on this Golden Valley server and then decide to sub, do I take my character with me to one of the premium servers?

Which premium server should I go to? Which one are you on, TGR?

Bloodworth, your registration is currently down. It throws up this message:

"Phase one registration failed:
Key: error
Entry: An error occured when sending the mail: Could not connect to SMTP host: localhost, port: 25. No account was reserved."

I'm on the first premium server, i.e. I haven't moved to wild yet. I forget its name offhand.

I recently tried this after reading one of Raph's blogs about sandbox implimentation.  I think it looks like an interesting game, and there is clearly a lot of depth to it.  The targeting however was simply abysmal.  Oh and I never did figure out fighting either, so when I met up with a ferocious adolesent bear it ended up wiping the floor with me before I was able to even take a swing against it.

Another problem was urban sprawl... and I mean everywhere.   Spent two hours running and was unable to cut down any trees because it wasn't permitted in owned forests  :ye_gods:

You should probably just take a peek at http://noizeviolation.com/wurm/Freedom_map.png and find areas of land which aren't that well visited. I haven't been back to samling since the initial starting point was up there, but it looks fairly sparsely populated right now from the map.

At least the area around dragon fang mountain and inner mountain looks packed.

It is a very promising sandbox. unfortunately digging dirt and carrying rocks is not exactly my idea of fun gameplay

It definitely caters to the creative people more than other types.  It's awesome when you finish a large project you've been working on, though it's tedious in the interim.  I had two toons working and that made it better.  However the upkeep on the free shard at the time broke me, and I decided I rather liked my wrists without the scars.

I've given it a try a few times and it just hasn't caught me early enough to want to keep playing.  I know that is part of why people like it, that it doesn't give you things for free and you need to sort of work to get/make stuff, but if it was easier to feel like I had some investment in the game early on (like a space that was very clearly defined as my own), then I'd be more likely to want to play. 

To me, the biggest competitor with Wurm is Minecraft, and I can build a decent enough wooden house in 15 minutes.   Again, I know that long term stuff in Wurm is part of the point of it all, but when I compare my experience there to my experience with something like the very first time I logged into the original F13 minecraft server, it just wasn't even close.

Should be good to go.

Golden valley does not technically exist anymore, you can not settle there, its a tutorial only server.


Yeah, not sure you would have survived that bear, as for combat primer, its one of the next sections of the tutorial we are working on.

We have a few wiki articles located here:  Fighting Skill Tips (http://wurmonline.com/wiki/index.php?title=Fighting_Guide) and Fighting (http://wurmonline.com/wiki/index.php?title=Combat) and the names of creatures are important. Animal conditions (http://wurmonline.com/wiki/index.php?title=Animal_conditions)

IE: The bear you ran into:  Fierce - red, size slightly increased, increased attack speed, increased stamina, frenzies more

As always the CA chat is a great place to get questions answered. Also turn on spam mode in options, its basically a verbose combat log toggle.

As for space, Yes, our population has been growing rather rapidly and a side effect os so many free user accounts is the tend to congeal next where they start. The map is a great guide http://noizeviolation.com/wurm/Freedom_map.png, i know from my flights around the south east is less populated. I still highly recommend that if you guys are going to try this out, group together, it will increase the enjoyment 10 fold.


They are related.

I have formally left this project.

I hope that it was by choice or for a better opportunity.  Thanks for the updates!

aye thx

Yes, I left. More for some soul searching and some personal refinement reasons. Three years and a lot of lessons learned isn't a bad run. It's just time for new things.

Glad to hear it.  Best of luck in your new endeavor!

Good luck in whatever you do down the road. 

Arise!

Wurm to go on Steam, with the ability to play locally and server hosting:

http://www.wurmonline.com/2015/09/16/wurm-unlimited-announcement/

This is now available on Steam.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/366220/

I'll keep my eye on this. A lot of the concepts looked interesting but I didn't want to deal with internet dickheads. Now that I can play solo or with a few friends, it might be worth it.

I put a bunch of time into the old WURM and I have to say it's a little weird to me to split an already small player base into yet another game mode/world.   I assume they are continuing the MMO part in tandem?  Again, that seems strange.

It does alleviate the biggest problem I had with the game which was it was just too expensive.  Monthly premium + $$ plots + $$ tools just made it too much (not to mention paying for the currency conversion).

Dunno, I really did like the game so I am interested.  Then again, I'm not sure if I would enjoy playing in a completely empty world.  Part of the fun is exploring and seeing all the crazy stuff people have done.