Wurm Online: New land opened, Free to Play tutorial server/sandbox

[Bzalthek]

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

[Mrbloodworth]

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 :)

[Cadaverine]

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.

[Mrbloodworth]

Some are a bit old. But perhaps this will help you a bit.

[Bzalthek]

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.

[WindupAtheist]

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.

[Bzalthek]

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

[CharlieMopps]

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.

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

[Mrbloodworth]

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. 

[Mrbloodworth]

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.

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.

[NiX]

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

[Mrbloodworth]

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

[CharlieMopps]

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.

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.

[NiX]

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!

[Nebu]

All player made.

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. 

[Mrbloodworth]

All player made.

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.

[Rendakor]

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.

[Demonix]

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.

[NiX]

Holy shit.

[Malakili]

Holy shit.

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.

[NiX]

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.

[Mrbloodworth]

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  And of course I don't deserve any of the credit, and I did not make this happen, but, hay..thats my grass!

[Demonix]

Holy shit.

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, 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.

[Cadaverine]

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  And of course I don't deserve any of the credit, and I did not make this happen, but, hay..thats my grass!

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

[Bzalthek]

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.

[Mrbloodworth]

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   And of course I don't deserve any of the credit, and I did not make this happen, but, hay..thats my grass!

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

Its the little things.

Another time lapse video.

[Bzalthek]

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

[Nebu]

Its the little things.

Another time lapse video.

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

[Bzalthek]

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

[Mrbloodworth]

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.

[Nebu]

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. 

[Mrbloodworth]

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    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.

[Bzalthek]

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?

[Mrbloodworth]

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.

[Bzalthek]

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)