Wurm Online, Anyone?

[Zaune]

(Cross-posted from The Arch Rival due to lack of response there. And amazingly, it still seems like a good idea now I'm sober.)

Official Site

If you've never heard of it, Wurm Online is best described as what Minecraft would be like if it was created by a really hardcore SCA member. It's the first, perhaps only, MMO to accurately simulate the gruelling and tedious manual labour of medieval life.

I have a bizarre love-hate relationship with this game. On the one hand you've got beautiful graphics, a detailed and interesting crafting system and a community full of genuinely helpful and likeable people; it's up there with the Dwarf Fortress community, with which there is not surprisingly a large amount of overlap. On the other hand, it can be extremely grindy and it's really difficult to get much of anything done without spending a certain amount of real-world money.

I've gone in and out of this game a couple of times, and I'm starting to be slowly but inexorably pulled back towards it. But this time, I want to do something different. See, the thing about Wurm is, if you're playing solo then you're on a hiding to nothing. You need to be part of a community, work together, divide responsibilities and ideally share some of the costs.

It's going to take teamwork, patience, cheerfulness in the face of adversity and a robust sense of humour. We'll start out as a handful of untrained peasants with nothing but a backpack full of tools, a handful of loose change and whatever resources we can dig, chop and forage along the way. We'll face monsters, wild animals, other players if we pick a PvP server and probably each other.

It could end with us living it up in a magnificent citadel. It could end in all-out civil war and ignominious failure. But either way, I reckon it'll be a bloody good laugh.

Now, who's with me?

[phred]

I'll give it a shot.

[phred]

Where are we starting? Phredopyro is my name on there

[Zaune]

I was going to wait and see if we got some more volunteers before committing to anything, but my vote would go to the Release server. It's the newest, so theoretically it should be easy to find an unclaimed spot.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

I might give it a try, but I can't promise any kind of huge commitment. These games like EVE fascinate me, but unless I'm stranded on a desert island for all of eternity with only one game to play, I don't really have time in the day to accomplish more than what can be reasonably done in an hour or two.

[Zaune]

Not a problem. It's one of those games where it's a good idea to multi-task a bit; I usually have my laptop on the desk and read an ebook during the grindy bits.

So, that's three of us. I was hoping for five minimum, because then we could split the ingame price of a settlement token equally. Which reminds me; have a look at this and let me know what sort of settlement rules you think we ought to have.

[Zaune]

I think I've found a potential settlement site. Not sure how to hotlink from Dropbox, so here's a link. (Original image from the community map.) The area circled in red has a lake for drinking water, stone to quarry, a clay deposit and plenty of timber.

Unless anyone has a preference for another server or site, I'll head out there and start scouting the area.

[PeZook]

I might check it out. Can hardly promise I'll stay, though. The non-premium limitations seem absurdly anal.

[Zaune]

Well, that didn't get off to the best start. I found a good spot, went to get some wood, got hopelessly lost in the woods an eventually got murdered by a cave bug and lost nearly all my gear. I'm currently waiting for the in-game currency I forked out for to clear so I can buy some decent armour.

[PeZook]

Oh boy this game even has its own "terrible interface apologists"

"Hey if these people are turned off by holding LMB to look around they didn't REALLY want to play anyways"

MY GAME BEST GAME

[Zaune]

I could see it being annoying if you play a lot of games where it's the other way around, but you get used to it after a while.

[PeZook]

It's a clear and massive fault in the interface that's easily correctable but it's been a year since that post and nope.

Seriously, they want to make money off it, right? More players = more money.

[phred]

It's a clear and massive fault in the interface that's easily correctable but it's been a year since that post and nope.

Do you play mostly FPS type games? Because aside from not being able to scroll out to 3rd person view I dont have a problem with the moving/looking stuff.

I do have a problem with being repeatedly killed by random animals because my starting equipment is a wooden sword and paper shield, which I'm holding backwards or something.