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For a lot of people the deed is not considered in isolation - the surrounding biomes and topology is vital to our sense of place and our range of resources. The proximity of close friends and neighbours at adjacent deeds is critical to maintaining the alliances and communities we have built. We are not just talking about someone's home, it's their neighbourhood - how much of the surrounding topology and 'feel' of a place can be moved. Some players go out every day visiting friends. We are not just assets we are people, and if people lose their homes, their long time neighbours, and their will to play, they are no longer assets.

Allright, lots of comments during the night It's a lot to take in and often diametrically opposed opinions. Here are some thoughts: I don't see us launching without a new UI. We need to look into the stuff people have done right in WU with QoL improvements and newbie stuff such as the things I read Sklo did. Also the monetization and premium model will be questioned. We might tweak it in such ways MrGary suggested. Eve still has monthly premium/subscriptions so it's not like it's a dead business form. The login server will be the same for both clusters so we could allow people to go from Steam to the existing servers. And we can include an option to log on using old accounts via Steam. We need to sort out what that means for our requirements to prohibit the sale of silvers, items and accounts between players outside the Steam Wallet though. We'll have to look into it and can't really give an answer at this early time. Yes we could launch both a Freedom and a PvP server at the same time. A lot to sort out (and mainly improve). Is there an extensive list of QoL improvements most people agree upon kept anywhere? Actually Retrograde has been compiling such a list for a good while

I think all joy in the game would die for some players forced to move - I think some would not bother. For some the location is everything - it would be like the Scottish clearances. Lifestyle is so closely related to our location and the local resources. Anyone forced to give up a prime location for a lesser location on one of the other servers might do just that - give up. It is well known that our lives are defined by the spaces we inhabit, and that includes our own spaces we have painstakingly carved out for ourselves in our virtual world.

I can't agree more. For my side, I can say, the day I am forced to abandon my deed and my region will certainly be my last day on Wurm.

My 2 cents - Steam and existing WO servers should be the same and it would benefit both communities at the same time: 1) Argument that "Lets give people fresh start and newbs seeing people in high gear will get discouraged" is not a valid argument - I am only here because I saw those people and thought "I also want that" otherwise I didnt see the benefit of being here. the skill grind is too steep. In that case EVE Online would be dead long time ago - When I joined there I was amazed by the huge corporations flying capital-ships. 2) It would revive markets - not all players has 24/7 time for grinding therefore it is good if I have a possibility to buy better gear and advance faster if I only have 2-3 hours per day max to spend on WO. 3) There is still a lot of unused ground on all the servers. 4) What makes wurm great and why I stay was community - Older players helping new players to understand the game. I dont believe that new players on a new cluster will stay for long with this grind and no community. As it feels now this is an attempt to open game on steam, let the old community keep paying to cover all the expenses and if all goes as planed let the old servers die on them own because new players wont come in to old servers because of steam and more and more players will just leav or switch over time.

I have not seen the developers state that they need to eliminate some servers to reduce operation costs in any substantial way, nor that they want to make the player base more dense on the remaining servers as a motivation. This idea is put forth by players who place little value upon what others have created out of the Wurm environment because they have spent little time on this. The most dramatic part of Wurm is the way that players can transform the environment around them even beyond just their own deed. Then what they leave behind or maintain is a visual history of Wurm and an example to others of what is available for them to do as well. I have no quarrel with those who have no interest in this but rather see Wurm just a a social game or a pvp experience of destroying others but when it comes to destroying whole worlds (servers) just because they have put nothing into them, in this respect then they have gone too far in their self indulgence at others expense. Muse put it well in her posts about deeds designed to fit into the environment (also shaped) surrounding them. Then living there for years after enjoying one's creation can't be replaced, moved elsewhere or paid off with $$$$. It's not "all about the money baby!". Also as mentioned by some, players on the new WO Steam servers will miss out on this experience of traveling roads that were built long ago and passing through quaint Villages along side of them if they can not visit the old heritage Wurm worlds (servers). I suppose they could just make a newbie account though to visit them and perhaps be inspired by the possibilities of what they too can achieve over time if desired. =Ayes=

Although I agree with the there being too many servers part I don't agree with anybodies effort and time being turned away or converted to "silver". As any smart person will pick time over money. Also people have that have spent years developing their deeds with years worth of upkeep dedicated to it would not just up and go easily and if they did I can assure you they are not coming back. I know a lot of games offer server transfers at certain times at a fee, guild wars 2 comes to mind but certain criteria need to be met for the server to open up to transfers. It's hard enough for new players to own land, making it more expensive would not help at all. As a free to play player you start with zero coins, and dropping the deed alone is like 4s for a min size, if that gets doubled or tripled it means not many people will be dropping deeds, let alone paying another 20 euros for a sub subscription + 3-5s a month for a min size deed. Just my thoughts

Wurmrise, the far reaches of Jackal

can we please get rid of the existing pvp servers at that point in time then i don't think the team actually understands how much time and effort people put into character development, map progression including deeds, just to be stuck on an abandoned server or worse, working on a new server experiment just to get the toon rolled and merged to where your existing character already is, with 1k days playtime (this goes for pve and pvpers) this alone makes me incredibly hesitant to even THINK about playing the game yet again, these are real concerns. we really should stop separating the player base even further, it just keeps not working 😕 wurmageddon 2.0 and make everyone move to the new cluster? also as a side note, I have an idea that could generate revenue for the game, but might be opposed by some players. it requires a truly functioning account management system and a web shop: SELL SLEEP POWDER ON THE WEB SHOP AT 1 EURO EACH and make it master-account bound (only tradeable through your own toons). remove the sp from traders because nobody buys them at 5s each, and then keep the reward system from premming at 2sp/2month. I've easily seen 600-800 sp sell within a little over a week, imagine how much revenue that would generate if they were easily accessible through an online shop, AND directly supported the game.

No. -1

Dec. 6th-15th We Are Live! Screenshots If you have any questions feel free to post in this thread, and I will add the answer below here! Discord Link to the Blackmoor Christmas Impalong 2019 discord! https://discord.gg/RnpUV9k

+1 for whatever of that sort that makes sense... nobody likes too much micromanagement... game's too grindy already, no need to 2-3-100x perform extra actions for the common things that literally just take more key pressing/window management and time If there are antibotting measures, flag people and accumulate a score on such.. than check on them... but it makes no sense to annoy every customer because of the few black sheep, it's counterproductive.

I really love WO, I could never get into it long term because of OGWO and feeling left behind by veterans. This sentiment is shared by 4-5 of my friends, one of which who is a veteran from 'wilds' days. We all joined Jackal as a pseudo-fresh start and it feels good to be slightly relevant. I've seen some posts with sentiment that 'There's a level 100 cap therefor there is no difference between new players and veterans'. From a perspective of a new player, the feeling is that you can't make an impact at all. Why would anyone ever buy or even interact with anything from a new player when they can get a 80 QL tool with all 75+ enchantments for a silver or two? Making thousands of planks / stone bricks aside. Before Jackal, I never made a simple, small scale trade - cotton for wemp. I've played since 2013 off and on. It was genuinely super exciting for me to make a simple trade and actually interact with communities, it's quite a lot of fun. Outside of Jackal, I never really interacted with anyone. Everyone is already in their well established cliques. A lot of people look at the free-to-play MMOs on Steam. I think a long term, fresh start cluster is exactly what this game needs. It's personally what I've been waiting on for quite a long time, and I'm sure I'm not alone in this. Another point I'd like to make, is there are currently 11 million steam users online. If 0.01% of those players (11,000) tried Wurm, and 10% of those players stuck with the game, that would triple the playerbase that is currently online as I post this (300). And I feel like those numbers are not entirely unrealistic at all, even if the game is niche.

In a sense, Rolf has not one but two "target markets" to make happy. One -- and decidedly the most important one -- is the current playerbase. These are the players who never dropped out, the ones who continued to put money into the game for 15 years, who have maintained multiple subscriptions (sometimes dozens) and multiple megadeeds (sometimes dozens) without protest even when subs were hiked. These are the ones who often buy high level characters from other players, who invested heavily into the old "trader" system, the ones who think nothing of buying $100-$200 in silver from the cash shop, the ones who love "end game" content, the ones who have spent YEARS perfecting the perfect deed and have ZERO interest in starting over. This group must never be betrayed, because if they leave the whole thing not only can, but WILL collapse. This is why Rolf will NEVER have a server wipe, and probably never force-merge servers. It would be seen as a deep betrayal, and the ones who kept Wurm afloat for years would eventually walk away because who knows what will happen next? On the other hand, the needs and interests of this group are not necessarily identical to the interests and needs of "new blood." One person who wanted to force all new players into the existing server system, noted how great this would be for the "market." Yes, if you have a high level crafter, this IS the ideal result for you, and has always been the ideal result of new players. But a handful of high level crafters can easily meet the needs of a vast market, and the result is newer players never get the chance to sell their own wares, and except for a few who can grind hours on end, can never develop their own markets. That only makes sense -- who wants to spend 30c on a 40Q item, when a 90Q item costs half that and can be made 3X faster by the master craftsman? No matter how low the new crafters cut their prices, the master craftsmen can always go lower. New players do not want to "admire and be inspired" by the older playersbase's constructions and towns and massive monuments to themselves -- they want a chance to make their OWN monuments, from a pristine environment with challenges and rewards suited to their own efforts. This is why I think the "showcase tutorial" with fancy buildings and 100 glittering sparkle signs was such a failure. Wurm is not about being impressed by someone light years ahead of you, who will always be so -- it's about making your OWN world. It's about HANDS ON experiencing the world. It's about living in a dangerous world, maybe finding a wild horse (not given a 5-speed by an existing player), carefully crafting and improving a sword they made with their own hands (not getting a 99Q admantine 2hander with LT enchants). Not every one wants to actually make their own sword and armor -- but they all want to make their own stories. Not live in a highend world created by others a decade earlier. This is only one of many reasons why a "fresh start server" -- uncontaminated by veterans jumping in a boat with their gold and builders and sailing over to terraform it all in the first two weeks -- is necessary. Every time in the past the game has howled for "MOAR ADVERTISING!!!" what they really meant was they needed fresh blood with pockets of fresh money to keep the traditional Wurm market economy churning for the high end crafters. This market economy is actually a deeply flawed system -- its super duper fun for those on top, and much much less fun for those on the bottom. The ones on top will never be satisfied and always want more and more. In their generosity, they will often give crates of high level tools armor and enchanted weapons FREE to new players thinking this will encourage them to stay, when all it really does is spoil the game for the newer players. If Rolf limits the Steam version of Wurm to nothing more than an advertising gimmick, giving them a "free client" that they essentially have had access to anyway for more than 15 years, and a "demo" where they can see only a landscape littlered with what other people have done, as they already had access to for the past 15 years, then a Steam launch is simply going to be a failure. I think Pristine and Release (quarantined, fresh start only servers) actually were a successful model -- maybe in fact one of the last successful risk Rolf ever took. Wurm's population numbers actually went up without immediately declining again a month later. I think the current server system, players, characters, deeds, communities, should always be maintained, respected, and cherished -- but the future of new blood is not in that current system. Yes the ideal end result is to eventually meld the two communities together into one big giant community, just as happened eventually with Pristing/Release. If that is done looking primarily at the needs and wants of the current player base, however, it will fail. But if it is done WITHOUT considering the needs of the current player base, it will fail much more spectacularly, much faster, and Wurm will indeed be pushed further into a death spiral. Good luck with that, Rolf! I mean that with utter sincerity. You HAVE to move forward, the game always needs to take new risks -- but the least misstep could be fatal. You have always done well at taking risks however -- sometimes even changes I personally hated. Sometimes you make massive mistakes and fall flat, but you always get up again, and you always move forward.

Yeah, right? This is so annoying. Delete your deeds! Delete your stats! Delete all the servers, let's start again! Even though it'll be painful and you definitely won't like it, it'll be good for you in the long run! Pffft. Often said by players that aren't actually playing Wurm, or those with little or nothing to lose. Personally I like low-population servers, with lots of space to rummage and roam. I hear bad stories about some servers; like it's hard to find mobs because they're populated by animal hoarders. Just...lol. Where I live, if I go out in a wagon I've usually got a creature convoy following me

I think a better solution is to determine a way to take a deedplanner copy of a deed and reimport it into a server. The deed sizes for the old_location and new_location would have to be the same. Then once the deed is imported you would still need to terraform the borders to blend it in plus the mines would have to be rebuilt as well (perhaps the rock layer could be placed where the mine was so you simply tunnel in. I suspect there is a way to programmatically do this. If it's possible then at least server shutdowns to move populations together would be much less painful.

yeah no, half the negative reviews for the lif mmo on steam are people calling the game "too grindy" even tho that game is 1000x less grindier than wurm. I guarantee you day one the game would have negative reviews from all the people who downloaded it expecting a rust-like experience. They'll spend 10 minutes trying to figure out how to craft stuff, notice that it takes 20 seconds to carve a shaft and just quit lol, they'll leave a nice fat bad review on their way out as well. Wurm online is just way too niche, at least with WU you get the choice to make the grind softer by changing server stats, in wo you cant do that.

Learn the lessions from the WU community, implement some of the Quality of Life changes, but keep the essential grind. I am not saying making it easier, just remove the completely pointless annoying stuff that turns players off, like moving 10 tiles to meditate. Add changes like the option to have an autosorting ql of items in containers (or disable for default) plus digging and mining actions going in to the Wagon/Cart/Container. The list list a long one. There will be existing players who won't like this, they will just tell you to go play WU, but for me this is about improving the long term viability of Wurm itself by making it less frustrating for new players and to stop the player drain that happens after 20 skill

If you want wurm to survive whether its ogwo or steam wo, it's long past time to update the premium model from pretty much all or nothing. Adopt a system like Runescape has. In runescape f2p, you can max out a skill, but you can't use bonus xp (which is like our sleep bonus just used differently), a few skills are locked at 5, areas and certain gear/high end gear are locked, better methods of grinding skills are locked, etc. So for adapting that to wurm with some changes to fit better, that would be something like as f2p: You can use sleep bonus, but it will only affect a skill if it us under 20. Decide if this is enough to encourage premium or if post 20 needs a higher difficulty to gain skill. Most skills can be grinded to 100 as per usual, but some could be locked to 20 to encourage premium. For example, weaponsmithing, fine carpentry, all thievery and war machines, stuff like that. You can ride a large cart, but not a wagon. Yes that's a downgrade from current if you already had the mind logic, but its a small trade off for quite the f2p change. You can ride a cow and a horse, but nothing after that. You can't be a priest as f2p, so it would work as it does now without premium, however you need to close the loophole of f2p priest allowing non-priest actions or just disable skill gain from doing a prohibited action to prevent the priest AND crafter loophole that existed with dual faith priests with chaos libs. You can't create or improve high end gear; Along the lines of moon metal and dragon armor. And probably way more to tweak that I don't care to think about and write because I'm not the ones being paid to do this. Aside from that I feel like more servers in different clusters/places will continue to split the dwindling community more and if steam wo takes off that leaves ogwo to wither and die like epic as mentioned before. Good luck though.

Allright, so I thought I'd quench some of the will I stay or will I go-rumours by starting a new thread about an idea I've had quite a while. Back in 2015 we put WU on Steam and it has worked out allright. Now sales there are dwindling but Steam remains the best place to promote and sell PC and Linux games. Trying to promote your game via Facebook or Google ads is very expensive to the point of being pointless unless your game looks and has a really triple A newbie experience. The attempts we make have very poor conversion rate. Not to mention larger expensive ads on websites which simply are huge costs per click for us. Also trying to SEO the top rated search places for sandbox games isn't easy either even if we actually show up which I guess yields some traffic. But trying to improve there won't give much bang for the buck. So I figured, how can we go about putting WO where the PC players are and words spread nowadays - on Steam? If someone searches for a type of game they'll get one hit per game instead so it's a democratic search of sorts. Free to play games are highly sought after and I think A LOT of people look for and try free to play MMOs there. Compared to finding us online and download our client via custom links and registration, on Steam we would work exactly like all other games. We would probably get a fairly stable stream of players who look for games like these and decide to try them out. I asked the other devs and while moderately to very positive they raised the same initial questions many of you will. So I thought I'll start with them and a couple of my answers and then we'll discuss the rest. Here goes: Q1) Would we be risking more fracturing of our player base? I think it would be best to start clean server/s for a couple of reasons and aim to keep it/them in a separate cluster a good while. One is that new players deserve the feeling of being a newbie among other newbies with fresh land. This means that I believe their experience and inclination to stick around could be hampered by encountering very experienced accounts and high quality items. As the servers mature we merge them into the main cluster. Exactly when this merge would take place would depend on how well the release goes. If we receive virtually no new players and it's basically a failure, the server would merge very quickly so fracturing wouldn't really happen. If, on the other hand thousands of players come we would have to consider more carefully when the right time to merge is. This would mean Wurm becomes more sustainable which surely must be good for everyone. If we are extremely lucky, we receive so many new players that we can merge earlier because the old accounts and items will be quickly dispersed among the new population (but then we're probably talking about tens of thousands of new players). Q2) Steam gets a bit fussy with real money transactions. Can we abide by Steam Guidelines? I don't see how we wouldn't abide by Steam guidelines. We aren't involved in RMT or account sales. Our players may be but that's not unusual for online games. We would look into what we can do with the Steam shop though so we support their systems. Q3) How about the code base? Won't another branch be too much to handle? We'll see about branches and code base. Basically the server shouldn't need a new branch as far as I can see. There will be new clients though but it sure must be worth it if we want to get thousands of new players. Q4) How about staffing the servers? Will there be enough volunteers around to help out? We don't know at this time. We can't require anyone to help out. Hopefully some will of course and perhaps some GM's might consider returning if they see Wurm on Steam. I'll be interested in pitching in as well at least around launch. It's also related to Q1: If it's a success there will probably be resources to staff the servers, if it's not the server will merge fairly quickly. The initial success of the game shouldn't be based on whether people get help from GM's really - the thrill of encountering Wurm should be the main attraction. I'm fairly sure there will be players to answer questions in chat channels though. When it comes to answering questions in the Steam forum, hopefully Retro can manage some there as well or we suggest they visit these forums. Depends on the pressure. Q5) Will we be able to deal with the added cost of infrastructure? I am fairly certain the amount of new players will be able to sustain the cost of at least one server. If we need more servers the revenue is good so then we should be safe from other perspectives as well. Q6) Would we release both Freedom and Epic servers? We'd start with a Freedom server and be ready to launch more. You will have to discuss moving the Epic server there but from what I gather it would help with some multi account issues and might be a good solution for that. Q7) What timeframe are we looking at? Well, we would want the client to feel really polished. There are quite a lot of improvements planned and from what I understand we're looking at around Q1-Q2 (let's say February to April sometime) next year. Okay so these are the initial thoughts I have. I am sure you have more so let's discuss more pros and cons!

*cough* https://www.wurmpedia.com/index.php/Wurmageddon

Opinion: WU doesn't offer credibility since it's user operated. That's WO Steam's strong point. WU servers are player made. They can go poof in a week, or they are run by shady individuals or you can get unfair treatment and noone would care to know. WU servers, they are not for serious investment so eventually they don't attract players. Opinion: Don't take away the "massive" aspect of the game. @Legios posted a graph with the WU players. It shows very small numbers. If it says something, it's that the amount of people who want to "minecraft" their way through wurm are very small. Wurm's more complex and deep. It's not a game designed for LAN with your buddies. Wurm works best in an open persistent world with a lot of people. It encourages trading which brings life into it's economy, one of it's attractions. Small servers such as WU don't have this beautiful aspec that WO has (or once had). This doesn't mean though that theres a batziliion of players in Steam waiting for an open world persistant MMO to arrive. But it surelly means that going "minecraft" means competing with WU for a customer base of 500. Don't go there. Opinion: Old players should not be your primary target group. Most of us that have been through a lot in this game. Some of us are toxic, some others are here just to make money out of the game and so on. Old players have nothing to provide in this new venture. Quite the contrary, they can drive new players of steam out of compentition because they know every quirk of the game, they can skill much faster and so on. Dear old players, @Ayes, @Brash_Endeavors, @Amadee and the rest. If WO Steam suceeds, there's no need for new players to join "our" cluster. They will simply join the WO Steam and as it will bring revenue devs will focus their work there. Soon you'll be playing single player on a multiplayer context. Inevitability is what will make our accounts and efforts of the last ... 10 years, insignificant. Deal with it, Knock Knock, who's there ? Reality ! And Reality says : Nothing stays forever. Opinion: Wurm skilling should be a bit easier to accomodate for the generation useless (Millenials, Next Gen and the rest of instant gratifiation junkies). Suggestion: Skilling should be free, premium should get a class specialization, read bellow. @MrGARYproposed a good solution. Here's one different from me. Once premium for the first time, a player will pick a specialization, e.g. builder, crafter, smith that contains a couple skills (4-5). One of those skills can be designated as master skill and get a 3x gain. The rest of the skills of the specialization group will get a 2x bonus. The bonus will last as long as the player will stay premium. An account that has gone premium once, will get the 20 cap while non-premium as it works now, to prevent people skilling up accounts and keeping them without prem and fully useful. This will help people build professions and seek others for their services on their professions too. This will also make the game more approachable to millenials and the rest of the next gen lazy people while maintaining the hard grind identity for those that wish to push more skills. Suggestion: Don't generate random noise maps, they don't have variety. Make realistic map and climate. What makes trading bloom is that not all areas are able to accomodate all materials. You shouldnt be able to plant cedar next to the water, nor have sand up on the mountains. Very high altitude should not have that much plantation. Higher quality ore's should be common on mainland with high altitude mountains while low quality in low altitudes. And so on, you get the idea. Spoiled brats should not have everything available next to their stone double door, cause if they do it's like playing single player, on the same server with 1000 other people seperated by a couple of fences. Independence was a bad example of a server. You could be next to the water, have huge plains for crops and a very steep moutain next to you with all the ore available. That's not realistic. And let's not talk about that huge dirt layer Suggestion: Hoarding materials shouldn't be easy. Hoarding materials makes trading and player interactions not work. Containers should go back to how they used to work in 2014 and prior. Decay is good, we should embrace it. Overal, my opinion is that you should treat this as a new and seperate project. Something completelly different as it targets a new breed of gamers. If you ask people on a game con what's wurm online, nobody will probably have a clue. So nothing to lose. Also ignore most of the established player suggestions. All they want is a way to keep their hard-earned highly skilled characters, or prepare the ground on the new "world" to get there easily and much faster than every new player.

Steam is how i found this game but is wu and so i went in browser and saw wo

And I'd take it one step further. If they haven't already, they should make characters on some of the WU servers and experience for themselves what works, and why. It's a real eye opener for those who haven't actually experienced it, and who are still stuck on some of the old assumptions about what would "ruin" Wurm. As I've said before, WU is living proof that many things that may look like "dumbing down" in print and dismissed out of hand, are in reality fun, good for the game, and don't feel "un-Wurm-like" at all.

Please bear in mind this is nothing set in stone. We really want to ensure that if we take this step it's a step that has been discussed with you all, so you know our plans moving forward. Specifics may change or we may not be able to give full answers because at this point we haven't sat down and worked out our full map to make it on steam. Speaking personally, I really do appreciate you all lending your thoughts and being constructive, I'm on break at the moment, but I'm able to relax a little lore knowing the place won't melt down without me just yet!

Lol admittedly, I read the forums backwards and didn’t realize he was responding to Brash_Endeavors. My bad!

Pvp is dead don’t waste your time tbh. Open the PVE server and make your coins for 6 months

This. "Don't put all your eggs in one basket." The basket may drop and all could be lost. For anyone not familiar with this expression it means please don't make Wurm vulnerable by becoming fully dependent on Steam - we don't know what the future will hold for Steam, and we may become restricted by their rules, which can change at any time. Rather "Keep several irons in the fire." Keep your options open. Keep checking your irons in the fire to see if any are getting hot - keep looking at your portfolio of WO options.

I also want to stress that a forced move to steam would not make everybody happy. Some years ago the game i was playing then opened an opportunity to play it over steam (original launcher fortunately retained) so I gave it a try. In fact, steam client took a lot of space and performance and worked badly with my graphics card on linux, there was significant overhead when running the same game over steam compared to the native client. Additionally, Valve seemed to be quite nosy about my personal data which was additionally disgusting. After some time I decided to delete the steam client (no idea whether the account is still around). I would definitely not be happy to be forced to use steam, especially as I am running the game on some bit older boxes.

this would honest to god be the best solution to this game at this point get everyone together stop tearing each other apart

Wipe all the servers and give 1 pve and 1 pvp/no rules. If I had it my way id opt to just go with one server with a pve zone surrounding the starter and have the rest of the map be a free for all. Return to the way the game was in Beta. RIP Newtown

So now we're crystal clear, you got our money already and need us no longer so no reason to keep your promises. Quoting what rolf posted:

Sounds interesting but little to no interest to those of us who do not want to spend months and months rebuilding a new character's skills. If you look at Jackal population vs rest of freedom you can see there are quite a few who would rather not be bothered grinding all over. I know that some players have 12+ hrs a day to grind but most people do not, we have spent our time grinding and working on skills over longer periods of time. To have to spend all those months redoing that work makes me nauseous. I would be happy moving my characters with nothing but their skills and silvers I just bought (from CC no less) for leaving my old server (if you were shutting them down or merging them) But starting over, no I would probably request a refund on the subscriptions I just paid and find something else to do. Also a side note, if you do start a steam server you will fracture the current population even more. In case you are thinking otherwise please revisit that conclusion. It may not be your intention but it will happen nonetheless.

The more I try to envisage this situation, I see that WO will be entirely old (veteran) toons with all new players going to the Steam fresh server and any fairly new players on WO with not much to lose going also. Is it a lot different from now? No, but the chance of getting many new players again is likely gone bar the odd person wanting to sail around endlessly visiting a ghost town. An idea could be that the steam version is just a free trial area and if you want to play further, keep your skills and equipped gear and migrate to WO.

Bannisters and handrails for blending in upper floors when using stairs. Because we're tired of using wooden fences and falling off the top of a stairs. Left and Right facing doors that meet up with the tops of stairs. Small arched walls that line up left, right, and centered for pairing with smaller entryways and match up with stairs. Ceilings that can be built after a Roof Items/Objects that can be attached to ceilings (chandeliers, banners, chains, etc) Glass-making Display cases with glass covers Encased Glass Windows Stained glass windows via dyes during glass-making process Pulley type floor or ceiling object for winching objects up and down floors (think hauling but for multiple levels at a time as hauling only works on ladder floors.) Ramp type floors, basically stairs but for vehicles inside a house. Functional Parapets, let us shoot arrows over them duh! Left/Right hanging gate. Example, if left hanging then there is not post or walled portion on the right side. This let's you pair a left and right facing gate side by side for a double-wide gate for 2-lane roads. When placed on adjacent tiles they open and close together. Most of these I have posted about over the years, only to be ignored. Others I feel would be nice but haven't offered up to the suggestions forum until now.

Wouldn't your opinions have more weight if you posted it with your normal forum ID instead of a newly created "anonymous" id? You have some good suggestions but by the same token, "MMO" games with instances and lobby isn't really an mmo, nor are the ones with server limits of 64 players. 300 seems closer to "mmo" tag than either of the previous. Yes for the current population on 9 servers is a bit crazy but any major changes like merging servers or consolidating the servers would remove even more players. The last straw and all that. Does something need to be done, yep it does. Things that might help is better marketing, targeting more mature players who have expendable income and are not part of the instant gratification crowd. I know little of those things so I can't really comment on them. Not sure merging code bases would work but it is something to think about. Looking at the WU servers who serve the instant gratification players, they never last long (ignoring the servers with corrupt admins) but anything with very fast gains and speeds seem to fade out or re-invent themselves quite frequently. WU private server stability, I have played in several (tried 20-30 different servers) since it was released even ran my own for a while before handing it off to someone with more time. Of those that I have played only 4 still exist today in the same form they did when I played. There are others that are still around but they have new maps, resets and other things that have changed them. That will not help retain players, I am very hesitant to spend hours on end building a deed that can poof over night, but that is just me. Anyway I wish CC and GCG good luck.

I'm ALL FOR THIS. Wurm (and nearly every game like it) is all about progression. The most fun is to be had while you're making things happen, not after they've happened. Some people like designs, some people like gearing up, some people like having trophy/show-off items or the rarest of the rare... But something I think everyone has in common: Fun decreases in some way when the question "What next?" comes up and you don't have a suitable answer. I've loved Wurm (both Online and Unlimited) for years, but what kept me from truly enjoying it was how far behind I was compared to everyone else. Of course, every time I'd play Online, there would be countless players willing to just give me free, awesome, game-breaking items like rare weapons and armor. But I would always say "no thanks" - that would make me skip a LOT of progression. Add some microtransactional mini companion pets or something. However, speaking for both myself and a lot of gamers I know, I probably would be way less interested if it didn't involve a new fresh-start server. I would be personally willing to help in-game if it happened. But even if a fresh server isn't ultimately a part of it, it can't be a BAD thing to expose Wurm to an entire community of gamers. As for Wurm Unlimited... the sooner a true API (not the codeloading nonsense that's currently necessary due to a lack of one) is available, the sooner that platform can truly take off. I have countless ideas for mods that are just too much of a hassle to write, let alone maintain with updates, when you have to jump through code-substitution hoops. There are lots of addons available for WU that enrich the game in many ways, even ones that I prefer over the vanilla WO experience, but in the end the way they have to be done is a pain in the ass. The communities that form on them are wonderful though, but I believe they would be no more affected by Wurm Online than they currently are.

When Rolf, the creator of the game says that revenue is down and things aren't going well, you know things are bad. I love how casual he is about it, it's clear he is beyond caring for this game at this point. I wonder how his real estate investements are going? Anyway, at least he is honest with us which i like.

This is not 2007 anymore. The Wurm team has learned from the past mistakes enough to be able to provide data integrity. The point still stands, I'd trust WO Steam more than any WU server to put my time and money investment in.

@Nomadikhan white/red bardings 2x in stock.

Hmm, strange that you would be getting that error without having placed a crafter. What it is saying is that it has found a creature that it thinks is a Crafter, but can't find it's workbook. Further up in the logs, during server load, there should be a line that says "No workbook found on creature (<creature-id>)". If you don't mind, could you use a GM character to find out what creature it is? In-game you can use the GM wand, right click on an item and select Creatures>GM interface, scroll down to GM Tool and type the id in, then click send. You could also look in the creatures database if you know how to do it. If you're not comfortable doing that, I can look in to writing up a workaround. Some quick possibilities off the top of my head, it is a Crafter (in which case deleting the creature is the easiest solution), some kind of problem with the mod id database (maybe a removed mod), some other mod conflict involving creatures, or I've missed something.

Eek ... ><

Not to sound like a smartarse but yes, suggestions forum section and WU modding section. 😛

I hope you don't run a business....

Great news. Fingers crossed it will work out. Few points to consider though: 1. influx of new players who are not necessarily mature will pose moderation issues, chat mods on standby 24/7? 2. Griefing will become a thing again, just like with the Reddit invasion years ago. This can't be avoided and can be handled just like it is handled currently but genuine issue support tickets will be waiting in queues behind stupid griefing cases (hopefully not but something to be prepared for). 3. As proven on Jackal, experienced players who decide to play on the new cluster will still have the upper hand and huge advantage over new players. It's not the veteran accounts or items/skills/enchants that really matter, it's the knowledge of the system and how to play it. Granted, this knowledge is publicly available but it's a lot to take in and learn for someone who is just starting. New cluster will be a cow to milk by people who know how to play already and know where the money is or how to train their skills effectively. This could be avoided if Wurmpedia was updated with data which is scattered all over the place, from forum posts, to spreadsheets, to people's handwritten notes, to articles on other medias with data mining findings from WU. The 3rd point would be the biggest concern in my opinion because if 10-20 "veteran" players decide to move over or play in parallel on the new cluster, with the knowledge they already have and which is not easily accessible in one place, pretty quickly history will repeat itself and there will be a handful of powerful players and "the rest" who might get discouraged by their slow progress (compared to others). This is being mentioned a lot in other posts as the main deterrent for new players (along with outdated UI). There is nothing anyone can do about the knowledge people already have, can't take it away. Building a comprehensive knowledge base on Wurmpedia with data from the devs on how things work so that it can be easily accessed without having to ask (in english, which could be a barrier for some as well) in CA-Help might be a way to level the playing field for the new players and most browsers can translate it to their language on a press of a button. I understand that all this data is available for public and there are all sorts of skill gain calculators and all but the chore of digging through posts on the forums alone could be avoided. Plus, what's on Wurmpedia is mostly guesses and results of testing (or not) by players so the information can be false, which doesn't help at all.

Hmm no not really a revamp. It would mean opening a new server with the same code as before and releasing the game client for free on Steam. If we need more servers because a lot of players come we would start new ones. The existing servers will remain. I don't know the difference between a dream and a plan. Thinking about something becomes a plan I think, especially when you ask around and find out if there are any showstoppers or big problems with the idea. It's not like we need to plan a lot more once we've discussed this thoroughly. Then it's more "should we do it or not" and take the obvious steps.

AWS is not that cheap as you would think. Moving a project I work on to AWS would cost about 3-4 times more than running it on hetzner. It all depends on how optimised your current server environment is, when it comes to Wurm a bigger root server on hetzner can handle multiple Wurm servers at once even if they are highly populated, which makes it a lot cheaper than on AWS. AWS of course has a very good uptime and you can expect a stable environment even if you do nothing for years. A root server needs some care every now and then.

Fattest cat I have ever seen IRL. Just the shop cat and mascot of my local auto mechanic... He loves using the credit card machine as a pillow, and despite being in an oily garage, keeps himself clean.... as far back as he can reach anyway...

My cat told me it is my own fault she sleeps on the table since I left a blanket there. All blankets on earth belong to her.