Wurmhole

That was another game I really loved. It died and came back to life three times if I remember. It was such an immersive game in its day. If only we could build a house...

When Wurm Online reaches the end of it's rope, there won't be much value in selling to another company. There probably isn't now either, but I don't think the game is ready to close just yet. With any long running game, there are players that still love it and wish they could keep playing for another 15 years, despite no new developments. I saw this with Asheron's Call. After it shut down, a dedicated few players spent the time to reverse engineer the client code, to recreate the game. It took years, but it is now a functional game again and has a decent little community. So with Wurm, we already have the WU model, making it very somewhat easy to help the WO version of the game live on, for as long as the players wish it to. Move WO code to WU, then sell the final map data to players. This would allow anyone that wants to, to keep their hard earned assets alive. Keep traveling those highways they built, stop at special memorials for our departed player friends and just keep all those great memories alive. Originally I thought of auctioning each server, to keep them unique, but there is far too much risk in the winner being unsuccessful with managing their server. So if everyone has a chance to own their own Wurm history, then the servers will never truly be gone. Imagine tight knit alliances partnering up to host the full server network. Allowing travel between all servers, including from SFI to NFI. The possibilities of what could be done are pretty limitless. Sandboxing the sandbox if you will. Personally, I would buy every server. Call it Wurm Reborn Server DLC sale and charge 100 euro per server on Steam, then if sales underwhelm, time for the 50% off sale. ALL player data would have to be wiped for security, so the server hosts would have to restore all the payers that wish to rejoin their server. Fortunately almost everyone has their skill dumps locally, to make it a reasonable task. Just think, if 3000 players all bought a copy of their favorite server, at 100e each, doesn't that cover the cost of your initial investment @Krister? Just keep that idea in your back pocket for now. -Wurmhole

Kirtner is human macroing. Hiding it behind several layers of humans. They person in ph is going to use AI to create the actual content. Then a shiny metal looking wurm NPC will come for us all, but in RL, not the game. But if I die, will I be allowed to reroll a new me? Maybe if I just change my IP address, but then I'll be banned, until Amnesty Day. Hopefully that day comes with cool new cut and paste logos that all say TBA. FYI, Wemp is legal where I live.

Honestly, out of everything ever done to Wurm, WU was the one bright light in my opinion. It had the potential to blossom into something big. The new player counts were skyrocketing, compared to anything WO had ever seen, but they just never came up with a good way to monetize it. I know many here feel WU took away players from WO, but while it did, it also added more new players to the Wurm franchise than anything in its history. The fact that players didn't stay is the important part. What was missing from WU is also missing from WO. It is those missing elements that will always make this a very niche game that only a few dedicated player will even tolerate. Rebuild from scratch. Wurm 2.0 or just let it all burn down now.

If I thought Wurm had a future, Id offer to buy it. But I don't. The IP isn't worth 300k, 100k or even 10k. There isn't anything about Wurm worth paying for right now, other than for sentimental reasons. Kirstner has made it loud and clear that Wurm is on the ropes and not long for this world, other than just existing in maintenance mode to collect the last trickle of player revenue. If I was going to invest, it would be in the creations of Wurm's replacement. Buying games that are 15+ years old, that never manage to grow in player base (except new server spikes), is not a promising business model.

How will it benefit Game Chest to unban a handful of people. Every one of them is now a player that requires some amount of probation, where the GMs keep a close eye on them to see if they are going to get back to their old tricks that got them banned in the first place. There is pretty much no scenario where it makes sense to unban, unless done through the appeal process. Toxicicity, cheating or whatever behavior caused the ban in the first place isn't worth bringing back for a couple euro in deed/prem each month. This just doesn't make any sense for the game or company. If 5000 players were banned over the years and Wurm was going bankrupt, just maybe it would be a possible business option. But until then, there is about as much chance if this amnesty thing happening as making WO 100% F2P for deeds and prem, with no skill level restrictions.

Bans are made for a reason. Several of my previous alts have been banned, but AFTER I traded them (when it was allowed, before Steam). It makes me sad that they will never return, but players made their choices. No amnesty.

I like this concept. Something else to consider, besides what Akuzic mentions above: What to do when there are two tools of the same type on the belt? I like to have a skiller hatchet and a speed hatchet on the same belt. I can obviously manually select the tool and hot key the actions, but if I ever decided to use the universal action key, what hatchet would be default?

I have been thinking about altars and why they just haven't been upgraded to be loadable. I suspect there would be a lot of issues around domains. So what if we just eliminated domains completely? Eliminate all priest reliance on domain. Eliminate all spell reliance on domain. Eliminate all meditation reliance on domain (lava/freeze to name a couple). Find another way to gain the buffs that came from domains, such as just being a priest or follower of a god? Once domains are eliminated, there wouldn't be any reason not to let altars load in a cart, would there? Just imagine a pile of altars, representing all available gods and all at different QL, yet none are interfering with the others. Imagine canal tunnels that don't have altar spam every 10-20 tiles, so your mag doesn't have to run back and forth to sac, for those reinforcements. No more domain wars, where someone imps there altar to insanely high levels that overlap your deed - a deed that you pay for, yet your neighbor can devalue with their imping skills

30 is a good height. 33 if you want to drop a single story building inside the tunnel, to exactly match the height of the opening. 40 is probably my favorite opening height, since I am riding in on a cart most of the time. If you are going up right from the entrance, you might go for 60 entrance height. Just my personal preferences. SOme like much higher and some do so low that it feels like you are going to crash into the opening ceiling as you enter. Also, they have not done anything yet on this suggestion for tunneling up or flat for an entrance.

No. I don't like when animals trample the grass and turn it to packed dirt. I was hoping there was a mod that would prevent grass from being packed to dirt.

Is there a mod for this yet? I know there is one that stops farms from turning to weeds and I can boost meditation speeds, to get a bunch of grass makers, but was hoping there was a server wide option to turn off packing completely.

Well that is a little embarrassing for devs. But only a little. Easy mistake to make.

WU (on Steam) is the single biggest event to bring in new players and I personally consider it Wurm's greatest achievement. I know many decades long veterans hate WU, because it split the player base from WO, but honestly, shouldn't we be happy that Wurm players are enjoying their favorite version of Wurm? The second biggest was the NFI launch on Steam. As with every new server launch, hoards of old players rush to the new lands, to capitalize on the needs of new characters. THey also come for the pristine new lands, with fabulous new sights and deeding potential. They, meaning me, loves new server launches, but it also splits the player base. Now there is a group of veteran players that have left their old homes and communities for new lands. There are also the veterans who keep their old characters and lands AND create all new characters and lands on the new servers. Double the revenue for Game Chest. New players came via the extra visibility on Steam, but most left, leaving the bulk of Wurm revenue needs on the shoulders of the die hard veterans. All the servers now are graveyards. Archeology was one of the smartest content updates. Content that lets you benefit from quitting players, which is the one things Wurm is better at than just about every game I know. Wurm in it' current form isn't going to bring in new players in any meaningful way. There can be new servers, new marketing gimmicks and new minor content additions, but none of it is going to retain new players, without massive fundamental changes to this game. Every year that goes by will Wurm age, while other games release with amazing new graphics. It is hard for new players to come into an old game like this and feel excitement for it. I just can't see any efforts to bring in new players having more success than the classic "new server launch!" money grab. So we just need to throw dev efforts into Wurm 2.0, on a completely new game engine, or simply call this what it really is, a game with no future, other than attempting to retain the remaining player base for as long as possible, to pay off the few hundred thousand USD of investment to buy it.

I like the drum roll, cause my wife yells "ROLL!" every time it happens. Although, she hasn't for a long time, since I'm only a forum fool now. Edit, but yes, what the heck made anyone think it was good to announce your failure with fanfare?

I do appreciate the community/cooperation we have here. It is absolutely what kept me here for so long. But with limited time to play, I log in for 10-30 min and the alliance is deserted most times. It is mostly a solo game now, so I choose to play WU for free, to get my few minutes of Wurm in a week.

I hear you. I really should have stated that I like "modded Ark." Vanilla Ark can be very frustrating at times. The building needs work, but mods really shine in this area. Conan is probably my favorite building game, but it is far less challenging than Ark. Conan died for me though. THey stopped selling DLCs and moved to micro transactions that aren't very micro. We used to get a whole new building set, new armors and weapons and some misc stuff all for 10 USD. Now the micro transactions will get you a couple sets of armor for the same price. Or you can grind for weeks to make it free, if you are unemployed.

The reason there is usually such a strong aversion to it is a large percentage of folks here have been here for more than 10 years now. The thought of new people coming that could achieve in 1 year what previously took 10 years to achieve is soul crushing. Yeah, I get that completely. It hurts if you only look backwards. Hoarding the awards of your pixels as a badge of honor. But does that help the future of this franchise? No. Only the toughest players survive long term in Wurm. Casual players, folks that just want to pop in for 15 min to 1hr a day, dip their toes into the Wurm lava and decide this is no life for them. How can they possibly be relevant in a game like this? My son has a successful career and came to try out Wurm, as a way to spend more time with dear old dad. He tried for a couple days and waved goodbye. "What's the point of this Dad? I'll never amount to anything here with the time I have to play." So he plays other games, where he can achieve something in a few months of casual play. Same goes for me now. I no longer have 16hrs a day to devote to Wurm and I just can't keep it all running on an hour or less a day. I now play Diablo 4 for about 2-3 hours a week with my son. We are having a blast.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean with this comment, but I'm honestly fine with WO 1.0 getting sunsetted and a new 2.0 version created to replace it. I'm happy to let my 20k USD investment go, in favor of some real progress with a brand new version of this game, that can keep up with the times. WU got part way there. It took a new spin on the skilling, which was much more tolerable than WO, but WU really needed a better monetization plan and consistent upgrades to make it viable, not to mention the crippling issue of lame old graphics/animation/fighting that WO has. WU is entirely responsible for many of the QoL updates we have received in WO, since the launch of WU (thank you mod developers!). As for Ark, do you mean "ARK: Survival Evolved"? Are you saying you want Wurm to be less like Ark? If so, I (and Game Chest hopefully) would have to disagree. Do you understand how successful Ark Survival is? At this moment there are 62,000 players for Ark in Steam Charts, vs 131for Wurm Online and 129 for Wurm Unlimited. So please, let us be like Ark. Honestly, if we could evolve to Ark graphics, Ark fighting, Ark animations and a reasonable level of skilling, we could turn this thing around. Just PLEASE not Ark characters! UGLY! I think I almost like Wurm characters better, lol. I've played Ark far more than Wurm over the last couple of years. I've bought every DLC they offer. I have 8 servers running. It is a fantastic game. I get an adrenaline rush every day in that game and the last one in Wurm was probably when I scaled a flat top mountain on Xanadu, shortly after it was released.

Good apology, but I'm still on these forums to see results. Rebranding, a fancy web site and store won't make any difference in the long run. The old web site, branding and store did not impact me in any way, to be honest. What matters is the game. I Posted about this in the first "Hi, I'm Kirstner" thread, but this game is just outdated and primarily appeals to people that are already heavily invested in the game. All the updates and content additions are to appeal to existing players. All that is being done is an attempt to keep those existing players paying subs and upkeeps. Wurm is old. It looks old. It has a nostalgic feel, like firing up my old Atari 2600. This is not a game that will magically attract hoards of new players. New branding/web/store is just putting a new paint job on a 1974 Ford Pinto. When you get in, it is still a Pinto inside. When you drive it, it still drives like a Pinto. Wurm 2.0 is what you need. We need better graphics. We need better animations. We need better fighting. We need better building. Faster skilling! One thing you can say about Wurm is that there is no other game in the world that allows you to spend an entire decade of your life, 8+ hours a day, just to raise 10% of your skills to max level. There are some people that love that about Wurm, but for every one of them, there are at least one million people that would never play a game that insane. Do you want to grow Wurm or do you want to focus on just keeping the same players that have been here for over a decade? That is the only question I need answered right now.

no, sorry. Wurm is about getting to 99.999999. There are no 100s.

But how is that done on PvE servers, where most of the player base lives?

@Krister You have a real gem of a game here, but it just doesn't shine bright enough for the world to see. Each new campaign, we get a big (for us) influx of new players, but they quickly fade away. We are left with generally the same group of core players, that have been around for many years. This game is funded by old players that throw money at multiple deeds and multiple accounts. I believe many of the development staff are part of that group. This makes development somewhat focused on the needs of us old players, to retain our interest. When big exciting updates to the game happen, many old players return to try the new features/content, but how many new players are enticed by a new feature to a game that didn't interest them in the first place? If you want to make this game a real success, you need some fundamental changes. I would say the first one needs to be the visual appeal. We have such tired old graphics that only veteran players are see the beauty of Wurm these days. The old saying of "you can't judge a book by it's cover", does not help get new players. We all judge when scrolling through a list of 10,000 games to find something new to play. Just make Wurm 2.0. Stop trying to keep 1.0 relevant. 1.0 players will keep playing till the servers are turned off, because they have so much already invested. So go make a 2.0 with better graphics, better combat, better house building. Better able to handle large numbers of players, creatures and buildings without crashing. Make a game that doesn't require 500 players to each have 10 active alts and 10 active deeds to keep money flowing in the game. I generally spend around $2000 a year on this game and have been at it for over a decade. I could buy a new car with that money. But I realized a while ago that there was no reason to continue. There is no vision for a future Wurm that isn't just more of the same, plus a few little add-ons to desperately hold old players from walking away for good. Do something BIG! Don't just keep stringing everyone on with few little changes. Could you imagine a car manufacturer just selling the same car for two decades and only changing a few features on the dashboard? Maybe add another radio station preset button? Keep selling it for the same price as new model cars from the competition? It's why nobody buys this car. I may sound like a bit of an angry Wurm player, but I'm not. I have so much love for this game. I'm just very disappointed that in all the years and cash I invested in this game, it never went anywhere, other than adding complexity, which gives people more things to grind. I can go outside and rub two rocks together for 10 hours a day if I just want to grind. I know this comment is pretty far down the line and likely not to be read at this point, but I haven't been in forums for a long time, now that I don't play anymore. I do with you the best and pray to Nahjo that you find a way to make Wurm relevant again. -Wurmhole

This is pretty epic! I was one of the few that really enjoyed AC2. I can still clearly hear the burun shouting "alert the clutch!" I tried AC1 again a couple months ago. I loved the sounds. The game play ok, but graphics were tough to get back into. I wish they would get the AC2 emulator up and running. On NFI, Olthoi is one of my priests.

Most of my gaming life is spent trying to get back the amazing feeling I had when playing AC. It was amazing (first graphical MMO for me) to be in a game world that was so alive. All the ambient sounds around me as I explored. The incredibly complex world of spell casting, with the hundreds of components needed. Crafting thousands of different armors. I think my first wife was about left me over AC. Wurm is pretty great though and a decent way to distract me, while waiting for that AC successor. Probably never get that first MMO love feeling again, but I'll keep hoping. Also I'm in the "old" group. At our age, gaming is a great social tool, especially with so many bugs floating around. Just make sure you get outside and do some walking. Old farts can't afford to be glued to their chairs for 16hrs a day. You won't last long if so.