What Helped The Most When You Were A New Player?

[Bachus 462]

I started 5 years ago ( although it seems longer ) and the most help came from an Old Time Player from GV days in our alliance [Tiger] who patiently answered a lot of questions and allowed me to cut trees on his place as the only spot I could find to deed on Indy was a Marsh hill.

Then once I knew a little more the Wiki was invaluable and my neighbor (Tich) filled in the missing pieces.

[Emoo 4,357]

First started Wurm about 10years ago now and around that time the biggest help for me was definitely my friends, and village members

[HarryJPotter 21]

When I first started playing, many years ago as a teenager, the idea of and exploration kept me around a few months.  Eventually, lack of progress in skills and premium time made me go away.

 

I played other games, but still thought of the fun times I had in Wurm, so when I was older with my own money and control over my free time I decided to give Wurm another chance.  With that said, I attribute my current success to two things...

 

My lack of free time (only 2-3 hours playtime a day for the beginning) so I didn't burn myself out.

 

Finding the Factional Fight series and watching/listening to them while I played.

[validate 598]

tried wurm many yrs ago. died many times and could not find iron.  gave up after 6 hrs. hated the game.  GV  if I rememeber right

 

a couple yrs later. playing minecraft and loving it. read in their forums about notch . helping with wurm online at the time didn't know it was the game I tried and hated.

 

Read up on the game this time. wiki and forums.  seemed to have a small population. but when I read what could be crafted and the land scaping.  I was sure this was the game I was always looking for.

 

logged in. and again noticed this was the old game I hated. but thought i'd dedicate the weekend and try it.  and this time read up on it. and ask for help ingame. 

 

I saw village looking for new players. I sent a pm and got one back.  had to use the map and died 3 times but I made it to the north indi , mountain deed.  the mayor was Notchman , and 2-3 other guys. they showed me the ropes. I prem'ed by the end of the week, and one more week deeded my own deed. (over a ton of clay lol opps. newb)

 

ended up in the hospital for a week. and then home for 6 weeks. I played 12-16 hrs a day.  made a new coastal deed. with great neighbours around to help with advice.

 

I have to say for new players.  read up on the wiki and forums. ask for help often.  best to join a village for a few weeks or months, then venture on your own.  don't need to pay for prem time until most skills near 20.  also after you pay once, you can make the in game money to continue to pay for prem time just ask who needs what and make it.

[Tekari 133]

When I first started playing '08 or '09 it was mostly players on server chat helping me. One name I remember well is Amikron.

Later it was definitely the Wiki.

 

One of the best tips I got back in the days was to play in windowed mode so I could access the Wurmpedia easily

[Noizhead 622]

Other:  Grit.

[silakka 2,360]

wiki and villagers provide the most of the basic help everyone needs

but if you need sweet little tips and tricks that aren't so clear in wiki or your villagers have no idea, then that's when you go to CA help

Just that this poll makes CA help look bit underrated.

[demondan 1,865]

First started Wurm about 10years ago now and around that time the biggest help for me was definitely my friends, and village members

 

Like me ya kient!

[Alden 209]

First dipped my toes into Wurm in 2009.

The wiki was the biggest help, and global chat just after that. I would pay attention to the chat as I went about my day, and picked up a lot of things by the questions that others asked.

 

Wurm was a much simpler game back then, Today's newbie has a much harder time trying to swallow all the information that gets spit at them.

There are plenty more advantages to newbies nowadays as well, but often that just ends up being more information for them to try and swallow long before they can use it.

[Jaz 2,663]

Wiki was a great help to me, but I cannot be grateful enough the neighbours too:

 

Diopapa, Ivanson, Koocooo a bit later Hilfe, Pingpong  - just a few names who were around and either helped a lot or been of invaulable info on the ways of Wurm.

Those times on the north of Independence in the wild are still magical memories ...

[Tzaasi 12]

I played for a year..took some time off and then restarted with a brand new character. In both cases my friends and allies were great in helping me get started with a healthy dose of wurmpedia and player guides.

[Bachus 462]

bump

[geode 292]

This seems like a good time for me to say some things about the Wurm Wiki and it's current situation. This post is not an attempt to derail or troll, until now I saw no other thread involving the Wiki to make my comments.

 

I first tried Wurm in 2007 but did not keep playing it. It confused me bigtime. I tried Wurm again in 2008 and using the Wiki in a second window I began to figure things out. I did join a village (won't name it) and was used pretty much as Labor and was kept in the dark about a lot of things. I asked a lot of questions of my Village Mates and many of the Villagers answered of course... like when I began to do BlackSmithing for first time I asked how to do it, I asked our village BS, She told me to transfer the item I was Imping into my inventory to Imp it after it got to "Glowing"... and I found BSing frustrating because the item kept cooling off. She then told me "You won't make a good BS, just help me and keep the Peat coming and I will do the BSing for you". Later I learned she had been lying to me as I opened her Forge once when I was fueling it and noticed she was keeping the items in the Forge as She imped them. Later I tired BSing and keeping the item in the forge to maintain it's heat and saw the great advantage in doing so... and realized why She had lied to me. There was other things other vet Players chose not to explain to us newer Players as they deemed it advantageous to themselves to keep us ignorant as it benefited them in some manner.

 

That right there taught me never truly trust anyone in this game, no matter how friendly they appeared to be, as there will always be too many reasons other Players might lie, cheat, steal, just to gain an advantage over others, and too few reasons why they should do the right and honorable thing. Players are afraid they will lose an advantage, will lose out to others.

 

So in regards to the OP and the Poll, I can say If not for the Wiki I would have been lost in this game and once I figured out that knowledge is power around here I asked less questions and just looked it up in the Wiki. I stayed playing Wurm because of the Wiki's existance. The Wiki is not always right, but at least it was, until recently, PLAYER maintained and updated, and thus less likely for errors, once written in the Wiki, to stay there as many could see it and had permissions to fix the errors.

 

Now the Wiki is In My Opinion "Staff" updated and controlled, and since I have good reason not trust others in general in this game, the less People that control the Wiki, the more I foresee it and expect it to get filled with information that isn't complete or accurate, that benefits a few at the expense of new Players especially that don't know Wurm like us old Players do. Any time a few control the Knowledge and Information it will be handled in the wrong way, and it will be here as well eventually. History teaches that lesson over and over again.

 

I am NOT in favor of a few People having access to make changes in Wurm's Wiki. IMO we need to return to the Wiki being maintained by the Community as a whole.

 

And of course the Few will tell us not to fear, that they will safeguard the knowledge for us, and that it will be complete.... but with all due respect.... that has always been said before with "safeguarded" knowledge.

Edited August 21, 2015 by geode

[Aeris 3,750]

as there will always be too many reasons other Players might lie, cheat, steal, just to gain an advantage over others, and too few reasons why they should do the right and honorable thing. Players are afraid they will lose an advantage, will lose out to others.

One of many reasons why a player maintained wiki is bad. I'm not saying that the current Wurmpedia Assistant system is better though, it's actually worse since it's the same thing but run by a smaller number of people.

For as long as players are the ones handing information to other players people will always try to keep the good bits to themselves if they'll somehow gain something from it. Imagine if the Wurmpedia Assistants actually got information confirmed from the devs instead, how much more useful that would be for all of us.

[geode 292]

One of many reasons why a player maintained wiki is bad. I'm not saying that the current Wurmpedia Assistant system is better though, it's actually worse since it's the same thing but run by a smaller number of people.

For as long as players are the ones handing information to other players people will always try to keep the good bits to themselves if they'll somehow gain something from it. Imagine if the Wurmpedia Assistants actually got information confirmed from the devs instead, how much more useful that would be for all of us.

Edited August 21, 2015 by geode

[topkos 478]

Neighbors: the croc, the spider or the wolf entertaining me with a dance around the ql 1 campfire while cooking a ql 1 casserole on a ql 1 pottery bowl to find out after over 1 hour and a half that the food wont even get noticed on my hunger bar. That day the dance of agony would end with me dead in the horrible slums in the outskirts of New Town. Doesn't matter I have good experience now and this char is soooo past nettles/blueberries casseroles. He is hungry for some real food and that bird with the name of Old pheasant is going to satisfy that.

Back in New Town with my pride totally destroyed I decide that hunting can wait and i need to somehow enter on that fenced mine to get my first nails.

+10 . Will start a new char anyday after all the laughs i received in kingdom channel for asking for help to get out.

[Tipper 260]

when I began to do BlackSmithing for first time I asked how to do it, I asked our village BS, She told me to transfer the item I was Imping into my inventory to Imp it after it got to "Glowing"... and I found BSing frustrating because the item kept cooling off. She then told me "You won't make a good BS, just help me and keep the Peat coming and I will do the BSing for you".

 

Excuse the pun, but that's pretty cold. It was a revelation for me when I realized I could just leave stuff in the forge, and I didn't need to pick stuff up or remove it from containers prior to repairing.

 

On Wpedia --

 

The system of exchange between developers and editors is spelled out on the front page (a new addition?) ...

 

The information on the Wurmpedia is gathered by the players as Wurm Online is considered a Sandbox of Discovery, however from time to time we do get information provided to us by developers to aid us in our quest for knowledge.

[Zachariah 736]

3 years of playing and I chose the wiki however the CA help channel was very helpful as well. And I chose the wiki not just because I am an avid editor on it    but all of the options were very helpful. 

Edited August 22, 2015 by Zachariah

[MrGARY 12,421]

In my first month of Wurm, I started on GV with some other people new to Wurm too, didn't learn much.  I'm pretty sure I turned the help chat off because it was annoying.  We moved straight into Wild very quickly because it was a pvp server and started our own deed.  There was no help channel, and I didn't even have a forum account much less look at forums for quite a while.  I even had to find my own way to our village using the map, and after I died to my own dog it took me 2 days to get myself back home.  I heard about the wiki but I used it basically for crafting recipes since that was all I looked for.  I basically taught myself how to wurm at first, it's a wonder how I stayed looking back at how insane this game used to be towards noobs

[Banzai 664]

common sense, yo.

gotta use that wogic. 

[AndreC 48]

When I started off, the wiki was my life.

[Theshrike 48]

Good people. When I first started house of mol rehan was being built, they gave me a shovel and used me as digging slave. Left after a few hours, converted to HOTS and some nice guys taught me everything.

[Sullen 30]

I think I have 2 cents worth typing up on this topic.

I started playing the game twice because the first experience was terrible and I didn't give the game a chance. I'll outline why it was "terrible" here.

 

I want to preface this with Wurm is my favorite game, and I don't see that changing. I think you either hate it or love it, I hope it's around for decades to come. Nothing is perfect, and it seems the company is doing a lot lately to fix issues, listen to their customers and add new things. It's been fantastic.

 

1. I'm the type of person who researches everything on a game before I usually even start playing, so that I don't gimp my characters. Thankfully, it's difficult to do that in this game unless you skill up without premium, losing out on precious characteristic body stats in the beginning.

The Wiki is incomplete, and often times outdated.

 

I can understand the developer's stance on not wanting to divulge game mechanics, making it to where we need to "figure" it out on our own. I respect that. However, for a new player, that works against retention. Relying on the Wiki, and chat can be fun, but can also be frustrating for a new player. 

 

It also breeds "elitism", such as  (aka features) bugs, mechanics, quirks, understanding the math behind skill gain, traders, rare rolls, certain helms decreasing speed less than others, etc etc (obviously these are just examples, its not too important what is specifically listed here) that are closely guarded secrets within the community. So a new player relying on the Wiki and chat for their answers on various questions might be met with a perceived relative silence and ambiguity.

2. The tutorial is awful, even after the Xanadu revamp, and now players can easily find the portal without even being forced to go through the tutorial the first time. Maybe move the Portal somewhere else not as easily found unless you actually went through the tutorial, while preserving the ability for us experienced players to still bypass it.

 

3. Graphics. I have a handful of real life friends who refuse to play the game simply due to the graphics. I personally don't mind because the gameplay is so fantastic to me that it doesn't bother me, but I certainly feel it's worth mentioning.

 

4. More Youtube presence. If Im interested in a game, the first place I go is Youtube. There are only a handful of people making videos for Youtube. I think it would be well worth some production money to have some very quick gameplay videos created that are easily referenced. Such as, lets say I play a different MMO that has millions of players (no need for names), I can look up on Youtube how to do something, like lets use something in Wurm for example, how to make a large cart. It could be a quick video on what components you need, how to get those components and how to continue building the cart once you have the components. I think these videos are super important, especially to the younger players in the world because every other game has them, we just don't seem to attract the type of personalities to sit down and make these, and we have less players exacerbating the issue.

 

I love that this question has been brought up, it sounds like someone is reading in between the lines and are making moves on making this awesome game more marketable and improving retention rates.

 

Thanks for reading,

Sullen

[rapidron 142]

I joined wurm after reading the wiki.  there is still a lot that is not explained (a mistake IMO) but it is a great guide esp compared to some games.  I was lucky and after dying a few times pulling my small cart, i passed a new  village and was offered a spot.  We were all noobs and let the animals die beasue we did not know to feed it.   Guess they did not graze well on brick.  Great times. 

 

the wurm academy on Pristine is the best thing I have seen for helping new players.  hats off to those guys.

[Marlon 303]

I don't remember having or knowing about the wiki back then, but now that it is there, I enjoy and use it a lot.

It's paramount though that new players understand, what took me so long to grasp, that you have to stick it out, and that figuring things out for yourself is normal (and the point?).

Neighbours, the random passer-by, these were my useful things, but I started playing again, a second time, with my fiancee, and we figured things out together. It's a game of discovery and using your marrow. 

The wiki, like any other wiki, can contain correct, or inaccurate information, but you soon discover it, and fix it. Inaccurate information does not hang around very long there, as with wikipedia or any other public source. I think however, that the devs not confirming or divulging information is fantastic, we want to, NEED TO, find and research and figure things out for ourselves. If a settlement has a bunch of villagers that are resourceful, and inventive, and they happen to stumble on the way to skill up your hammer/sickle skills (like we did) - then sure, why not use it to our advantage. It's economy and competition. Doesn't mean we will lie, just means, eventually, when a villager leaves, he will spread the word