Crowdfund a Wurm 2

[Eldurian 86]

I realize this won't be a popular suggestion because it involves giving up everything you have worked so hard on on so many years but it's something I want to suggest anyway because the climate of MMOs is changing and I fear for the future of this title. 

 

I believe we are entering the third age of MMOs.

 

The First Age - The Dawn of MMOs

 

Characterized by titles such as Ultima Online this was an age in which MMO's were a blank canvas and there was no real standard on "How to build an MMO." This lead to very unique game mechanics in the title of the time. Some of which worked, some of which didn't.

 

The Second Age - The Age of Themeparks

 

The success of Everquest followed by the even greater success of World of Warcraft establishes a certain style of games known as "theme parks" as the gold standard in MMOs. Theme parks center around leveling, questing, and acquiring better gear while enjoying developer created content. Titles such as Wurm, Darkfall, and Mortal Online that center around player interaction and creativity as the driving content are seen as risky models and receive no funding, relegating them to niche status games.

 

The Third Age - The Age of Crowdfunding

 

Games begin being funded through sources such as kickstarter allowing players to pay for the development of games they want to play. The innovation of First Age MMOs is reawakened but some of the lessons learned about successful MMO design in the second age can still be applied to innovative titles. Star Citizen comes barreling into the scene proving that Third Age MMOs can get funding even some major companies should be envious of. 

 

My Fear for Wurm

 

Wurm is clearly an underfunded niche sandbox of the second age with a tiny community in terms of successful MMOs. Compare the terraforming and beauty of titles such as Landmark, Life is Feudal, and Crowfall to that of Wurm. With building as a central system the massive titles of Wurm are really a joke when compared with the voxel system and other third age MMO technology.

 

But you have made the best sandbox currently on the market with the (possible) exception of Darkfall! Look at your crafting system. The only one I've ever used where a crafter can be a crafter instead of a harvester or merchant. I regularly describe it as the best crafting system ever and the standard other titles should look to. Look at your wound system. It's fun as hell!

 

This title and these ideas don't deserve to be washed away with the coming tide of 3rd Age MMOs. If you crowdfund a new title, and include even half of what makes Wurm, Wurm. I for one will be glad to back it. I have faith in you, because you've already proven to me you can make a great sandbox.

 

Make a 3rd Age wurm with something like voxel based terraforming, better graphics, and more engaging combat. And you can wow the market with your capabilities.

Edited May 3, 2015 by Eldurian

[Oreo 5,793]

hah

darkfall is terrible

[Aeris 3,759]

HAh, a thread exactly like this one popped up a while back. I still feel we're crowdfunding Wurm 1 since it's technically still in Beta, despite what the label says.

[Eldurian 86]

Darkfall crap crafting, no terraforming and a lot going against it.

 

It's combat is quite fun if you have the twitch skills, high end machine, and extremely good connection to handle it. The fact it's focused on player built factions as opposed to pre-built factions like JK, MR, and HoTs is a huge mark in it's favor.

 

Also deeds may make Rolf a lot of money but structure based territorial control (Building, destroying, and capturing structures that give different groups ownership over an area of land) would be the way to go for any serious PvP title. The deed system really holds the PvP servers back IMO.

 

Honestly if Adventurine got together with Rolf and said "You get the crafting and building, we get the combat and territorial control." I have no doubt that they would design the most amazing fantasy sandbox we'd see for many years to come.

 

I still think the Wurm team could design something amazing on it's own if they got the funds to hire on some additional help in a few select areas such as 3d modeling though.

Edited May 3, 2015 by Eldurian

[Etherdrifter 2,518]

Something that is slightly more worrying is that wurm is no longer niche and unique.

 

We're seeing other titles pop up that offer a crafting focus and tend to integrate PvP in a much more cohesive, balanced, manner.

 

Really wurm 2.0 would not be the answer, what would be worth considering is a crowdfunding campaign fund some extra coders whose specific goal is to fix the many existing issues in the game and give it some polish.

[Eldurian 86]

HAh, a thread exactly like this one popped up a while back. I still feel we're crowdfunding Wurm 1 since it's technically still in Beta, despite what the label says.

 

Well unfortunately I don't think the game will never gain traction as it is. Too many of it's systems are tied to outdated technology and the graphics make it a hard sell. Believe me I've suggested this title to MANY people and few of them can get past the visuals.

 

Check out the Star Citizen kickstarter. It started with amazing visuals and sky high promises. It raised about 2 million on Kickstarter and has gone on to raise over 70 million post KS on it's own site. Enough money to deliver on it's sky high promises.

 

Anyone wanting to design a successful 3rd age MMO (or keep their 2nd age MMO relevant in the 3rd age) needs to study and analyze the lessons taught to us by SC's massive success.

Edited May 3, 2015 by Eldurian

[Eldurian 86]

Really wurm 2.0 would not be the answer, what would be worth considering is a crowdfunding campaign fund some extra coders whose specific goal is to fix the many existing issues in the game and give it some polish.

 

I highly disagree. I don't think Wurm's outdated terraforming tech can compete with voxel based titles. When graphics, terraforming, and combat all need a massive overhaul a whole new game is the best way to go.

[Nachtmahr 96]

Well unfortunately I don't think the game will never gain traction as it is. Too many of it's systems are tied to outdated technology and the graphics make it a hard sell. Believe me I've suggested this title to MANY people and few of them can get past the visuals.

 

Check out the Star Citizen kickstarter. It started with amazing visuals and sky high promises. It raised about 2 million on Kickstarter and has gone on to raise over 70 million post KS on it's own site. Enough money to deliver on it's sky high promises.

 

Anyone wanting to design a successful 3rd age MMO (or keep their 2nd age MMO relevant in the 3rd age) needs to study and analyze the lessons taught to us by SC's massive success.

 

To be honest... i prefer wurms "outdated" visuals to a loot of other games

 

The scenes you stumble upon while striving through unclaimed land are sometimes breathtaking

Well designed villages usually end up in my screenshot folder as well... you can already do so much in wurm with the options the players currently have..

 

Also... you can't compare Star Citizen to Wurm.. at all

Most of SC's success so far(or at least the initial kickstarter) is because of one name... Chris Roberts.. that's why I backed.. that's why everyone I know backed..

After it went up the first few millions ofc others fell in as well.. the promises it makes are just too good to not hop onto the train

[Milosanx 716]

All the titles you have stated still dont compare to wurm. They may have elements of what wurm has, but not the depth. 

 

Nobody really wants to make a niche game like wurm, we are just lucky Rolf still does. Companies don't have the balls. Perhaps is the majority of games changed their mindset to "non instant gratification". the niche would be a lot more popular. I don't think there is a fear of that right now.

 

We will see many many cheap knockoff of wurm, but they won't be wurm....and if you say LiF, i'll /slap you...

[Belrindor 663]

Bought LiF a while back. Played it for exactly 5 hours. Takeaway: Boring as hell. It's not Wurm and never will be, no matter how good it looks.

 

I'd also say that I'm one who likes the 'outdated' look of Wurm in comparison to the Voxel farms out there. I also funded Landmark and can't stand it.

Edited May 4, 2015 by Belrindor

[Klaa 4,872]

Eye-candy only gets one so far. Gotta have good gameplay.

Dwarf Fortress... most primitive gfx ever (vanilla); however, incredible depth.

Minecraft... cubes, literally just cubes.

Edited May 4, 2015 by Klaa

[Milosanx 716]

It's funny, when you look at 2 of the main reason why people don't want to play wurm...

 

1. The graphics --  I love the graphics, but the other reason is the sheer volume of items the engine has to deal with. So things like redoing tree textures or any huge graphical upgrade would really tax us all frame rate wise.

 

2. The combat. -- I think the combat suits wurm imo, especially that its more related to your characters skill and not your actual real time skill. Lets face it, wurm is all about time spent.

 

Anyway thats just me....

[Eldurian 86]

This vs. This
 
You know nothing about their personalities beyond that they are both gamers and apparently will pose half naked for photos. Supposing that's your kind of thing which one are you more interested in dating to see if there is a spark? Chances are that once you've been in that relationship for awhile that the appearance is going to matter less than the content of their personalities but I think most men would answer that with one girl the looks are something that will draw them in, while with the other it's something they will have to "get over" before they can have an enjoyable relationship.
 
That's how graphics work of a game too. The more attractive they are the more likely people are to try the game. The less they have to "get over" before they can enjoy the game. Chances are once you've been playing the game awhile it's not a big deal (Though I do regularly find the massive tile based system extremely restrictive to what I can create) but if the other game reels them in before because it's more attractive then they will never even try yours.
 
Unfortunately as shallow as that seems games need a lot of sales to succeed and once they do succeed they can use that revenue to develop more content faster. Once that's been going on long enough they can have better visuals AND content.
 
@Milosanx. On some level I agree with you which is why I want to see Wurm step up. A 3rd generation MMO developed by Rolf would have a TON of depth. I still think the third generation MMOs will eventually surpass the original Wurm simply as a factor of having more funding and not being shackled to the same systems that were very innovative when released, but now very dated.

These aren't Blizzard. Some of them really do care about delivering depth. Star Citizen is definitely a very deep game and there is a lot of deepness in what Crowfall aims to deliver as well. Some of these games are going to spend their budgets on additional features and depth as opposed to voicing over new quests.

Edited May 4, 2015 by Eldurian

[Etherdrifter 2,518]

Actually, as a small aside, I moved to wurm from the freemium gaming world after quitting Salem when it got too unbalanced.

 

The only reason I gave wurm a go is because a friend of mine really wanted to try something with better visuals than what we had already played.  I can't knock the graphics of wurm since when bumped up to full it is still VERY pretty to look at.  The reason we did not try wurm sooner was the paywall, we knew we'd hit it and it was a horrible thing to hit.  Our reasoning was "do we invest a few weeks into a game and then quit because we decided it was not worth paying for?".

 

My friend soon left because she found the combat lackluster and unintuitive, she never upgraded to a paid account.

 

Moral of the story here is that wurm has a low retention rate (50% at most, most likely somewhere closer to 10%), why this is I cannot offer anything save my own experiences for reflection.

[Warlander 2,730]

To be honest, Wurm graphics are not that bad considering how much separate entities game must render in big villages - creating engine which can render static or even cube/voxel based world is much easier than what we have in Wurm.

The biggest problem with Wurm is lack of almost any help for new players, ancient interface not changed to modern standards since many years and lack of "initial goals" or built-in interactive guides for new players.

[griper 537]

Wurm in my opinion:

Decent graphics

Excellent crafting/building/terraforming

Uninspiring combat system

Poor performance (lag)

Misdirected development efforts (as I said, my opinion )

and finally..

Huge potential (if things above get sorted out)

[sunsvortex 599]

A couple things here

 

#1 -  Right after 1.0 was released Rolf had a bunch of people show up at a type of celebratory party for the release of 1.0 (Multistory). Rolf was on stage and was taking questions and one of the members of the audience asked him what was on deck for WURM 2.0  - -  Nothing, there wont be a 2.0 --

 

#2 - On graphics - the graphics could be greatly improved by switching engines to something like Unreal 4

[media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clakekAHQx0

 

Youd also get all the workflow and capabilities of a modern engine

[Araninke 490]

Wow, those renderings look awesome! How cool if Wurm could look like that...

[Wraithglow 787]

My view of Wurm is that it's such a great game because of the sheer weight of development work it has undergone by passionate developers over the years. No other game has measured up, maybe one day one will but if it was as simple as throwing money at it then it would have happened already.

 

Crowdfunding is not a silver bullet. If someone took Wurm as it is today (let alone a few years ago) and put it on a crowdfunding site they would never get funded. It's not because it's a bad game, it's because people can't see the appeal until they try it. Games designed by committee always end up boring, or cumbersome and end up having to cut back on their original promises. I'm not too bothered about having a 10% retention rate. In fact, I think it's nice because you end up with a core of loyal players and a good community. There's a reason the idea of a steam release is always treated with trepidation...

 

My final thought is about all these voxel based games. They all see to be based on the idea of wonderful realistic-looking scenery. And that's great. But in my experience that gets real boring real fast. The terraforming in Wurm isn't really about creating majestic vistas, it's about the fact that you can create your own idea of a perfect place. Then fill it with barrels! Or whatever floats your boat.... show me a game where you can do that

[sunsvortex 599]

If you watch the video all the way through they show a handful of the assets in low poly mode that look completely realistic and show tree seeding and how the trees spread over time plus quite a few other odds and ends. Its worth watching all the way through. All the assets they are talking about come with the Engine. They ask a 5% cut off gross, but if you call them they will give you a better deal.

[Kuwani 16]

Incoming wall of text, so TL:DR - I'd be on board with this and I've got some where between $1,000 - $10,000 waiting for that sort of project because it could be closer to my ideal game than Wurm currently is and that's already fairly close.

 

I've played Wurm on four separate occasions now. Normally I only last a couple of months before I burn out. That's mostly because I get bored playing alone. I'm 3/20 on getting people into Wurm so its not for a lack of trying, but a lot of people can't really get into it or burn out far quicker than I do. So why is this? Well the most common complaints I've gotten are the clunky UI, dated graphics, boring combat, slow pace, ease of survival, and lack of automation. I'm not going to address all of those because some of those are the things make Wurm what it is.

 

So let's look at the complaints. First the UI, yeah it feels old with lots of menus and sub menus. If I had a copper for every time I heard someone equipped a tool to use it rather than setting it to active I could deed a whole server. Its not horrible, its just old and not very intuitive. If you can't figure out how to do basic things like using your ax to cut down a tree you're likely not going to hang around long. How do we fix that? Well for this particular example perhaps an active tool box of some sort so that 'current using' a tool is more intuitive. Something you just drag a tool into or perhaps presetting the tool belt in some more prominent fashion. They're equipping tools, putting that tool in their hands because it makes sense. If it needs to be set to active some other way it should be obvious. On a related note key binds should be easier to find and set. Some sort of modern key binding UI would do wonders because I don't know anyone that wants to spend time navigating to find the action they're looking for.

 

Next the graphics. They're not bad, but let's face it they are dated compared to what people are use to and yes, I get it there are a whole lot of individual objects and a non-static landscape. There is a ton of data to push around and store so server power is being used elsewhere. What is going on is impressive, but a new player can't see it and likely doesn't care. Since perception is reality for the most part its going to be counted as a strike against the game warranted or not. This one is harder to fix and all you can really do is inform people why there aren't shiny visuals. I will say the object remodeling that has been going on does help some, but in the end this is a trap of more realistic leaning graphics in that they don't age as well as something more stylized. I suppose one could look at a new engine, but most of them out of the box aren't going to support the sandbox elements Wurm has going. Most of their customers aren't looking for that. It doesn't mean those engines couldn't be made to support things like terraforming and individual object rendering/data tracking its just a question of what it takes to get there and if you get there is it going to be efficient.

 

On to combat. Most people I've introduced to Wurm find combat to be pretty dry, almost like dice rolling than anything else. It feels like you're watching it rather than taking part in it which is completely different from the feeling after completing a big project where it feels like -you- did that. There's a sense of agency missing like my actions don't matter beyond the basic setup. Here too, yes I realize you can aim for body parts and wounds in particular areas have effects, but it feels more like RTS combat than RPG combat where you're just issuing orders rather than in it. If that's good or bad is up to individual view points, but it feels different. I'll be honest in that I like action combat, but I don't think it would work well in Wurm so I'm not completely sure how to deal with this one without it going into the realm of twitch style combat. Some sort of active block/parry might help, but I don't foresee crazy over the top abilities coming into the picture.

 

As for ease of survival? Let's face it, staying alive in Wurm is painfully easy most of the time. Food and water aren't hard to come by unless you choose to live an hour walk in land. Monsters are fairly easy to escape from so long as you're not trying to carry a whole tree in your pocket. With that said I should say this is PvE server view and while I know there are more threatening monsters on the PvP servers I don't know how much more difficult they are to simply avoid. Again here this is some what open to personal taste if this is good or not, but risk can add something to the game. As far as the environment goes its pretty easy to overcome. What I would like to see here is something I would call developmental draw. The more developed an area it is the more likely monsters are to spawn or move in that direction. Simple example, if you're a lone farm house with a couple of cows it should be more likely to draw wolves to prey on the livestock. It wouldn't make sense for trolls or bandits to show up because its not worth their time to raid a single farm house, but a village is a different story. Basically the more you have the larger things are that come to try and take it. This would help counter act their being ever lower risk the more developed you get. Or at least properly shift the threats to some sensible direction.

 

The last two are a bit tricky. The slow pace we're not going to get away from and I don't think most of us, myself included would want to, but its something that comes up so I feel I should at least mention it in passing. I've noticed there is quite a large player base in Europe. Perhaps its more common to find people who don't need instant gratification over there than here in the US. It might just be different localized tastes paired with my personal sample of prospective players.

 

Automation is a more interesting one to talk about. I'm not sure how many people would welcome it, but it does have some limited if controversial place and limited automation could work in fitting with the theme. Things that could run off of wind/animal (I would include water, but no real rivers) power to say mill grain on a larger scale or perhaps even a sawmill of sorts. One could think of them a bit like boats in terms of the number of parts, but buildings you setup to fill particular useful tasks. I'd also like to see progressive tiers in there where you have to say build a basic forge to get an advanced forge that then allows you to work something large enough to be made into say a sawmill blade.

 

This isn't an exhaustive list and some of it is the opinion of a small sample, but they're weak points that could stand to be addressed in a Wurm 2. I would love to see a second ground up stab at Wurm because its a fun game and as close to my ideal game as I've found. Its just a game that's fairly entrenched and might be difficult to make changes inside of the existing system. Anyway, my wallet is ready for this if it ever came to be. To close I am interested in know what others think the weak points are and how to address them. There aren't tons of us and I don't know how much capital would be there to crowd fund something like a Wurm 2, but I think it would be foolish to keep a complete rebuild out of the discussion. It might be out of reach, but the process could be useful.

[chademaster 33]

these people must not know that minecraft is wurm 2

[mrtaccgnol 60]

-

Make a 3rd Age wurm with something like voxel based terraforming, better graphics, and more engaging combat. And you can wow the market with your capabilities.

 

 

#2 - On graphics - the graphics could be greatly improved by switching engines to something like Unreal 4

 

vs.

 

 

DEPTH

 

My view of Wurm is that it's such a great game [...] No other game has measured up [...] I'm not too bothered about having a 10% retention rate [...]

My final thought is about all these voxel based games. They all see to be based on the idea of wonderful realistic-looking scenery. And that's great. But in my experience that gets real boring real fast. The terraforming in Wurm isn't really about creating majestic vistas, it's about the fact that you can create your own idea of a perfect place. Then fill it with barrels! Or whatever floats your boat.... show me a game where you can do that

-

which of these mindsets more closely coincides with those of the wurm developers? I'll let wurms sparklingly brown 9 years of development speak for itself

[mrtaccgnol 60]

not that I'm saying either is correct, everyone involved needs to go home and think about what they've done

[Sarcaticous 338]

I have never liked the idea of crowd funding. You first help pay for development and then you pay to buy it after having already paid for it. Makes no sense to me unless given free or significantly reduced price access to the funded object after completion.

 

-

 

 

 

vs.

 

 

-

which of these mindsets more closely coincides with those of the wurm developers? I'll let wurms sparklingly brown 9 years of development speak for itself

 

@mrtaccgnol: You seem to forget WURM has only a handful of developers. Not even that many for several years. I think you should just go home, forget about the thinking part.