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KanePT

How is Wurm?

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8 hours ago, Brash_Endeavors said:

I was trying to find some graphs specifically looking at 2015-2018, because we have had this discussion before about the impact of WU on WO,  but can;t find them now. Perhaps BDew (who made most of the "population over time" graphs in the last decade), can do an updated chart looking at Wurm over the past 10 year period, which will make actual trends much easier to spot.   In any case, one thing that won't help, is people relying on "memory myths" to make points on causes/solutions for Wurm.  

 

Sadly the current MRTG data goes only back to June 2016 and i didn't keep the old data, so here's an updated graph for the last 2 years. Standard disclaimers from my old graph threads apply :P

 

premium.png

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And since i had more time to waste at work i decided to plot WU CCU data over the same timeframe...

 

qJjITEd.png

 

Blue line is WO premium numbers (and they match the left Y axis)

Red line is WU CCU numbers (and they match the right Y axis)

Also all big WU updates that came out are marked on the graph

 

Note that the compared numbers are different things, but if there was any trend of one affecting the other i'd expect it to be visible here... and i'm not seeing any to be honest.

 

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On 7/11/2018 at 8:36 AM, Ayes said:

If the objective is to create more player interaction, making the game more attractive and enjoyable to those who are positively influenced by this aspect, then I see a far better way to do so. That would be to make it easy for this to happen by having Portals able to be created on every deed to every starter Village. Then at every starter Village have a Portal to every other server. This would make social gatherings and visits to other players readily available with minimal time devoted to traveling to them. This system can be easily created by the Developers since it is already in existence in the game but in a much more restricted format.

 

Even then these points are not what will "cure" the decline in the Wurm Online population and I think they are the wrong direction to look if that is the goal. Wurm Unlimited is now the great direct competitor to WO since it is basically the same game. Yet this has had some positive effects in that ideas from the Modders there and certain concepts have been gradually and gently introduced into WO. Until WO can become as player friendly *time wise* as WU it will always have the lesser advantage, thus drawing more players to it (WU) who prefer this style of game. The *time* needed to accomplish anything is the great destroyer of the WO player and as you see, only the strongly determined survive. Reducing some of these time sinks are the most beneficial changes for the game population as a whole, as well as new players to come. This is I think what should be focused upon as an improvement to player enjoyment and retention.

 

This.  This is so right-on-it, imo.

 

Also, another thing I think, that is usually left out when people are theorizing about the "decline" is natural attrition. It's going to happen no matter what.  Wurm's been here approx 10 yrs now.  People come and go in games and no game can expect to survive forever on the core group who either haven't left or have left & come back. 

 

I didn't always feel this way about it but have gradually come to believe that Wurm needs to start appealing more to a new audience and making the game more fun for newbies. WU has really opened my eyes to a lot of things. The so-called easy mode being a bad thing for Wurm is nothing more than a lot of specious arguments. They sound reasonable on the surface but have no actual basis in reality when it comes to attracting players who are just looking to have fun.  Staring at timer bars and/or taking hours to go anywhere or do anything,  is just not fun and not what the average new player is looking for, and gets really old and tedious even for established players.  Niche yes, but adding more fun-factor won't change Wurm being a niche game.  I do believe, however, that it would attract more of the people who are looking for this particular type of niche game.

 

Natural attrition will always decrease numbers in any game. It's inevitable. Without newbies, the population will never increase.   High level accounts, whether earned or bought, are more fun because everything is "easier" and faster.  (yes I said the dirty word that so many vets claim to hate. "easier.")  Yet those same people who enjoy their own "easy mode" call anyone who finds Wurm to be sluggish and tedious without a vet account "lazy," and are in complete denial that they too want things "easier" and faster.  Otherwise why would anyone in their right mind pay those outrageous prices for a high end character.

 

Ayes, your points about making it easier & more fun for people to gather, socialize, help friends, get help when needed, visit merchants, etc., (without being force-crowded into smaller areas by closing servers), is spot on and I agree wholeheartedly. 

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15 hours ago, Brash_Endeavors said:



Last time we were close to 6k, let alone the idea of hitting eventually 7k,  was back in 2014 .   There was a very SMALL bump up again in early 2015 clearly tied to the Elevation reset and bridges, but after that  we were pretty steadily losing over 100 players a month. If WU had actually escalated that rate over  the past three years, we would be closer to 500 players today, instead of eventually stabilizing in the years immediately after WU to around 2500 now. WU in fact was what made it possible for them to hire many more devs, over a dozen devs today, adding massive amounts of new content on a regular basis that has actually slowed the decline between 2015 and 2018. (There is still a decline, just no longer 100 players a month)  And, some new players came to WO specifically after trying out WU, and wanting a server/amin system that was much more reliable steady and consistent than some of the more erratic WU servers, where some people start new servers in great excitment then close them 6 months later because they are bored or got a new job.

  

WU was released in October 2015. According to Wayback machine WO had 4640 premium players on Thursday, 22 October 2015 at 8:35

https://web.archive.org/web/20151022063625/https://jenn001.game.wurmonline.com/mrtg/paying.html

3120 players on Tuesday, 10 May 2016 at 9:25.

https://web.archive.org/web/20160510072751/https://jenn001.game.wurmonline.com/mrtg/paying.html

 

That is slightly more than steady loss of 100 players a month, thats 1/3 playerbase gone in 7 months.

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And the year before that, we were about -6200- players (July 2014). The point being, we were hemorrhaging players long before WU. 

 

If we had 3120 players in May 2016 and  then 3069 players in August 2017 (a loss of 'only' 51 players total in 15 months) , then the player loss has actually slowed to some degree since then. When you look at only short periods of time, such as a seven month interval here or a nine month interval there,  it's hard to differentiate longterm trends from seasonal fluctuations. You really need to look at longer spans of time. Possibly (??? we don't know for sure 'why' we can only guess) the slowdown in the rapid decline after that  was due to the massive influx of cash that came from selling 200,000 copies of WU and which meant Code Club could greatly expand the dev team and thus start the relatively massive content updates of the past two years.

 

Without WU, the population seemed poised to continue a decline that started well before WU and that would mean cutting staff and ending content updates, instead of improving them.

You can much more easily make the argument that "WU Saved Wurm" as saying "WU Killed Wurm".

 

In any case, let me repeat

We were hemorrhaging players long before WU.

We have actually slowed the trend that started in 2014. It's still declining, however. 

 

 

 

Edited by Brash_Endeavors
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7 hours ago, Brash_Endeavors said:

 

And the year before that, we were about -6200- players (July 2014). The point being, we were hemorrhaging players long before WU. 

 

If we had 3120 players in May 2016 and  then 3069 players in August 2017 (a loss of 'only' 51 players total in 15 months) , then the player loss has actually slowed to some degree since then. When you look at only short periods of time, such as a seven month interval here or a nine month interval there,  it's hard to differentiate longterm trends from seasonal fluctuations. You really need to look at longer spans of time. Possibly (??? we don't know for sure 'why' we can only guess) the slowdown in the rapid decline after that  was due to the massive influx of cash that came from selling 200,000 copies of WU and which meant Code Club could greatly expand the dev team and thus start the relatively massive content updates of the past two years.

 

Without WU, the population seemed poised to continue a decline that started well before WU and that would mean cutting staff and ending content updates, instead of improving them.

You can much more easily make the argument that "WU Saved Wurm" as saying "WU Killed Wurm".

  

In any case, let me repeat 

We were hemorrhaging players long before WU. 

We have actually slowed the trend that started in 2014. It's still declining, however.  

  

  

  

That is the thing... the revenue of Wurm hasn't really increased compared to 2014-2015, 2016 saw some increase in revenue, but last year went back to 2014-2015 level... Profit has increased, but at least since 2013(the website I was looking at it, has data from 2013) it hasn't seen a loss, so I don't think Wurm was ever in danger of being closed. And comparing 2016 and 2017 the profit has declined in 2017. So telling about "WU Saved Wurm" is weird considering it never did need saving.

Would be VERY interesting to see 2018 data tho.

 

Data I got here, I don't really understand swedish, but with Google translate you can get the idea what is what:

http://www.emfas.se/bokslut/code-club-ab/motala/datautveckling-systemutveckling-programutveckling/2K2MIFYI5YDOJ/

There are some pdf reports too, which don't open for me, I asume you can see them only in Sweden.

 

But this is true, Wurm was losing players already before WU was released, but you can't really argue with the fact, that WU release affected WO playerbase badly. Maybe we would've gotten to where we stand now eventually without WU, who knows. but that is only assumptions. The numbers more or less stabilized since that.. It has slow downwards trend, but it hasn't been in freefall any more.. Two main events, which give bigger increase the numbers: christmas in winter and anniversary in summer.

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Here's a thread of people worrying about the death of Wurm:

It's from August 2008 - ten years ago.

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I believe the problem is most gamers don't want to play the same game for decades on end.

They want instantaneous glorious gratification of a large variety. 

Most people don't have the patience to invest all the time that Wurm asks for, especially for PvP. 

I'd also assume that most of the players this game retains DO want to play the same game for decades on end. 

Wurm might have found most of the players it was ever going to reach without some clever marketing campaigns. 

 

 

 

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On 8/7/2018 at 2:02 AM, Trake said:

I believe the problem is most gamers don't want to play the same game for decades on end.

They want instantaneous glorious gratification of a large variety. 

Most people don't have the patience to invest all the time that Wurm asks for, especially for PvP. 

I'd also assume that most of the players this game retains DO want to play the same game for decades on end. 

Wurm might have found most of the players it was ever going to reach without some clever marketing campaigns. 

 

 

 

Dude, there is a point where grind becomes too much.

I played Runescape for years (and probably will come back to it if I get in the mood) and grind in this game is quite big. The difference is that even at lower skill levels you can earn some reasonable cash or actually fight mobs, so it makes it bearable and even fun.

Majority of players do not want to play a game where it takes YEARS to max a single skill or where you have to run to guards every time something larger than a wild cat comes near you.

You have to depend on charity of older players to get anywhere unless you enjoy grinding all essential skills for months to be able to set up a house and be able to defend it. You may say it's okay because MMOs are social games, but there should limit of dependence of new players on older players' mood.

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I can only look from my perspective, what killing wurm slowly in my view is almost everything get easier and easier and it removed motivation to play and gain skills and do things. Lost everything on fail actually was a good thing it motivated you to get thing like tailoring up so you could make a sail without requiring a lot of cotton.

 

Despite what most think I actually avoid grinding I try motivate myself in other ways tricking my brain that I am not grinding. I used to improving for others as motivation to get my ws up but I have improved for free the last few years because it not worth it anymore. What made ws a good business was you could not mail most weapons so people actually have to get the weapons to me encourage local trade and actual meeting up with people. Cheap mail, easy server transport with plotting all kills of local trading and make it impossible for a new to start up a business.

 

There is less and less things to do beside crafting and building. Fighting has always been bad and could use a 100% rework and rift where you forced to play with random people is not for me. I miss things to do like in other games I played where you could take a smaller group out for some fun with some real challenges, something you cannot do alone but need a small group for. Make it actually multiplayer game. Now most players play alone all the time there is nothing in the game that motivates people to play together, only looking pve. Bring some fun and challenge to fighting system please.

 

Religion, when I started some work was put in to balance religion, it was later totally destroyed with random player religion. Nothing make sense anymore.

 

There have been a lot of new improvements but they are sadly not saving wurm what needed is something that keep you play for years and having fun doing it. What attracted me to wurm was it was not easy there were a challenge opposed to most other games. If not for a few people that keep make me want to login I would likely have stopped years ago.

 

Wurm is a niche game and please keep it that way there is plenty other kids game out there. Wurm doesnt need to become the new WoW it is ok it just maintain a steady player base in my opinion.

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The game seems essentially the same its always been to me. Sure there have been some changes here and there but I still do the same things I've always done. One big change is that it's really difficult to sell things to other players. I believe the source of this is demand stagnation. In other words, everyone can make all their own stuff so there is no need to buy that stuff. Selling things isn't that important to me but I do like to try and play for free. But that's become unreasonable.

 

Anyone that looks at that website which Rixk found, keep in mind that Google doesn't usually convert numbers when it translates currency labels. For me, it switched the SEK to pounds and left the numbers the same. Gota wonder where that 1.2 mill SEK net profit is coming from. I'm also curious what happened between 2013 and 2014, there was net income growth in those years that had nothing to do with WU. I'm pretty confident all the NI growth from 2015 onward is from WU.

 

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Hello, i just came back and taking another look at Wurm, been gone since 2011. I was on Chaos, MR, a part of the Arachnedelphia Settlement.

 

I logged in for a few hours today at the spot that used to be my house (it's gone now), killed a few wolves and bears infesting the area. I was surprised the place was still there.

 

EDIT: lol i just noticed this is the first post i ever made on these forums.

Edited by Rhasinah
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Hello,

I played wurm a long time ago, played and quit long before unlimited, and then i think i came back for a while when unlimited came out but i then drifted off again.

 

 

I am now considering coming back as iv been away a long time and i know much has been changed. One of the biggest things for me is reading people say the economy has improved? - That really was a huge downer for me when i played....all you could do was level up jewelry making and sell as much to the trader as you could hoping no other player has emptied him.

 

How has this changed? I heard the traders gone? - Whats the main input of currency to the gameworld now and what encourages its circulation?

 

 

also, on the subject of grind....the thing I want to come back for is to build my own private server. I play D&D with friends and I thought it would be cool to build a roleplay world in wurm for us to play in. I intend to GM build all kinds of extensive and detailed cities, castle, ruins, shrines and all manner of hidden treasures, clues and things to build quests and campaigns around.

 

When its ready and my friends join - the grind will be key. We wont want to max a skill quickly, we wont want every to be masters of everything or the most important skills - we will want different players to be masters of different things to provide a sense of community. We don't want an archadey 'everyone can do everything quickly' game.

 

 

oo, lastly, what are npcs like now? do they wonder around a bit more? I remember them being fairly static

Edited by CountZero

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