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Malena

Things you can do in Wurm but can't do in most other MMOs?

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I went ahead and grouped all your points in few categories, my comments will be inlined like this text:

When talking about "sandbox MMO's", I mean MMO's with core concepts similar to Wurm - land ownership, no exclusive/on-demand instances etc.

 

On 9/3/2019 at 9:03 AM, Malena said:

Leaving your mark in the world

- Terraform the shape of the land (seen in few other sandbox MMO's, altrough rarely to Wurm extend. Having separate rock layer is rarity)

- Build bridges (unique to Wurm, nothing I know have anything similar)

- Build underground cities (unique to Wurm, nothing I know have anything similar)

- Persistent player affected world. Something someone made/shaped 10 years ago may still be around (seen in few other sandbox MMO's, altrough only Wurm have such persistent world - other MMO's tend to reset it at least every few years)

- Player made kingdoms that get their own custom designs for wagons, banners etc which remain even after the kingdoms are gone (unique to Wurm)

- Permanency: Items/houses may take months or even years to decay (vs instantly or in a few hours) (seen in few other sandbox MMO's)

- Players can change the biomes of the land (dirt to sand etc) (mostly unique to Wurm, few other sandboxes have limited biome changes or biomes changing as indirect result of player actions - for example, terrain slowly changing into grassland if all trees around are cut down in Haven and Hearth)

 

World & Environment

- Everything ages: animals, plants, trees, guards, items (decay) (mostly unique to Wurm)

- Incorporates all of the following changes: Time of day, Type of weather, Seasons, Direction of wind (when we count all of these together - unique to Wurm)

 

Land ownership

- Own as much or as little land as you want (few sandbox MMO's have similar terrain ownership system to Wurm)

- Have endless amounts of storage space (few sandbox MMO's have similar storage system)

 

Player Housing

- Build a house wall by wall, floor by floor (Ultima Online) (mostly unique to Wurm, no other game have system as powerful as Wurm)

 

Furniture / Appliances / Devices etc
- Build a chicken coop and keep chickens (Haven and Hearth got its own advanced system for chicken coops)


Agriculture

- Plant forests and harvest them for their fruits, nuts and lumber (seen in few other sandbox MMO's)

- Keep bees and collect honey (unique to Wurm? Maybe other games have it, but I can't recall any)
- Plant and harvest crops (Albion Online) (seen in few other sandbox MMO's)
- Breed and raise animals (Albion Online) (seen in few other sandbox MMO's)

- Bred animal "DNA" with various traits that pass on to offspring (unique to Wurm)


Mounts / Vehicles / Travel / Exploration

- "If you can see it, you can explore it" - no artificial boundaries (seen in few other sandbox MMO's, some like Salem take it to extreme with having theoretically infinite world)

- Travel to other servers by sailing to them (unique to Wurm)

- An ever-changing world that can be explored and discovered again and again (unique to Wurm)

- Build and sail ships (mostly unique to Wurm, some MMO's have ships but they are utilized less and are less mechanically advanced than in Wurm. One notable exception is Black Desert Online)

- Carts, wagons and other transportation vehicles with inventory that animals can be attached to (mostly unique to Wurm, few sandbox MMO's have similar system but with much less freedom of choice)

- Transportation devices (cages, carriers etc) (mostly unique to Wurm)

- Players can create highways, creating a vast network of player deeds throughout the world (unique to Wurm)

 

Cool skills / abilities / functions

- No artificial skill boundaries (except the priest stuff) - become a master of them all!  (Albion Online) (mostly unique to Wurm)

- Discover who lived on an area of land before through archaeology (unique to Wurm)
- Discover sources of water hidden deep in the ground through water divination, make a well and drink from the water that surfaces into the well (mostly unique to Wurm, Haven and Hearth and probably Salem got similar system)

- Create your own paper from wood pulp and bind a book (unique to Wurm)

- Make your own booze (Commonly found in other MMOs as part of cooking) (this specific way of making alcoholic beverages in mostly unique to Wurm)

- Gather snow from the ground, make a snowball and hit someone with it (unique to Wurm)
- Bury corpses with a headstone (unique to Wurm)

- Give names to pretty much anything (houses, animals, items) (unique to Wurm)

- Incredibly deep cooking system (Haven and Hearth/Salem beats it in complexity, and is core mechanic of player progression)

- Incredibly deep fishing system (mostly unique to Wurm, altrough some other games have pretty deep fishing systems as well)

- Hunt for and loot player's old decayed houses and belongings (Ultima Online) (seen in most other sandbox MMO's)

Weapons and Gear

- Build your own gear from raw materials (vs drops or quest rewards)  (I guess building gear from harvested materials is pretty common? (WoW) (Ultima Online) (Legends of Aria) (GW2) (very common)

- Decide exactly which stats and enhancements they have (very common)

- Have the crafters signature on the item (Ultima Online) (seen in few other MMO's)

- Lifelong items: Improve, enchant, repair and maintain your gear eternally and building sentimental value (vs replacing them with better and newer versions as you progress) (mostly unique to Wurm)

 

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About goals.

 

I find a lot of the goals we make for ourselves in Wurm, mirror those we would like to achieve in the real world if we had the opportunity.  Some even use Wurm to try out before pursuing their real life dream.  Most of us live and work in increasingly pressurised, confined spaces in real life, and so the open world, vast landscapes and 'breathing room' offered by both Wurm Online and Wurm Unlimited servers, give us that living space we crave.  Most MMO's offer large attractive landscapes to some degree, but few have the scope and depth of the border-less physical freedom we find in the Wurm world.  Wurm also affords us many opportunities to learn and grow in spontaneous ways without regiment or prompting. Some people take longer to realise this than others, but Wurm provides a means to 'simply be' - offering an escape from artificial goals and pressures.

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As others have said in various ways:

 

The journey is the destination.

 

Somewhat a relic these days, most MMOs and other online games focus on speeding to some sort of endgame, with everything before it just becoming a long tutorial or time-sink to justify the monthly fee.

With Wurm though, there is no end game. No one has reached 'max level'.

 

Most similar to this would be Eve Online I would say and I'm sure that's part of a decreasingly small list of games.

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Reliably make money in game! This isn't something I'm super into now, but when I played back in middle/high school, it was always a challenge to get my mom to let me buy premium. I had a lot of fun running around, casting strongwall and enchanted grass for people, and looting abandoned old deeds on Chaos. Ended up buying a phone and half of a laptop with money I made in Wurm, and it didn't feel like a chore doing it. There's a ton of options in this game, and most people can't or don't choose to do all of them. 

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20 hours ago, Warlander said:

- Player made kingdoms that get their own custom designs for wagons, banners etc which remain even after the kingdoms are gone (unique to Wurm)

Archeage has a rather impressive system that allows you to add your own customizable image to things from shirts to banners to ship sails. You pretty much upload the image you want and it shows up in game. Blows up Wurm's system out of the water.

 

20 hours ago, Warlander said:

- Build a house wall by wall, floor by floor (Ultima Online) (mostly unique to Wurm, no other game have system as powerful as Wurm)

Ark, Rust, Fallout 76 and nearly every other survival multiplayer gams out there. Super common.

 

20 hours ago, Warlander said:

- Keep bees and collect honey (unique to Wurm? Maybe other games have it, but I can't recall any)

Ark does this. 

 

20 hours ago, Warlander said:

- Bred animal "DNA" with various traits that pass on to offspring (unique to Wurm)

Ark does something similar with the imprint system. 

 

20 hours ago, Warlander said:

- Build and sail ships (mostly unique to Wurm, some MMO's have ships but they are utilized less and are less mechanically advanced than in Wurm. One notable exception is Black Desert Online)

Archeage ship system blows Wurm out of the water. Ships can be manned and generally need to be manned by multiple people (cannons, navigation, planks, defense). Ships are physical in the game world and can be interacted with and destroyed in really intricate and gut wrenching naval battles.

 

Wurm's ships can't hold a candle to Archeage.

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@Angelklainearcheage sucks... it's in the books as "how to not sell a game", it's a huge waste that that gone full pay2win killing the potential it ever had, you can sell a lot, you can do it in times more.. and still not do it at the level they achieved.

ark/rust reset maps, even if you do not want to do it... eventually they start to lag and force you to reset.. there are not that many "sandbox" games where you can build and keep what you have made in the pixel world for year or 5/+ ago..

fallout 76 had so many fails.. game buried itself.. fast.. it's not worth to comment or recommend for anything to anybody..

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19 minutes ago, Finnn said:

full pay2win

Yeah....  Completely unlike wurm, which doesn't allow real time currency to give a player a ridiculous edge ;)

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Ask for real help & get it. While most games don't have a 24/7 "help" chat, I don't know any game where you can say "Hey, I just got attacked by a huge mess and could use a hand getting my body back" or "I've lost my boat." and people you may not even know will stop what they're doing to try and help.

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Thank you so much for your input everyone! So many great descriptions of what draws you to Wurm. The nature of the video, will however be a simple "list" of things, so I won't go into any deep descriptions in this one, I will in some future videos however, so your lovely descriptions have not gone to waste!

 

I've added some things you said and also modified which other games have some of the same things. 

 

Some of you were mentioning sandbox survival games such as Ark and Rust. From what I know, these are not MMOs but merely multiplayer games. Just as a reminder, like it says in the title - we're only talking about MMOs in this thread. And btw Warlander, this includes MMOs outside of the sandbox genre as well by the way in case you have more of your awesome notes!

 

The whole point of this video will be to target MMO players out there who are tired of the "same-old, same-old" of their regular MMOs (which will mostly be theme parks). So I want to blow their minds with what you can do in Wurm. I will include anything that is unique to Wurm but also things that are very uncommon to find in any other MMO. Hence, keeping the uncommon things up there.

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On 9/5/2019 at 4:55 PM, Finnn said:

@Angelklainearcheage sucks... it's in the books as "how to not sell a game", it's a huge waste that that gone full pay2win killing the potential it ever had, you can sell a lot, you can do it in times more.. and still not do it at the level they achieved.

ark/rust reset maps, even if you do not want to do it... eventually they start to lag and force you to reset.. there are not that many "sandbox" games where you can build and keep what you have made in the pixel world for year or 5/+ ago..

fallout 76 had so many fails.. game buried itself.. fast.. it's not worth to comment or recommend for anything to anybody..

The question is not "which game is worse or better than Wurm". Here we are discussing things exclusive to Wurm. The things I pointed out can be found in other games, which means they are not exclusive to our world.

 

Also, read about Archeage Unchained. It will surprise you.

Edited by Angelklaine

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On 9/4/2019 at 4:39 AM, Sindusk said:

It's probably better to rephrase the question to be "what is the draw of Wurm" instead. When you open up a question like this, you can probably check the box for absolutely everything being    You can obviously argue something along the lines of "Minecraft is not an MMO" which would simply lead into an argument about the definition of an MMO.

blah blah blah Minecraft isn't even comparable, It's a f******  lego version of Wurm.

 

My answer to the question of "what is the draw of Wurm" is choice of goal. In most games, you're tasked with some goal you're aiming towards completing.

- I played EQ from just about the start.. It's the only other game that held my attention as long as Wurm has. It was never a "goal' that kept me coming back.. It was community. Obviously, this isn't for everyone... Obviously Wurm isn't for everyone either.

 

 

In Wurm Online, there isn't any real goal set for the player at all, and nothing guiding the player towards doing anything in particular. There's very little enticing someone to build a village, train a skill, or slay a certain creature. You are placed into the world and left to your own devices. You figure out how the game works and set your own goals. 

The one thing that kept me here for YEARS was the fact that I could have something of my own... That I could go out and complete tasks, if I WANTED to... Not that I had to.

 

It's a shame that the very thing which was so interesting about Wurm is slowly being drained away. The old personal goals and new journal run in direct opposition to the idea of giving the player free choice. There is an arbitrary set of tasks laid out that players are encouraged to perform. This starts dictating the way players behave instead of allowing them to form their gameplay goals naturally. I'm curious how many new guard towers have been built specifically to satisfy the journal goal which requires it, instead of for the purpose of actually having a guard tower. 

Does it matter? If someone new comes in and uses it, is it a waste? Was it a waste before if someone built one for looks? If one person is happy with what they have achieved, is it a loss? If 10 people? The old personal goals were there forever... It was only a rush to complete because of the benefits. Right now, missions and the journal are the closest thing to to having "quests" in game.. You have the option to ignore them.

 

Everyone's reasoning for sticking around will be different. Everyone's end goal will be theirs alone. Instead of ripping it apart, celebrate it for what it is.  It's a shame when people who obviously enjoy playing and do so still find any reason to rip apart seams that they don't really need to.

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I think if people want wurm to last many more years they need to stop thinking about why they stay and what makes wurm unique (not much anymore), and think about what will make others want to stay who try the game out.

 

There's just so many fuddy dud veterans who are toxic to any new ideas, suggestions, or anything that makes new player experiences better because "they had to do it this really crappy way, that's the way it should be". 

 

Life is Feudal does everything wurm does btw... there's also A Tale in the Desert, that one game that starts with an X... and Life Tree Seed or whatever... they're all very similar to wurm.


Then there's countless single player/pseudo multiplayer survival games that do everything wurm does...

Edited by jonsnow

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47 minutes ago, jonsnow said:

There's just so many fuddy dud veterans who are toxic to any new ideas, suggestions, or anything that makes new player experiences better because "they had to do it this really crappy way, that's the way it should be". 

 

It's not even that though. So many new players are so used to everything being handed to them in other games that they can't appreciate what Wurm actually gives. What's the point in gaming if you are decked out right from the start?? What keeps you there? What makes you want to stay long term? If you already have it all in the beginning, what's the point?

 

Change is good, but if I have to present you with a key to your own prefabricated deed, a full premium package for the price of nothing and 100 skill... What's the point? Just buy someone's character.

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1 hour ago, Silvirwolfe said:

So many new players are so used to everything being handed to them in other games that they can't appreciate what Wurm actually gives

 

They aren't handed everything, most games ARE grindy by some nature at the very minimum.  Even basic shoot each other battle royale games you grind for something, even if it's just skins, or unlockable players.  The difference there is they usually prey on people that can't control themselves and let you buy the stuff or buy lootboxes. 

 

Here's what the new players aren't used to.  Grinding to anything worthwhile taking so damned long especially when you don't know what you're doing or have the access to the right methods/items.  Grinding being so ridiculously boring you can't play without watching something in the background or playing a second game during timers.  A new player comes and finds out they have to spend a couple hours a day for a week trying to grind body control just to ride a horse because they don't know sleep bonus or the right way to grind and they don't know they need to ask a vet how.  Riding a horse is arguably one of the most important backbone mechanics to the entire game, and if I started today just finding out about wurm, I'd leave if I knew I had to spend the next week hitting a button over and over non stop just to unlock such a basic ability.  I don't have the patience that I had when I started more than 9 years ago, and usually most people don't.  When most people look for a game to play, they probably aren't looking for one that they plan to set aside years to "play".  Fun, that's what grinding/playing wurm seriously lacks that most other games actually have, and I don't have any ideas on how to fix that without changing wurm's identity, but there's no point in anyone being in denial about it.  The main thing that made wurm "fun" to me were the people I played with and they all quit for one reason or another.

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24 minutes ago, MrGARY said:

Here's what the new players aren't used to.  Grinding to anything worthwhile taking so damned long especially when you don't know what you're doing or have the access to the right methods/items.  Grinding being so ridiculously boring you can't play without watching something in the background or playing a second game during timers. 

 

And I could quote the whole damn thing, cause you are right, but I am correct too...  I can hop on WoW and have a 120 within a week if I so wanted. They are handed easy mode to grind and be on the top tier for insta gratification. I mean, just look at minecraft. Even they caved and catered to a creative mode so if all you wanted to do is build, you can build. In a sense, Wurm catered to that as well with WU.

As an "older" player, I do laugh at those that complain that it is hard... The game really isn't. Sorry you have to work on things, sorry you have to play past the freebie 20 point to experience what you really want to..

 

Both times I came back after a break, I did so for the community and the game play. I like seeing what I can accomplish with a blank space. Even years later when I change up what is already there. Fun is subjective, everyone can have a different opinion on it.

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The difference between most other games and wurm is that in other games there is grind, but it's mostly for either cosmetic stuff or serious end-game stuff.  I.e there's a lot of game to get through before you really need to grind.  Wurm is one of the few games where you have to grind just to do basic things, but then the endgame is entirely optional.

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It's great that the time investment is rewarded in Wurm… but times are changing.  The people growing up in this world are mostly wanting instant gratification. 

 

With that said, I don't think we should make this super friendly to them... but making a lot of quality of life changes to make the game more appealing to this vast new market would be ideal.

 

1. Increasing the amount of actions you can Q

2. Increased skill gains at earlier skill levels (curved skill gain).

3. Reduce the amount of failing on tasks as this is just not a fun game aspect in general (as shown by Jackal).  You could instead have an algorithm for needing x quality item to attach or something.

4. Lesson riding requirements on horses, or speed up riding cows.

5. Improve taming to be more pve viable for allowing animals to tank for newbies (and protect them).

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On 9/9/2019 at 11:56 AM, Wonka said:

The difference between most other games and wurm is that in other games there is grind, but it's mostly for either cosmetic stuff or serious end-game stuff.  I.e there's a lot of game to get through before you really need to grind.  Wurm is one of the few games where you have to grind just to do basic things, but then the endgame is entirely optional.

Pretty much... except ~endgame.. you just decide to grind even more(for the 90/99/100 skills) or focus on the things you've done less of so far.. explore/grind odd skills/fighting/pvp/pve/helping others/.../etc

That in a way hooks you with content for longer time, as your goal in the game keeps shifting, and the skill-gain or satisfaction from what you do and what other have done keeps changing with the time, there are burnouts as you eventually fail to keep up or RL kidnaps you.. but you return to bring another punch at w/e you're after.. old or new goal.

 

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whilst i do like wurm very much, I feel like people havnt played many mmos if the OP list is anything to go by. Most of these features are available in other games. I just haven't found one (at least a fantasy one) that brings them together nicely. Even games that get close and do some things better than wurm have some big "thing" that makes that whole game less appealing to me than wurm

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Buuut .. "many MMOS" which have Wurm-like features do not have all the features offered here, rather one or two of them, and very poor implemented.

 

(Let me give you only one example: riding.

From the old Oblivion (and the entire Elder Scrolls franchise) to the newly Animallica (in early access) games, you can ride and "have" horses.

It is a painful, hurtful, traumatic experience, your horse is horrible hard to command, you cannot do anything while mounted, you cannot breed your horses, you cannot gear them (unless you call "gearing" paying a stable owner to throw something on your horse, which you have no control on) and generally you cannot interact at all with your horse, a not so nice designed pixelated animal with weird anatomy or dead fish looking eyes.

 

On the other hand, in Wurm riding is a pleasurable experience, you can do 101 things (and some others I forgot about) while mounted, you can breed your horses until your deed ratio falls bellow the sea level, you have a lot of things to put on them, for look, speed, protection, different looking and, oh yes!, some dyeable gear now, you can groom, tame, fsb a horse, give a nickname to your nanimal, your horse goes through different life stages, it can be cared for, hitched, transported over seas, as for the design, what is more to say than look at those many colours!! look at the thread with screenies of new born baby horses!!

 

Please note that riding a horse is ONE thing you can do in Wurm, and it comes boxed with so many things tied to it, you rapidily lose count of them! Add to that that each and every of those things is also boxed with so many things, which are boxed with so many things, which ...)

 

I'll rest my case here.

 

I am sure most of us played a lot of other MMOS.

Listing what unique things you can do in Wurm means you can do all of them in the same game, not in 20-30 different games put all together, and even so you wouldn't cover all the options you have in Wurm.

 

Wurm is so complex, it doesn't have any "competitor". Nor will it have one in the near or not so near future, considering the trend in gaming industry, which seems to be pulling us back to the late '90s - early 00s, with simplistic, lifeless graphics, basic features, linear and short stories, "go there, kill 5 bandits, bring back their house goblins as proof" quests and 3-6 months of playing time (6 months, riiiight! .. but I felt so generous).

 

Wurm is so complex that it turns out to be another life on its own. Boring, less appealing, annoying, frustrating, yet so much of your own in its full splendour, glory, hopefulness and joy.

Enjoy it while it lasts and get the best out of it while you can.

 

 

What unique things can you do in Wurm?.. How about tell Nessie a joke and make it laugh out loud?

 

40b9b175cb5402239db195be6bc3ee33.jpg

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On 9/11/2019 at 1:47 PM, CountZero said:

whilst i do like wurm very much, I feel like people havnt played many mmos if the OP list is anything to go by. Most of these features are available in other games. I just haven't found one (at least a fantasy one) that brings them together nicely. Even games that get close and do some things better than wurm have some big "thing" that makes that whole game less appealing to me than wurm

 

My limited knowledge is exactly why I wanted to make this post, since I knew a lot of you have tried MMOs that I never have and vica versa. I was hoping that together we could make this list. 

 

So CountZero, you said that most of these features are available in other games. (and by games I assume you mean MMOs, since that's what we're talking about here). 

It would help a lot, if you could mention which MMOs have which identical features so that I can add the names of those MMOs to the list. 

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21 hours ago, Evening said:

Buuut .. "many MMOS" which have Wurm-like features do not have all the features offered here, rather one or two of them, and very poor implemented.

 

40b9b175cb5402239db195be6bc3ee33.jpg

 

Absolutely loved your post, so beautifully compiled. It was heartwarming to see someone with the same love and passion for Wurm. And I never knew that you could make the sea monster laugh! What the heck! That would have been great to add to the "crazy things you can do in wurm" list hehe.

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