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Bloodreina

Where Wurm Online failed me

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23 hours ago, Bloodreina said:

I know most of you like to say that Wurm's community it's one of its strongest assets. And, up to a point, it really is a nice community, much more mature and less toxic than many other communities (not saying there are no trolls here too, but way less than in other places). Yet, while not toxic, it is definitely not very vibrant or helpful either. Actually (and I apologize if this offends any one) it feels like it is made of some of the most self centered people in any of the games that I played far now, where pretty much everyone (again with a very few exceptions) is only focusing on their actions and are hardly interested in what the other people are doing.

 

Other players may criticize Bloodreina for her post, but the statement I quoted rings very true in Wurm. 

 

I believe your main deed is on Melody, which currently is very quiet.  Most days when I log in there are less than 5 players on Melody.  I do know there are places on Harmony and Cadence that is populated and local chatter is common.  There are also at least 3 large alliances on Cadence that currently are quite active.  I would suggest scouting around Cadence and Harmony, and maybe you can find a more populated area or make a connection with an active alliance. 

 

Bloodriena has been to the last two rifts on NFI and has livened up the grind with lots of whitty chatter in local.  Even though I prefer the quietness of Wurm, it is nice once in awhile to have someone that laughs and jokes around, especially during a rift.  Wurm is a tough game for social people because most of the deeds are so far apart and everyone is so engaged in grinding skills or building their deeds, they never engage the people around them.   

 

I am confused why alliance chat does not cover the entire NFI or SFI.  If other chat channels can be expanded to cover the entire cluster, why can't alliance chat cover NFI/SFI and make more players feel more connected to each other and the game in general.  Hell, I might even join an alliance if I could stay on Melody and talk to my alliance mates on Harmony or Cadence!     

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You are rite , the game had a more lively felling to it long ago .

But as time goes by it has just died off .

Less and less people still play Wurm official mainly .

The ones who still play are the diehards .

I have not seen anyone in alliance in over 1 year thats is 365 days easy ..

They need to open north and south to get players moving around ..

I think this may be one reason less people are still around..

Plus there are allot of newer games out and people taste just change..

 

I have seen you go by my deed on Melody and have waved to you..

That tunnel top north east ...

Wish you luck in your travels , may be time to look at another game..

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4 hours ago, Tukodama said:

I am confused why alliance chat does not cover the entire NFI or SFI.  If other chat channels can be expanded to cover the entire cluster, why can't alliance chat cover NFI/SFI and make more players feel more connected to each other and the game in general.  Hell, I might even join an alliance if I could stay on Melody and talk to my alliance mates on Harmony or Cadence!     

 

It's because alliances can't stretch from one server to another.  Your alliances are based upon deeds, and you can have a different deed (settlement) on each of those different servers.  That's why if your character is the mayor of a deed on Harmony, but gets killed on Cadence, where you don't have a deed, you get only the starter towns (or your tent if you'd placed it) as your respawn options on Cadence.

 

Deed citizenship doesn't stretch across server borders and thus alliances don't either.

Edited by Tristanc
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12 hours ago, Tristanc said:

Deed citizenship doesn't stretch across server borders and thus alliances don't either.

Doesn't mean you can't code an alliance chat that can go cross server. It's just info that can be adapted, it's a list of players, should be a relatively easy thing to implement. 

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I haven't read every post that you've put out, but I did take a look at the Mentor post, and the only reason I didn't respond is because you expressed an interest in someone you could eventually meet up with "in person," something I would never be able to do because I only play on the older South Freedom servers.

 

There is definitely a lot of Wurm players who are predominantly focused on "hermiting," doing their own thing by themselves. And it's true that the population in Wurm is quite small compared to more popular games. And it doesn't help that Wurm players come from all over the world, meaning that it can be hard to find people who are online at the same time as you.

 

But there are plenty of community-minded players. I don't know as much about North Freedom, but I do know Cadence has a relatively large population, and I'm pretty sure Melody is described as the least-active server up there. Down on Xanadu where I play, I saw 150 people online the other day. The alliance I am part of isn't especially big, but I know there are some which frequently have a handful of people online. I myself am interested more in community-building than building-building or gathering resources, haha.

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3 hours ago, elentari said:

Doesn't mean you can't code an alliance chat that can go cross server. It's just info that can be adapted, it's a list of players, should be a relatively easy thing to implement. 

Actually, it would be a nightmare. 

 

Each server is an instanced version of the code, it has zero knowledge of anything on another server. To add cross server alliances it would suddenly need to know it all, and that's a recipe for an absolute disaster. 

 

Better of just using discord 

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14 minutes ago, Archaed said:

Each server is an instanced version of the code, it has zero knowledge of anything on another server. To add cross server alliances it would suddenly need to know it all, and that's a recipe for an absolute disaster. 

 

Does it though? Then can't we circumvent that with adding an "alliance list" similar to how the friends list works  in order to open a specific chat with all members on that list? 

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We can see our friends list no matter what server we are on.  It isn't total simple, but it shouldn't be a big leap, certainly not a nightmare, to generate a global id for villages and alliances.  The problem would be that most probably already have an id that another alliance also has on another server.  I guess that is where the nightmare happens - mapping existing IDs to new global IDs.  

Edited by TheTrickster

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It's pretty easy to feel missplaced when you just encounter stuff like that. Like as if people even are actively ignoring you. But thereare some things in this game that play a huge role in that. Lot's of people have alts, they don't use to socialize, so those are kinda dead bodies of some sorts. Counting towards population but not towards being social or make the game feel lively. Another things is that this game involves lot's of grinding. Even though I feel grinding in this game is pretty rewarding unlike in other games, it kinda is a thing that often is done on the site. Like people are actively working a job and are still logged in to click create here and there. So even if thats the main character they might not notice you or even answer to pms.

Very often I contacted people that went by my place saying hello whilst I was busy cleaning the house or cooking dinner just to let them know, I wasnt available at that time and they didn't go unnoticed after all. Same thing happens to me a lot the other way round. I usually tend to say high when people pop up in local and it's pretty common I get no answer due to what I discribed above. And then, maybe even 2 hours later they notice and contact me to say hello. This game is very slow in about any aspect you can think off. What I however encountered aswell is: If you find people you wanna play with or just be in an alliance with they seem to be there forever. The alliance on Cadence I am in is very friendly, social, loving, kinda feels like family. We care for each other and respect each other. And even if there are sometimes problems, they get discussed and solved:

I remember I once contacted you, when you left Wurm a while ago, mentioning, that if you ever wanna come back and give it another shot, I would be available. This still is an offer to you. After all: When I found a wild horse for once, first thing that came to my mind: Contact Bloodreina, cuz Bloodreina is looking specificly for wild unbread horses for quiet a while now.

So try to maybe stick to that small amount of people you feel happy with and built on that relationship. Usually the rest will come by itself over time.

 

-Nahimana, Mayor of Morbidae Gardens on Cadence

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6 hours ago, elentari said:

Does it though? Then can't we circumvent that with adding an "alliance list" similar to how the friends list works  in order to open a specific chat with all members on that list? 

 

Unfortunately not. The friends list is saved to each individual player. The player "Sindusk" would have friend A, B, and C attached. If I go to another server, the friends list comes with that data. When the friends list gets updated (such as a new removal or addition), the server where the request came from would find what server I'm located on (via the login server, which tracks every player's current server), then send the relevant command to update the friends list for me.

 

Alliances and villages are not so simple. Each alliance is heavily server-bound. Just because you're in an alliance on one server, doesn't mean you're in that same alliance on another. This means if an alliance changes while you are off-server, you have no information about what actually happened there. You can be kicked from an alliance while off-server, and you wouldn't know about it until after you return. You don't get a message saying "X alliance has removed your deed on Y server" or any indication whatsoever. It's only when you return to the server that contains that alliance that those messages are sent and everything syncs back up.

 

In order to manage cross-server alliances or villages would require a fundamental rework of how that data is stored and managed. You cannot attach alliances to a single player, since it is used by more than one. In order to do it properly, you would need to synchronize the data across all servers. If you are in an alliance on one server, and that alliance kicks a deed, then you would need to synchronize that change to every server and have them run relevant checks to ensure all the proper players have their clients aware of the change. This means that, as Archaed said, servers would "need to know it all, and that's a recipe for an absolute disaster." This is very accurate, since every server would need to know about every alliance, every deed, every player within that deed, every branded animal that is allocated under that deed, the permissions set by that deed, and so much more... about every other server within the cluster.

 

While on the surface it seems simple to just say "make it so I can chat with alliance members when on other servers" the actual task is "rework the entire server alliance/deed infrastructure so that we can have cross server interaction." Doing anything short of that would be a subpar implementation where bugs would crop up and the functionality would be limited. What happens when a deed is added to an alliance when members are off server? What if a deed kicks a member? What if roles within the alliance changes (such as capital deed) and then the deed that used to be the capital is removed while the mayor is off-server the whole time? These questions and more would need to be accounted for in a system that would require consistent maintenance with any new features moving forward. In the end, it's simply not worth it.

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Its a shame you haven't found a good social group, there are some around but I've had to bounce around a few deeds. Such is the way with NFI being newer people move on and deeds/alliances go quiet. Unfortunately melody is probably harder to find people on being the small server. As far as the mentor goes hopefully  you find people to ask questions, I didn't reply as I have limited time and an odd approach to the game (running 5+ accounts, min maxing things and reading wurm unlimited code).

 

Although most of my goals are personal and not necessarily competitive against other players that's what I want from the game. I hope you find a group to hang with or goals to do in game.

 

Lethyria/Alarri

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Connecting people

 

I think we need to move away from the hard-coded definition of 'Alliance' (a collection of deeds on a particular server) and try to get back to what I believe Bloodreina is looking for - a collection of people.

 

I think we need to look at the friends list, and look for more ways of getting people connected, and keeping those people in contact, regardless of deed or server - after all some of the nicest people don't have a deed yet right? ;) 

 

I believe we need *new* ways of adding friends to our friends list.  Currently we have 'in person' add friend which relies on face to face contact, and the command /addfriend <name>  - which works across servers.  Most new players have to *ask* how to do this in CA_Help, it's not intuitive.

 

I'd personally like to see addfriend added to all chat windows.  A right click drop-down menu option in all chat windows, on each comment line -  e.g.

 

Player1 right-clicks the last comment by <Player2> Hi Player1!  etc and selects the drop down menu option:

 

Player2 > 'Send add friend invitation to Player2' 

 

...which performs the same job as /addfriend.  At the moment we only have 'copy name', and 'open chat' on this sub menu, so addfriend would be a useful addition.

 

The next thing to do is to add sortable groups to the friends tab. How about adding user-definable groups? A bit like groups in our inventory.  Social butterflies will have LARGE friends lists.  If I can make a new friends group and call it 'Alliance' - *I* can decide who I put in that group, (it's not limited to my server or by deed membership) and I can move the 'Alliance' group to the top of my friends list.

 

This does not solve the problem of initiating group team or alliance chat between servers, but these things will allow social people an easier way to get connected to people and be able to chat to *someone* without having to ask CA_Help.

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@BloodreinaI know that crushing lonely feeling you speak of. I would feel the same way if I were on NFI. I'm on SFI and haven't really experienced it here.

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12 hours ago, Sindusk said:

These questions and more would need to be accounted for in a system that would require consistent maintenance with any new features moving forward. In the end, it's simply not worth it.

I didn't realize such a system would be so convoluted and difficult to implement, my bad. 

 

Ok, then what about a different system that can be manually managed by the players similar to the "create team" system in game. 

 

Here's an idea. 

 

Say my alliance has 10 players, from player A to player J located in Indy. Naturally we'd have an "alliance" chat on indy. 

 

What if any member of the alliance can create a secondary chat called "G-alliance" (global alliance) where he invites the same member of the chat to the group.  Then, if say player A is doing a rift somewhere and player D is off delivering some goods in Pristine, and player B is on Release doing a mission, they can all see the "G-alliance" chat and write in it regardless of their location. 

 

Would that be feasible? Or would it imply the difficult issue of managing more data. In this case the chat is solely created by players, managed by individuals within the alliance. 

 

P.S. Sorry if it seems I'm hijacking bloodreina's thread, it's just an interesting topic regarding possible communication in game. 

Edited by elentari

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4 hours ago, elentari said:

I didn't realize such a system would be so convoluted and difficult to implement, my bad. 

 

Ok, then what about a different system that can be manually managed by the players similar to the "create team" system in game. 

 

Here's an idea. 

 

Say my alliance has 10 players, from player A to player J located in Indy. Naturally we'd have an "alliance" chat on indy. 

 

What if any member of the alliance can create a secondary chat called "G-alliance" (global alliance) where he invites the same member of the chat to the group.  Then, if say player A is doing a rift somewhere and player D is off delivering some goods in Pristine, and player B is on Release doing a mission, they can all see the "G-alliance" chat and write in it regardless of their location. 

 

Would that be feasible? Or would it imply the difficult issue of managing more data. In this case the chat is solely created by players, managed by individuals within the alliance. 

 

P.S. Sorry if it seems I'm hijacking bloodreina's thread, it's just an interesting topic regarding possible communication in game. 

 

 

Did the in game IRC functionality change or get removed?

Back when i played on Epic, we had an passworded IRC channel that crossed servers so we could communicate between Elevation and home servers.

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Not sure if it got removed, but realistically....how many people use irc channels these days? And I highly doubt any player is even going to be aware there's a wurm irc. Not to mention, that if I honestly started a new MMO, asking if there's an IRC channel would be the last thing on my mind. 

 

Hell I work in an office with people in their 30s and 40s and despite them growing up in the 90s and early 2000s, most of them don't even know what IRC is. 

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True,

but if you are asking if there is a way in game, that an alliance /village / group of friends can chat while on different servers, then that's probably going to be your answer in the short term.

 it antiquated, yes,
is it reliant on knowledge and an external server program, yes.

but all it takes is for someone to set it all up and then create interest via word of mouth nad helping people set up their autoconfigs etc so that it starts up just like a normal chat channel, then at least there is a light at the end of the tunnel for those who didnt know it existed at all :)

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14 hours ago, Muse said:

Connecting people

 

I think we need to move away from the hard-coded definition of 'Alliance' (a collection of deeds on a particular server) and try to get back to what I believe Bloodreina is looking for - a collection of people.

 

I think we need to look at the friends list, and look for more ways of getting people connected, and keeping those people in contact, regardless of deed or server - after all some of the nicest people don't have a deed yet right? ;) 

 

I believe we need *new* ways of adding friends to our friends list.  Currently we have 'in person' add friend which relies on face to face contact, and the command /addfriend <name>  - which works across servers.  Most new players have to *ask* how to do this in CA_Help, it's not intuitive.

 

I'd personally like to see addfriend added to all chat windows.  A right click drop-down menu option in all chat windows, on each comment line -  e.g.

 

Player1 right-clicks the last comment by <Player2> Hi Player1!  etc and selects the drop down menu option:

 

Player2 > 'Send add friend invitation to Player2' 

 

...which performs the same job as /addfriend.  At the moment we only have 'copy name', and 'open chat' on this sub menu, so addfriend would be a useful addition.

 

The next thing to do is to add sortable groups to the friends tab. How about adding user-definable groups? A bit like groups in our inventory.  Social butterflies will have LARGE friends lists.  If I can make a new friends group and call it 'Alliance' - *I* can decide who I put in that group, (it's not limited to my server or by deed membership) and I can move the 'Alliance' group to the top of my friends list.

 

This does not solve the problem of initiating group team or alliance chat between servers, but these things will allow social people an easier way to get connected to people and be able to chat to *someone* without having to ask CA_Help.

or we could move user interface 30 years ahead of that time and have management with friend list in a window allowing you to (un)friend or (un)ignore other players(or have set rules for which channels to exclude ignored ones, etc), instead of right clicking and running commands, needing ca-help or googling wurm client commands

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On 2/6/2022 at 8:25 AM, Bloodreina said:

I'm well aware that most people will either ignore this thread, or go straight defensive and start attacking me. And that's OK. I still feel that what I have to say is important and I want to say it.

I know most of you like to say that Wurm's community it's one of its strongest assets. And, up to a point, it really is a nice community, much more mature and less toxic than many other communities (not saying there are no trolls here too, but way less than in other places). Yet, while not toxic, it is definitely not very vibrant or helpful either. Actually (and I apologize if this offends any one) it feels like it is made of some of the most self centered people in any of the games that I played far now, where pretty much everyone (again with a very few exceptions) is only focusing on their actions and are hardly interested in what the other people are doing.

I am a social player. I like to chat with fellow players and participate to group activities. And Gods know that I did tried to find people to socialize with in game. And here are a few examples:
- Tried to start an alliance here - no answers whatsoever
- and when that failed tried to join an alliance here - no answers whatsoever
- or at least meet my neighbors here - no answers whatsoever
- Tried to look for a mentor here - no answers whatsoever
- or friends here - no answers whatsoever
- or fellow Romanian/Moldavian players here - no answers whatsoever

On top of that I was always active (and I consider that I was also nice and positive most of the times) both on server chat and on discord. Yet all my efforts show low to no success. The freedom chat is radio silent for the most part of the day. With one or two exceptions people in my friends list never message me unless I message them first (I honestly can't remember when was the last time when someone in my FL checked out on me to just see how my day was).

 

I consider myself a nice and positive person and in most games that I've played I had tons of friends and there are games where I stopped actively playing years ago, but when I log from time to time to check how things are, my screen lights like a Christmas tree from all the messages that I get. So I really don't consider that I am the problem. Still, here, I completely failed. Or, maybe, the "online" part of Wurm Online failed me. Anyhow, I end up feeling almost completely alone. And it honestly s***s, up to the point where it end up being one of my worst (if not the worst) experiences and feelings I had in all the MMORPGs that I played before.

I still love the "Wurm" part of Wurm Online, so I'll probably keep playing it (to a certain degree), but I'm honestly done trying to make the "Online" part work for me.

Why should you care about my stupid rant? Maybe because there are other (new) players that feel just like me and quit the game in silence. Maybe because you share a tiny bit of fault why Wurm is just a small niche game with a very high churn rate. It's easy to blame the developers for their decisions (or lack of), but maybe it's not entirely their fault and we all share a part of this fault. In my case it was not the Wurm part, but the Online part of Wurm Online that failed me...

 

 

 

100% agree, some really hostile people over building a minor bridge over water

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On 2/6/2022 at 3:25 PM, Bloodreina said:

Well i dont know how it is on NFI but on SFI Deliverance server we have a nice and active alliance and we help our alliance members if we can and ofc have time for that if u chenge u if you change your mind contact Myria ingame and come to Deli :) have a nice day 



 

 

 

 

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i try to at least acknowledge you if i see you bounce into the chat channel, i usually dont instigate conversations with new people unless i am feeling particularly social which is not often. i am willing to conversate sometimes but i have mostly tried to distance myself from getting attached to people on NFI anymore due to several heartripping incidents that pushed me to where i am today. so i will acknowledge you as often as i see you say hi and may even answer some questions or let some of my accumulated knowledge of the game out to help someone in chat but please forgive me if i am not social very often. and if i am not logged in on melody i am usually hiding deep in my deed on indy server because i am being anti everything. Interestingly enough i am part of a rather social alliance on indy too weird...

But i do see your struggle and will attempt to try and say more than o/ in chat okay

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