Plans for population growth?

[Karrde 336]

Imho another jackal would help greatly.

 

Perhaps even add means to make such more regular.

 

Overall I found the jackal experience interesting, and only really complaint is the final stronghold was a little bit of a letdown. Perhaps enabling siege weaponry, siege shields, spiked barriers, turrets, and etc to be more functional in pve. The enemy turrets literally did nothing, basically were just spawned mobs.

 

Players didnt even have the options to bring walls down and/or pick locks on their own.

 

Granted I heard the devs were caught offguard, and had not expected players to progress so fast.

[Archaed 2,280]

25 minutes ago, elentari said:

Not paranoid. Simply cautious. China (and pretty much Russia & the US) have had a terrible record this past decade when it comes to spyware, analyzing online activities & buying shares of software companies or outright brokering deals to get all user data. 

 

The EU has some data protection laws that are completely incompatible with many US, Chinese and Russian companies. There are some news websites I can't even visit in the US because they aggressively collect way too much of a visitor's data.

 

Not just that but EGS has an anticonsumer mindset that outright forbids publishers to sell their games on other platforms other than EGS. They bribe developers and companies to release games only on their platform. Wurm is on steam. 

 

A move to EGS wouldn't even be possible at this stage unless you want to completely remove Wurm from Steam and move it to EGS. And that would ultimately accomplish what? 

 

Opening 3 more servers, another landrush, 4000 more players in the first 2 months, then 3 more dead servers at the end of the year?

Amazing, every single thing you have just said here has been absolutely wrong 

[Finnn 3,298]

1 hour ago, elentari said:

Not paranoid. Simply cautious. China (and pretty much Russia & the US) have had a terrible record this past decade when it comes to spyware, analyzing online activities & buying shares of software companies or outright brokering deals to get all user data. 

 

The EU has some data protection laws that are completely incompatible with many US, Chinese and Russian companies. There are some news websites I can't even visit in the US because they aggressively collect way too much of a visitor's data.

 

Not just that but EGS has an anticonsumer mindset that outright forbids publishers to sell their games on other platforms other than EGS. They bribe developers and companies to release games only on their platform. Wurm is on steam. 

 

A move to EGS wouldn't even be possible at this stage unless you want to completely remove Wurm from Steam and move it to EGS. And that would ultimately accomplish what? 

 

Opening 3 more servers, another landrush, 4000 more players in the first 2 months, then 3 more dead servers at the end of the year?

Says who?

How many games have steam/epic/etc platform offering and shared servers among the different platforms, 1 good example is warframe:

platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, Microsoft Windows (I am almost certain they had a smartphone version as well, but since I am really off that market... I'll get back on the ignorance train, and try to forget about it)

 

Wurm is just a different game, if you want more people to stick around, offer something more than ability to get skills past 20.

 

Instead of ideas what to add to attract new people, look at it from another direction.. what stops you to refer wurm to a friend, what your IRL friends or friends from other games wont find fun in wurm to give it a shot.

Why do players leave the game, new ones or old timers? Doubt it's related to donkeys, even though I wanted to click the uninstall button when I heard them.

If it's a niche game and the market for it is small, you cant really do much to help it, without changing the game to attract more people and make it more appealing to different groups.

 

[Hazelspider 78]

The only reason I'd want Jackal back is because I have 395 jackal points.  Just 5 points away from being useful........forever.

[Etherdrifter 2,512]

Given how many of us predicted Steam's release wouldn't positively impact player numbers in the long run, and given how right that was, I think the next phase of planned growth is now under a lot of debate.

 

Jackal is a reasonable path to keep the older players engaged, but it isn't going to draw in new ones.

 

Overall, the numbers speak for themselves, wurm isn't declining, it is relatively stable now (it's sitting at about 1/5 the player numbers it was during the steam boom).  If wurm wants to start growing, it needs to see why steam failed to make it a big player in the mmo world.

[Finnn 3,298]

1 hour ago, Etherdrifter said:

Given how many of us predicted Steam's release wouldn't positively impact player numbers in the long run, and given how right that was, I think the next phase of planned growth is now under a lot of debate.

 

Jackal is a reasonable path to keep the older players engaged, but it isn't going to draw in new ones.

 

Overall, the numbers speak for themselves, wurm isn't declining, it is relatively stable now (it's sitting at about 1/5 the player numbers it was during the steam boom).  If wurm wants to start growing, it needs to see why steam failed to make it a big player in the mmo world.

I don't see any other platform with more players than steam(schshh we do not talk about asian alternatives), was a good shot but the game is not everybody's cup of mmo, not everybody have 2-3-5-10-15years to invest into single character(and ride top tier speed donkeys around like a mad wo/man).

 

Did steam fail or did people crank up the numbers with premium alts to boost priest faith/channeling and abuse favor with links?

[Archaed 2,280]

3 hours ago, Etherdrifter said:

Given how many of us predicted Steam's release wouldn't positively impact player numbers in the long run, and given how right that was, I think the next phase of planned growth is now under a lot of debate.

 

Jackal is a reasonable path to keep the older players engaged, but it isn't going to draw in new ones.

 

Overall, the numbers speak for themselves, wurm isn't declining, it is relatively stable now (it's sitting at about 1/5 the player numbers it was during the steam boom).  If wurm wants to start growing, it needs to see why steam failed to make it a big player in the mmo world.

lol. 

 

If you're always negative, that doesn't make you right. 

[Loneshade 32]

MY personal opinion is the game in itself cannot handle/sustain larger numbers overall nor can it compete in the MMO market as it is today. I have spoken with younger gamers and even shared the game with them/screen shots/game play and even explained the game to them and nope they wasn't having it, all agreed that it was just to much grind for nothing sorta deal. While it is in truth the long playing consistent players of this game (and all there alts) that keep this game going it is also much the same crowd that will be the only ones left playing.

[Stinboi 363]

3 hours ago, Loneshade said:

MY personal opinion is the game in itself cannot handle/sustain larger numbers overall nor can it compete in the MMO market as it is today. I have spoken with younger gamers and even shared the game with them/screen shots/game play and even explained the game to them and nope they wasn't having it, all agreed that it was just to much grind for nothing sorta deal. While it is in truth the long playing consistent players of this game (and all there alts) that keep this game going it is also much the same crowd that will be the only ones left playing.

 

This game is not for the younger generation, i would assume Wurm has the highest age avarage of all MMO, its a nich game that fits a small groupe of people.

Nowdays with easy access and tons of games coming out people tend to jump from 1 game to another.

 

And i agree with them, theres very little to gain compared to the grind.

 

Wurms biggest problem as i can see it is that the world is simple to big, making it feels empty and dead, this also makes it harder and harder for new players to stay. its understandable that they added new servers to the steam release, but there was never any doubt that this wouldnt be good in the long run. but again, theres not possible to do anything about now.

My hope(a small hope atleast) is that exploration update will breath some life in to the world, this could make even the lowest pop servers feels more alive and kicking.

 

But for everyone waiting for the playerbase to grow, well this im pretty sure will never happen.

Edited March 9, 2022 by Stinboi

[Finnn 3,298]

9 minutes ago, Stinboi said:

 

This game is not for the younger generation, i would assume Wurm has the highest age avarage of all MMO, its a nich game that fits a small groupe of people.

Nowdays with easy access and tons of games coming out people tend to jump from 1 game to another.

 

And i agree with them, theres very little to gain compared to the grind.

 

Wurms biggest problem as i can see it is that the world is simple to big, making it feels empty and dead, this also makes it harder and harder for new players to stay. its understandable that they added new servers to the steam release, but there was never any doubt that this wouldnt be good in the long run. but again, theres not possible to do anything about now.

My hope(a small hope atleast) is that exploration update will breath some life in to the world, this could make even the lowest pop servers feels more alive and kicking.

 

But for everyone waiting for the playerbase to grow, well this im pretty sure will never happen.

Ъъъъъъъъъ.... I mean... Errr *cough*, game world is ok, with more people - you'd simply need portal system to explore places and fight enemies for loot/gather resources/etc in a well known sense like few other games that still exist or have existed....

Reason for that is... it's persistent "SINGLE CHANNEL"(server instance) world, you CAN'T fit many people on same map because they will start trashing the place, 1 example is steam ant farm(mines for the noob horde..)

 

In that sense wurm is quite different from any other mmo, it's impossible to recreate veins by "normal means"(yes.. we can go grind mag battery and pop tiles slowly, collapse tiles at "reasonable" tile/euros cost or go overboard and pay more than the worth of a vein, only to mine trash low ql ore from it with 100 mining skill and tools, because wogic and testing how time, cost, skills and returns is out of planning balance's scope)

 

Unless the game changes to catch up with our time.. hardly any chance to get out of the niche ditch

[Etherdrifter 2,512]

10 hours ago, Archaed said:

lol. 

 

If you're always negative, that doesn't make you right. 

Well, I called it so clearly negativity was the right path?

 

Remarks at your expense aside; I wasn't alone in my "negative" speculation, though I am quite happy to admit that things worked out better than I predicted.  I must confess, I'm a little irked by the "everything is buttercups and rainbows" folks because they seem to be holding onto that idea out of mad desparation.  It's ok to admit things didn't go as planned and that mistakes were made.  You can't learn from things you aren't willing to admit failed.

 

The most common theme in negative reviews I see is about the subscription; in general you can go for micropay or subscription.  The only time both is going to work out for you is if you've designed an amazing skinner box.  Wurm, thankfully, isn't there yet (though the introduction of extra RNG might take it there unwillingly).  However, that does not change the fact that either you charge people for their characters or you charge them for their land; doing both is just a recipe for...  well where we are now.  Something needs to change on this front, but it isn't going to.

 

It is something I harp on about, but Wurm's priest system needs a drastic overhaul, either by getting rid of it (as is popular on WU), or by really fleshing it out so playing a priest is something you do full time, and not in an alt-box.  Most people have priest alts either because they want to be an island (there are always those people on games), or because there aren't enough priest players around to easily get hold of casts.  Priests need crafters to imp and repair, crafters need priests for casts - it's an untapped player synergy at the moment.

 

At the moment, time spent travelling that isn't taking me to an event, is dead time.  When I used to travel a lot on wurm, I was reading for my thesis, I wasn't playing the game, the game was just "loading" while I worked.  I was not gaining skill, I was building an ever bigger chore for myself (the further you travel from home, the longer you have to get back home to everything), and I'm not likely to find anything beyond a pretty view (definitely worth it in the old days when people built things, but now the roads are dead, no so much) or death (which is just an even larger chore).  Flesh out travel, make it tie in to skills; give people who are travelling a lot the ability to skill at the same rate as those staying at home and you're on for a winner.  The exploration update might help fix this, but it's going to need some solid content to do that.

 

There is a lot to like about wurm; but there is also a lot that is just waiting for the right tweak to make it *fit*.

[Radircs 76]

Well Wurm have some fundamental problems for the modern market. One is that the design is player driven in nearly every part. No player -> no content - > no reason to play -> no players. It’s a downwards spiral in itself that stems from the "old" days of MMOs where the game was just the frame for players to interact and not the interacting object itself. In the past this worked great since well there were no alternatives, the market access was a smaller group but also more focused so it worked for some games.

Now day’s there are more games out and games that offer both a interactive world and game on its own. Wurm still have a lot of charm and chances but is also vary unforgiving in the new player experience.

 

When our group started the second time with the steam release (we played 2013 on elevation) we all rushed the 21 BC and 20.1ML for riding and cart driving since traveling is nice but when you have places to be you want to go there fast and the mechanic to do that is gated behind a characteristic value you can´t get as F2P player. Meaning your action radius is way more limited if you don´t get this.

Same with our breeding we more or less started day 1 since again we want to have an action radius as big as possible and make interacting with our neighbors as easy as it can be. And we could do this because we were knowledgeable thanks to a past play time and we were a allergy organized group. It was quite easy for us to catch newer players and teach them some tricks it was ok that they leave us with some QL 50 gear (first week of the server so QL 50 were a nice start) since we had specialist in h who sink their teeth in it.

What we did there was smoothing our early game experience and the ones of new players as much as possible since we know it’s the most problematic part. You don´t have safety since you don´t have a home you have no skills to generate this and then you hit the F2P wall before you have even figuring out the basics.

 

Wurm need a lot of rethinking if it wants to grow the player base. Its nothing that is easy to fix or that is done with a single change it some fundamentals that are there that will probably alienate some of the player base if you lay hands on it but it’s also the things that hold you back.

[Ephemeral 10]

42 minutes ago, Radircs said:

Well Wurm have some fundamental problems for the modern market. One is that the design is player driven in nearly every part. No player -> no content - > no reason to play -> no players. It’s a downwards spiral in itself that stems from the "old" days of MMOs where the game was just the frame for players to interact and not the interacting object itself. In the past this worked great since well there were no alternatives, the market access was a smaller group but also more focused so it worked for some games.

 

This is spot on, and really the heart of the problem.

 

No amount of advertising or marketing is going to change the fact that Wurm is a niche, slow-paced, "old school" style experience. The only way to attract more people is to change any one of those things and doing so will make it fundamentally less of the thing that drew a lot of us to it in the first place.

 

Quite the quandary, really. Change and hope for growth, or remain as you are and hope to attract a dwindling player base. Let's be honest, Wurm attracts an older clientele and there's categorically less of us every year just by natural attrition alone.

[Archaed 2,280]

Stop expecting Wurm to compete with modern mmo's challenge 2022

[elentari 2,660]

2 hours ago, Archaed said:

Stop expecting Wurm to compete with modern mmo's challenge 2022

 

That argument can also be shifted to " Stop expecting Wurm to be able to thrive in 2022 because it is in a rigid design mindset and doesn't want to adapt". 

 

Wurm has a lot of areas it can be improved on and as people have mentioned previously, it has a lot of design flaws or old school ideas that are no longer feasible. As someone who started in 2012, Wurm was something new and unique at the time. But let's face it, Wurm won't survive as anything more than a husk of a game unless it wants to adapt. I keep hearing that it's a "niche game" but every year, this niche seems to be getting smaller and smaller till it will stop existing all together. 

 

Wurm can preserve its spirit while adapting to modern times. 

[Locath 523]

Few more thoughts on the subject.

 

1. While the staff is doing their best to make the game family friendly, the audience they are trying to protect is not the ones who have any income, especially disposable. 

We are not allowed to discuss certain parts of anatomy while talking about lungs is fine. Simultaneously the same child which is being "protected" from reading about it is told "here, take this sword and jab it in that man's face" and that's perfectly fine.

Those players are shielded from reading certain things but can't buy things they would want, from animals to deeds. Probably not likely to last because of those limitations.

 

Players who have that income can be punished and driven away by obsolete and inconsistent rules (murdering others being fine but talking about your own body parts isn't, to protect that one hypothetical person who doesn't know what human looks like).

And then they go to breed animals, read the event messages when they brand the horse, all of that is fine.

 

In the end, it's rules we all agreed to follow and i have no problem with that personally, but, i have seen people being warned and/or punished for obvious and harmless jokes. Those are more likely to quit because they feel punished for something no other game punished them for before.

 

 

2. Wurm (Freedom Isles ruleset) is probably the only game where you have to jump off a purpose built building to get a few medium wounds and not use the skill you already worked for over last few years to be able to progress. Thorn jogging paths are a thing...

 

Most other games: I have 90 blacksmithy so i can upgrade my tools so that i can raise my skill further.

Wurm: i'll make a free alt to make 1ql tools, puncture my liver and turn climbing on because i won't see any progress otherwise.

 

I have seen the argument of "if you are skilled enough, you can carve out a wooden rose with a spoon" which applies to none of the high population games but was brought up multiple times and doesn't make much sense.

 

3. Timers. Timers everywhere. Drinking water, lighting forges, nearly everything is on a timer. Another thing which most first time players wouldn't be used to. When they question it, the sad response is "oh wait until you get your skills up, you'll want all of those timers even longer...". Not exactly what current generations expect to see.

 

[Finnn 3,298]

[Etherdrifter 2,512]

7 hours ago, Archaed said:

Stop expecting Wurm to compete with modern mmo's challenge 2022

 

5 hours ago, elentari said:

 

That argument can also be shifted to " Stop expecting Wurm to be able to thrive in 2022 because it is in a rigid design mindset and doesn't want to adapt".

 

You beat me to it!

[DADLER 170]

I think it will come down to merging clusters but that will be a big ordeal in itself with a ton of little things to consider.

[Damascus 362]

They will never merge clusters , to many people/players would just stop playing ..

This game will be no different then Ultima Online with its small player base who just cant let go ..

Issue with Wurm is theres nothing to it .

Repeat this rinse and do over..

Adding pixel crack does not help in the long run , dosent hurt ether .

Wurm must adapt to modern play styles .. dungeons , quests  , city's long gone only ruins ,pretty much a rewrite of what there is .

Only thing i liked about Wurm was the players and terraforming .

Dont think VR will help any .

 

Solution to the problems is to admit there is one and find a solution to it .

People can doom and gloom all they want , all games come to a end at sometime ..

The time is when players give up waiting for the DEV,s or owners to figure what to do ..

[contestani 94]

-Remove  the  payment or premium for playing , only payments for deeds and special skins or  things in the shop.

- Improve the fighting system .

- optional : more languages

- Less grinding ,  scripted events in the wilderness or something  to more action.

- merge servers , for exploration and trade.

 

I knew a lot of people recruited by me  than weren´t able to afford premium to play without limitations, I think more people will be the best advertising.

[Nukacola 60]

11 hours ago, Radircs said:

Well Wurm have some fundamental problems for the modern market. One is that the design is player driven in nearly every part. No player -> no content - > no reason to play -> no players. It’s a downwards spiral in itself that stems from the "old" days of MMOs where the game was just the frame for players to interact and not the interacting object itself. In the past this worked great since well there were no alternatives, the market access was a smaller group but also more focused so it worked for some games.

 

Now day’s there are more games out and games that offer both a interactive world and game on its own. Wurm still have a lot of charm and chances but is also vary unforgiving in the new player experience.

 

 

 

When our group started the second time with the steam release (we played 2013 on elevation) we all rushed the 21 BC and 20.1ML for riding and cart driving since traveling is nice but when you have places to be you want to go there fast and the mechanic to do that is gated behind a characteristic value you can´t get as F2P player. Meaning your action radius is way more limited if you don´t get this.

 

Same with our breeding we more or less started day 1 since again we want to have an action radius as big as possible and make interacting with our neighbors as easy as it can be. And we could do this because we were knowledgeable thanks to a past play time and we were a allergy organized group. It was quite easy for us to catch newer players and teach them some tricks it was ok that they leave us with some QL 50 gear (first week of the server so QL 50 were a nice start) since we had specialist in h who sink their teeth in it.

 

What we did there was smoothing our early game experience and the ones of new players as much as possible since we know it’s the most problematic part. You don´t have safety since you don´t have a home you have no skills to generate this and then you hit the F2P wall before you have even figuring out the basics.

 

 

 

Wurm need a lot of rethinking if it wants to grow the player base. Its nothing that is easy to fix or that is done with a single change it some fundamentals that are there that will probably alienate some of the player base if you lay hands on it but it’s also the things that hold you back.

 

 

The devs will have to release a new cluster like the Western Freedom Isles on a different gaming platform such as Epic Games Store to really gain an influx of new players.

 

The simple problems that were commonly voiced by new players that could be addressed with the new cluster are the lack of livestock, lack of usable land for creating a deed, and improving the tutorial based on steam reviews will make a big difference in retaining new players.

[Archaed 2,280]

13 hours ago, contestani said:

-Remove  the  payment or premium for playing , only payments for deeds and special skins or  things in the shop.

- Improve the fighting system .

- optional : more languages

- Less grinding ,  scripted events in the wilderness or something  to more action.

- merge servers , for exploration and trade.

 

I knew a lot of people recruited by me  than weren´t able to afford premium to play without limitations, I think more people will be the best advertising.

 

 

Why don't we just make a different game and call it wurm? 

[Archaed 2,280]

20 hours ago, elentari said:

 

That argument can also be shifted to " Stop expecting Wurm to be able to thrive in 2022 because it is in a rigid design mindset and doesn't want to adapt". 

 

Wurm has a lot of areas it can be improved on and as people have mentioned previously, it has a lot of design flaws or old school ideas that are no longer feasible. As someone who started in 2012, Wurm was something new and unique at the time. But let's face it, Wurm won't survive as anything more than a husk of a game unless it wants to adapt. I keep hearing that it's a "niche game" but every year, this niche seems to be getting smaller and smaller till it will stop existing all together. 

 

Wurm can preserve its spirit while adapting to modern times. 

Improving is not a total rework of the game, nor is it expecting to go toe to toe with modern mmos. 

 

It's about defining and shaping itself within its own right, not about catering to the common core market

[Radircs 76]

42 minutes ago, Archaed said:

Why don't we just make a different game and call it wurm? 

I am all up for Wurm 2. Keep strong elements (the terraforming and the current tile based World desinge that gives the game a uniqe look, the crafting depth is fine)  and improve on elemnts that are failing (the lack luster comabt system,  idealistic a real 3D underground that get also rid of the problems with bridges, better pipeline for skins and decoraticv elemnts to get them faster out as money source so you can drop the subscritpion model to a maybe smaller premium effect) with a entierly new code base that is maybe better suited for it then the current one.

 

Its not that I think Wurm will die anytime soon. It can relativ easy be maintained on a small budget and as long as its a surpluss under the line it will keep runing maybe without updates but yeah. Its just the questions are we happy with this as players? And can the devs/owner be happy with somthing that will generate just small amounts of revenue but is not growing when ther is potantial to do so?