New Branding and a New Website -Video

[Berms 154]

4 hours ago, punishlife said:

 

 

Jesus, what happened to this game?

Just remake it on Unreal or something already

 

Imagine...Wurm...  remade in Unreal, current silly little bugs removed, awesome graphics, finished animations, fitting sound and audio AND with all the mechanics wurm has now? man, that would be my dream game and I would invest money in it.

[Gerbold 40]

 

55 minutes ago, Berms said:

Imagine...Wurm...  remade in Unreal, current silly little bugs removed, awesome graphics, finished animations, fitting sound and audio AND with all the mechanics wurm has now? man, that would be my dream game and I would invest money in it.

 

Maybe it would be nicer... but is it necessary? The charm of this game is the balance, which is probably the best I've seen. Graphical imperfections are cool. It doesn't matter to the players. The small hardware requirements are definitely an advantage. More important is playability, fun, not a great look that will consume time, money and generate errors.
I prefer to add new walls, elements of architecture. See how creative people are these days. Adding new building possibilities will be an even better gift.
I also look forward to more wild creatures to kill.

[Berms 154]

2 minutes ago, Gerbold said:

 

 

Maybe it would be nicer... but is it necessary? The charm of this game is the balance, which is probably the best I've seen. Graphical imperfections are cool. It doesn't matter to the players. The small hardware requirements are definitely an advantage. More important is playability, fun, not a great look that will consume time, money and generate errors.
I prefer to add new walls, elements of architecture. See how creative people are these days. Adding new building possibilities will be an even better gift.
I also look forward to more wild creatures to kill.

Agreed. not necessary but would be nice ofcourse to have a new wurm made in Unreal. Just a dream.

the "small hardware requirements" are not entirely true, though lol. 
I personally have a decent graphic card that can do GTA V Online on max settings but has constant (graphic or network) lag (spikes)  in Wurm... and wurm is like ancient compared to the other games I do in max settings. 
It needs way more optimizing and fixing the little bugs that cause the little lag (spikes) before Wurm can be advertised as a game that can be played on any or "small hardware" system.

[Xagru 431]

1 hour ago, Gerbold said:

 

 

Maybe it would be nicer... but is it necessary? The charm of this game is the balance, which is probably the best I've seen. Graphical imperfections are cool. It doesn't matter to the players. The small hardware requirements are definitely an advantage. More important is playability, fun, not a great look that will consume time, money and generate errors.
I prefer to add new walls, elements of architecture. See how creative people are these days. Adding new building possibilities will be an even better gift.
I also look forward to more wild creatures to kill.

Agreed. I played in Wurm few years in low graphic sets, many times even w/o pretty trees. For the last 1-2 years can play in full graph sets, even with few toons same time, and you know, what? I still dont use it usually. Maybe when I travel or streaming. So, would b nicer like in Unreal 5, but is that would bring lot of new players?

 

Question: why Minecraft is so popular and Wurm not (made same person)? Is about graphics? No. Is about world looks like toys? I dont thinks so. So many games are popular and is not about graphics, Like Tibia, Terraria and others. Is it a matter of marketing?

 

And other question, what is plan? I mean - new logo, new page, new shop, what next? What is plan to brind new players (more money)? That is question to CEO ofc.

[Idlamn 297]

I've read the text in the features section, it's kinda poetic.

Quote

As a woodcutter in Wurm Online, you're not just a harvester of resources, but a caretaker of nature's invaluable bounty.

:") true...

The grasslands at Mraconia Bay. cc @DaletheGood @notstupidbobb

 

It does describe some activities in the game well (in a belletristic way), but a lot activities aren't mentioned and there is some unnecessary fluff here and there.

Again I see that RvR is not mentioned... This game has the most advanced RvR I've seen (I haven't played Acheron's Call or DAoC). On Epic you felt like part of a kingdom and not some small guild. People went about their business but here and there there was kingdom business as well to which people participated to their abilities and willingness: from building and maintaining infrastructure like raider canals, walls, ditches, to things like scouting out raiders and even engaging them or actually participating in raids. Not to mention territory stuff on Elevation and other kingdom mechanics and PMKs.

No mention of any of this... It mentiones guilds which are not a thing in Wurm.

 

 

Also no mention of exploration. No mention of roads and infrastructure. Terraforming.

 

All of those systems that work together in Wurm. I keep hearing people say that Wurm is a bunch of disjoint systems mashed up together. But this is not the case, all those systems actually work together. E.g. you get wood from woodcutting, turn it into materials for a ship, build a ship and use it for exploration. Of course the tools you use are obtained from blacksmiths, and additionally enchanted to make them faster. The woodland itself is either wild or especially grown nearby by a forrester (in theory at least). Then to transport you go on roads by wagon or use the highway system. Horses from animal husbandry can be especially bred to make the ordeal faster.

Wurm isn't this game where you have a pvp set of armor that can be obtained from whatever tokens from getting kills in some arena. The same systems are also used in player versus player. It's all seamless.

My point is that, I don't know how, but the game needs to be presented like this seamless combination of different systems. And I think (just an idea) this can only be done with an example video - from planting the forrest to navigating in the vessel made from that forrest. Or some elaborate diagram. Dunno... I think it would be better than just listing some professions.

 

Lastly, I think instead of those placeholder images we should have gifs or short videos or even a carousel of pictures showcasing those activities:

e.g. for mining: prospecting, mining entries, tunnels, veins. For pvp: kingdom banners, building defences, digging trenches, guard towers (territory), appointing offices, scouting, building catapults, trebuchets, rams, and lastly some fighting.

I'd even leave the UI in.

[Miretta 1,415]

1 hour ago, Xagru said:

Agreed. I played in Wurm few years in low graphic sets, many times even w/o pretty trees. For the last 1-2 years can play in full graph sets, even with few toons same time, and you know, what? I still dont use it usually. Maybe when I travel or streaming. So, would b nicer like in Unreal 5, but is that would bring lot of new players?

 

Question: why Minecraft is so popular and Wurm not (made same person)? Is about graphics? No. Is about world looks like toys? I dont thinks so. So many games are popular and is not about graphics, Like Tibia, Terraria and others. Is it a matter of marketing?

 

And other question, what is plan? I mean - new logo, new page, new shop, what next? What is plan to brind new players (more money)? That is question to CEO ofc.

good points, I think we all actually know reasons on why wurm hasn't gained much attention yet.
a few reasons on what is currently still an issue and could be improved:
-there are many game assets that visually are inconsistent, while there have been attempts made at making it better, it's weird how some items look like they are petite with intricate carvings, while others look like someone just roughly shaped some wood with an axe, without it being tied to quality or skill requirement (as example why are flagpoles so incredibly thin?)
-wurm online, the name, I'm not even sure if current players know what it's about, but it doesn't sound very enticing. too common word to be found accidentially, too far from what the game is about to be associated with what wurm is. Though a name change would be rather drastic change after this long time. 
-marketing in general, even after this long time, it's incredibly hard to even stumble over this game, there is barely any media presence and what marketing team has done over the years was mostly internal for already existing players, we would need social media presence of the team rather than mostly only the community. Relying on community and word of mouth, has it's limits.
-accessibility, wurm is complex, not hard. The reason why people struggle to get into the game, is not because of graphics, it's accessibility for it's features. When starting out, players have no idea what you can even do in the game and just showing "a few chores" to learn the basics, especially with failing alot early on, is not inspiring to learn on your own....and handholding at the start is giving a wrong impression as well.
There is confusion when starting wurm, that most land is already owned in the starting zone, so you can't really do much, which is also frustrating, because as a newbie, you might want to explore, but you don't stand a chance against monsters or wide open lakes/oceans and are really slow and there aren't any clearly visible signs of if something is owned already without paying attention to chat or knowing to inspect the ground.
Pretty much: what I would think needs to happens, is an accessibility game overlay, that would allow players to be able to see the information important for beginners at a glance as a choice, a toggle, to augment the world, which might be less immersive but would help with the learning curve.
It's also about creating incentive...what has been pulling me into wurm was seeing what other players made and to learn that "everything" has been made by players aka "I could learn and do all of this!" *while some landscapes are natural, we know we can create those too
It needs to be made clear from the start, that this is a game about creativity, about sharing and community, about freedom and choices and the possibility of becoming great and known for something, that might last for a long time, to have a lasting impact.
Those are the strengths of wurm and there are many people out there who have never heard of wurm who would probably love playing it, but it simply hasn't reached them.

Starting with a new website and wurms branding was a good idea, but this new website and branding has been disappointing.

[wipeout 1,355]

5 hours ago, Berms said:

 

Imagine...Wurm...  remade in Unreal, current silly little bugs removed, awesome graphics, finished animations, fitting sound and audio AND with all the mechanics wurm has now? man, that would be my dream game and I would invest money in it.

You know the best part about this?

A lot of wurm's features that people actually genuinely love and use every day are honestly rather simplistic in nature
A big part of the game is our crafting and building system from resource gathering to refining, farming, mining and so on

I made a list a while ago to throw skills into the following categories combat, gathering, processing, religion/healing/meditating, misc to figure out the spread of skills

Combat 46
Gathering 19
Processing 46
Rhm 8
misc 9

Combat skills are all weapons and shield skills these practically function really similar and code wise would only use 2 different systems really with modifiers to do special skills and such that can be loaded next to it
Gathering is all "do action, get item, modify world" this is in the form of lowering terrain to mining a wall to chopping a tree the code behind this would not really be complex as its simple entity manipulation in a engine like unreal or voxel/whatever terrain you use editing
Proecssing is item manipulation and once you have a basic system it wont be much extra code to make all skills be able to take raw item in finished item out and even wurm's system isnt that complex on it its complexity comes to handling % chance and checking skills which again not that complex
Religion healing and meditating these are weirder, religion is a set of skills and spells related to those skills but the underlying system would not have to be hard and tbh making a mana system(and calling it favor) can be done in an afternoon as can most spell effects within that same week, meditation its a weird unfinished spell that wouldnt take to hard to redo, now healing is more complex due to its effect on skill effectiveness and all this other stuff but besides that wounds and healing not that hard and the skill itself is easy to handle

So ya wurm is a LOT of easy systems working together in janky ways to make it complex by having a LOT of items and effects but recreating such a thing isn't that difficult or anything the main reason we havent had a successful wurm killer is because those who try (looking at you life is feudal) go around at it in a weird way of "hey we should limit the players freedom and impose weird restrictions"

Recreating wurm's tile system is not that difficult and can be done in any variation of ways from a voxel based system with set sizes for modifiable nodes at x range(allowing 3d terrain is easy) to a grid system like wurm for a 2d plane
A 4km x 4km world is tiny for something like ue5/5.2 and we could render far away terrain easily in high detail

The big issue will mostly come down to how are you going to build your server backend but that isn't an issue for long once you settle on a plan for that and getting a basic world up and running then creating a simple crafting system and implementing skills for a beginner might be 4-5 months from learning how to do it to making it if they spend 4-5 hours a day on it on average(it took me less then that when i wanted to see how complex it would be)

But making it a properly secure game that is optimized and polished enough to be released that will take a lot longer but mimicking wurm's current content and swapping out annoying systems with more logical ones that is not that hard the hardest part will be learning how to code(If you are energetic enough and can focus for long enough and like puzzles this isn't long)

If you really break wurm down and look past its items and the way a player sees the world but look at the distinct systems in place like religion, animals, crafting, combat and so on you start to realize that there are only a few core big concepts in wurm the rest is fluff added in to give players more content(check out all the light sources we have as an example and how excited we were when we got braziers)

Taking wurm as inspiration and creating a game like it with gameplay improvements and things like a 3d cave system and better visuals and smoother terrain deformation(visually only maybe?) what you have on your hands is a year to alpha 1, 2 years to beta, 3-4 years to first release and this is being generous with your time, making your servers be able to handle thousands of people on the other hand? That is the bigger issue and will require a lot more time and man power so wurm's approach of a slow steady growth from a handful of people from the java forums gaming section to other places to the 16k people it had at its peak more then a decade ago would be a good way to go. Your numbers can be bigger of course.

The issue isn't even art as once you got your basics going and are using free assets you can get started with funding and get artists to help out or buy basic packs for the mean time until you get an artistic direction down.


Like seriously the only reason why we do not have a wurm clone that has beaten wurm into oblivion is 1. wurm is a niche game and any serious development team looking at it will go "big pass" and 2. those who tried had beef with wurm and wanted their version of wurm but with restrictions or missmanagement and drama, there have been 7 projects that i know of that tried to copy wurm in someway 3 died due to drama 1 is limping along  2 others fell silent during early beta and people gave up and 1 project never got off the grounds after creating a bit of hype.

So ya wurm is lucky that those who are genuinely interested in creating a game like wurm would rather just play wurm as they know making a game like it with its slow grind and such will not grow big UNLESS you add in mission based content an ever involving and expanding world and all kinds of other gimmicks that will turn the sandbox experience into a theme park with sandbox elements as that is where the big crowd of grinders is at.

Wurm has cornered this tiny market and people find wurm daily and look at it and go "hey i like this idea lets try" but fall flat on their face and quit and another game that does catch them better would grow big time due to this but it is a financial risk that not many are willing to take unless its a 1-5 man passion project idea and they tend to fail because you can not really create a good growing mmo that has tens of thousands of players with 5 people(unless your name is grinding gear games) in this day and age.
 

[Sidereal 1,119]

 

I actually find myself cautiously optimistic - and here's why.

 

 

Instead of closing up shop entirely, GCG has chosen to invest in Wurm Online.   Given that in-game loot crates - GCG's primary business - are no longer a viable business model, the company has chosen to pivot to put their weight behind Wurm Online.  They would have been well within their rights to say "A 17 year old niche MMO with a several hundred players isn't a winning prospect - let's just fold up this company and try again with something entirely different."  I try to keep this in mind - I would much rather have a Wurm Online trying to find a new path than to say goodbye to the friends I've made here and to this world that we've literally built with our tiny virtual hands.  A pivot is difficult for any business to pull off and I applaud GCG for trying instead of taking the ball and going home.

 

The announcement could have been done better, and that's something that can be fixed.  July 1 was the start of Q3 and I reckon something had to get out the door to pair up with a business announcement.  Could it have been done better?  Yes.  Are there dozens of talented folks here who would happily help put something together for free out of dedication and passion for the game?  Also yes.  Thankfully, this is the sort of thing that can be fixed after the fact and hopefully a valuable lesson has been learned.

 

The in-game silver shop is quite good.  Loyalty skins are back, which is something many people have wanted for a long time.  I can't tell you the number of times I've needed something from a trader and wasted precious time running around trying to find one, and now it's very easy to purchase them.  Plus, new gnomes!  Who doesn't love a good gnome?

Change is always difficult.  Even though we're finally getting what many folks have asked for - a commitment to investing in the future of Wurm Online - this moment still feels scary.  We love this world very much and it means a great deal to us.  I'll continue to provide constructive criticism and work with GCG to see this marvelous little world to continue, because I can't bear the thought of it going away.  And let's be honest, a niche MMO like Wurm lasting 17 years and still see active development is nothing short of a small miracle in the first place.

 

Yours kindly,
Ol' Auntie Sid

[Xagru 431]

I see so much emotions here in players who spent many years in Wurm. Any changes may bring fear, angry if we dont know what change bring and what intentions hide behind

2 worlds - customers and company collide without understanding each other. But, both sides want the Wurm to grow, right? 2 difrent intentions - love and profit. As somebody said b4, if CEO would come to us and talk honestly, w/o comercial b***t, that topic could keep totaly diferent energy. If we dont have clear vision of Wurm in tomorrow, what company has, we only get marketing tricks, that arouses mistrust about our tomorrow in Wurm.

 

Btw webpage, I wish to see Madnath's MEN project on webpage too. That thing could press me visit page more often than 1 per year.

[Finnn 3,321]

8 minutes ago, Xagru said:

I see so much emotions here in players who spent many years in Wurm. Any changes may bring fear, angry if we dont know what change bring and what intentions hide behind

2 worlds - customers and company collide without understanding each other. But, both sides want the Wurm to grow, right? 2 difrent intentions - love and profit. As somebody said b4, if CEO would come to us and talk honestly, w/o comercial b***t, that topic could keep totaly diferent energy. If we dont have clear vision of Wurm in tomorrow, what company has, we only get marketing tricks, that arouses mistrust about our tomorrow in Wurm.

 

Btw webpage, I wish to see Madnath's MEN project on webpage too. That thing could press me visit page more often than 1 per year.

As we go to local grocery store to buy something we can't expect local store or big-mart ceo to come and tell us about the item you're purchasing, right?

 

At best we'll get roadmap.. a maybe, maybe not even that, wishful thinking.. hopefully more plans for the future beyond just a year ahead and the dream of VR success.

 

What project, somebody praises it's own name and lists other people, wait they actually list themselves since random "hype" is invented.

There are two other reasons for the creation of the list, now a 3rd if that was not silent starting one, popularization of the game isn't among them.

 

Currently it's hobby tier streams of people already playing the game, inviting others from in-game chats and chatting with existing players from the game, no new views, mostly nothing gets promoted to new people.

If growth was achievable through not growing, sure, this will be great marketing plan to pull, but it's not how it works. 

[Madnath 3,113]

55 minutes ago, Xagru said:

Btw webpage, I wish to see Madnath's MEN project on webpage too. That thing could press me visit page more often than 1 per year.

 

I love to hear it and I appreciate you saying it. But I am hard against it.

Simply put it's a crying shame and almost a disgrace that VEN has been left high and dry for so long. The list on the old website alone wasn't updated for years until it was finally just flat out removed once MEN was made and was well received.

Keenan said quite some time ago that no matter how he cut it, when he looked at his metrics there was an effect from VEN and he'd be working to see about getting it working proper again. Plans that fell through, for some reason or another. Simply put those with access to that information knew it was a good system that worked, and Retrograde was onto something great with the idea.

Just recently we had an influx of streamers and only a handful stuck around long term, something that may have been prevented had we had a proper system in place to support them.

 

With any system like VEN it's hard for any player to measure the actual effectiveness and the idea has never been only to start people streaming Wurm for rewards. Katspurr has 5.8k followers, and BloodyDrongo has 7.1k followers. I'm not going to go into what made them stop streaming Wurm because that's entirely their own business, but each time they go live on Wurm, that's thousands of people having Wurm appear in their feed. That's however many viewers they have getting Wurm fed to their algorithm. For each person that starts to stream, there's a chance of giving them a proper launchpad to open their streams up to other content, increasing their viewerbase if they want to, and that's just adding to the value of having them as part of VEN. VEN was never a closed loop system, it was there for a larger purpose and as a long term system.

 

The big question on my mind is why a player had to step up and do this. Why did a player have to fill in the void that was formerly properly supported? The playerbase is willing to show their kindness in supporting the revival of the system, because they understand it's of little effect to them and it's a good idea to support those willing to go live and provide entertainment and show the game around.

I know for sure I'd prefer an inexpensive system that works to promote our own people, than another failed attempt at buying advertisement spots online that aren't seen because everyone and their dogs have adblockers.

Edited July 2, 2023 by Madnath

[Archaed 2,284]

18 minutes ago, Finnn said:

What project, somebody praises it's own name and lists other people, wait they actually list themselves since random "hype" is invented.

There are two other reasons for the creation of the list, now a 3rd if that was not silent starting one, popularization of the game isn't among them.

 

Currently it's hobby tier streams of people already playing the game, inviting others from in-game chats and chatting with existing players from the game, no new views, mostly nothing gets promoted to new people.

If growth was achievable through not growing, sure, this will be great marketing plan to pull, but it's not how it works. 

Actually the VEN was an amazing success and drove twitch viewership of Wurm online from 300 hours per month to over 4000 hours per month within three months. 
 

I understand that marketing and community isn’t your forte, but support and encouragement of user generated content (ugc for short) is huge for games, it gets people creating content, people who play the game consuming and talking about the game outside of just playing it, and can drive new viewership and playing. I’ve seen many people from streamers communities try out Wurm to play and falling in love with it. 
 

your insult against the content creators aside, supporting them leads to free advertising, opportunities for the dev team to reach prospective and existing players in new mediums and drive a greater sense of community. 
 

we had the factional fight brothers showcase new content and talk with the devs, we had drongo invite us on to play and be seen, katspurr did the most amazing trailer for Wurm too! 
 

don’t knock the power of these “hobby tier” content creators, they have a far greater impact on the game and mean a lot to people, more than a cranky forum troll 

[Firecat 865]

"Slapdash" 

 

(on the website being rushed out..)

 

Edited July 2, 2023 by Firecat

[Finnn 3,321]

2 hours ago, Archaed said:

Actually the VEN was an amazing success and drove twitch viewership of Wurm online from 300 hours per month to over 4000 hours per month within three months. 
 

I understand that marketing and community isn’t your forte, but support and encouragement of user generated content (ugc for short) is huge for games, it gets people creating content, people who play the game consuming and talking about the game outside of just playing it, and can drive new viewership and playing. I’ve seen many people from streamers communities try out Wurm to play and falling in love with it. 
 

your insult against the content creators aside, supporting them leads to free advertising, opportunities for the dev team to reach prospective and existing players in new mediums and drive a greater sense of community. 
 

we had the factional fight brothers showcase new content and talk with the devs, we had drongo invite us on to play and be seen, katspurr did the most amazing trailer for Wurm too! 
 

don’t knock the power of these “hobby tier” content creators, they have a far greater impact on the game and mean a lot to people, more than a cranky forum troll 

Joke's on you actually have marketing ed. If you recall I was asking for video dev streams, etc... memories.. right.. so fast forgotten.

You were so good at marketing and entrapped whole community into a blackbox discord so nobody gets to see or index any of the content, nothing shared there gets consumed into other platforms.

 

Where are these people?

 

What insult? I mentioned only initial talk and what madnath wanted and mentioned in gl chat, free subscriptions for friends who stream, that's not marketing, it's free subscription codes, no big plan for other than free gameplay in a subscription model game.

 

I check twitch daily, almost at any given moment have a stream few running on screen or background for content, music, throw a view for somebody in background tab.

And about this free advertising and so on.. do you recall who raised a lot of fuzz initially, who asked for these video streams and so on, when and how it all happened? How did the development team or you as PR get the idea to start streaming wurm or news?

You've forgotten the numerous times I've written for same things you now try to educate me about.

 

That's the core backbone of the VEN, when it was active, emoo, kats / FFbrothers and wurmofficial, with activity more or less in that order, maybe FFs had more hours. Rest of the streamers you can hardly recall(?) therefor "hobby tier".

Emoo grew into fulltime streaming from part time(most hours compared to others), Katts unsure what happened there I detached since it was more of an "official, not official" stream presenting wurm, plain honest content have more value than sugarcoating content, builds better trust. FFbrothers eventually moved to variety streaming or mostly 7dtd these days, same with emoo; wurmofficial never did well what was asked in past requests, dev comments about things, showing content, sneak peeks of unpublished content. Maybe because there was not much to show or other reason, eventually these turned into maybe a shown screenshot, not much details if any were given around it, and eventually stream was solid as "retrograde roams around random server", which was fine, still some staff + chat interaction was welcome change compared to none at all before these streams. You can recall how many times you've probably not liked doing these streams because of the bad questions about fixes/balances/new content/issues/etc, some streams seemed to end.. quickly, other times you learned to ignore and carry without bothering much about that, focusing on other topics or redirecting into other topics.

 

I was here before and during the ven.  

Edited July 2, 2023 by Finnn
end..

[Adnurak 127]

half the small Ws on the banners at the head and foot of the website are backwards

[TheTrickster 2,290]

It looks more like a de-branding than a re-branding.  

 

Generic casual phone game anyone?

 

 

Edited July 2, 2023 by TheTrickster

[Madnath 3,113]

2 hours ago, FelinasEP said:

Hours viewed means nothing when the majority of those hours (over 90%) are from people who already know about and play the game. And with a less-than 2% retention ratio, any players that come in through that avenue are destined to leave within minutes.
That was empirically the issue with Wurm streams - they are not fun to watch. Wurm is basically an IDLE game, it's barely even any fun to play (hence the retention issue) so why would anyone get captivated by watching it?
What is there to captivate them? A timer running on the screen? Cause that IS 90% of Wurm gameplay. Sitting and watching a timer expire. Oh boy, I wanna play that!

 

My issue with this kind of statement is, it blankets all Wurm streams with the same type of tag without an attempt to understand them or understand appeals of each.

Drongo would be able to talk about things going on in the game and entertain an audience with humour and proper engagement with a community.

Katspurr would adventure to a totally random spot and show the scenery and areas between, and take on the challenges along the way.

Fabricant literally hosts game shows and streams people playing them at events like impalongs.

 

You don't need to like Wurm streams, I'm not saying all this to change minds and magically make you want to watch every stream out there. But I do genuinely think there are people who can make streams of Wurm work, but it requires a certain personality or ability to make it entertaining and/or engaging. As much as I love Wurm streams, I don't watch a massive amount because I prefer to listen to them, which is something I actually really like about Wurm streams, they rarely demand you actually sit and watch. They tent to live on my 2nd monitor and I'll wait until I want to say something to bother chatting. It's nice.

 

tl;dr Wurm just requires a certain type of person to stream it and they exist and really, almost anyone can be that person. It just takes some work and understanding.

(Please for god sake don't feel slighted if I didn't mention your stream, they're just 3 old streamers who made Wurm work for them)

[Jeston 316]

On 6/30/2023 at 8:17 AM, Madnath said:

 

Also hey guys what game is this?

 

that is the new RTX setting, gonna have to get a 4080 grandpa

[Xagru 431]

Instead of arguing and scratching old grievances, wouldn't it be better to go over it and try to speed up the machine?

 

Madnath, if u dont want MEN on webpage, I wish to see it there, still. Because:

47 minutes ago, Madnath said:

Drongo would be able to talk about things going on in the game and entertain an audience with humour and proper engagement with a community.

Katspurr would adventure to a totally random spot and show the scenery and areas between, and take on the challenges along the way.

Fabricant literally hosts game shows and streams people playing them at events like impalongs.

That's why streams, permanent and new channels would attract me to the site.

Sure, if someone streams grinding of HFC, it can be boring. It is boring for watching. But if she/he does as tutorial, or she/he is doing it for a while, or  talks with viewers about what he's doing, and then continues the adventure leading viewers into the world of Wurm?

Recently I watched 2 streams that were watched by people not familiar with Wurm. In @Gerbold transmission, only me and one other person knew the Wurm. The rest of the viewers are former Gerbold's friends from other games. I don't know if they entered into Wurm or not after, but if this stream wasnt happend, they wouldn't know about Wurm.

 

All this new branding seems to be interlude to some bigger plan, not just a new plastic logo, new website with fake pictures and notes, and another glorious report for investors? I'd really like to know this plan of new branding.

Edited July 3, 2023 by Xagru

[Sindusk 2,448]

Sometimes I find myself wondering what the community of Wurm would be like if there wasn't an immense amount of history. If everyone just forgot the past and saw the game in its current form without the attachment of nostalgia or the bonds they've built with other players. A timeline where nobody had strong opinions, grudges, or "precedents" of how things should be done. Would most players continue playing? Would people want to engage with this game right now if not for its history and the part they took in it? Does it fit in the current ecosphere of the gaming market?

 

Does it even make sense to try and make the game more "mainstream?"

 

I find myself viewing the development and progression of Wurm recently as taking the wrong direction. The attempts to "reach the main crowd" or "draw in new players" always seem to miss the mark. I believe this is because Wurm is not a game meant to be marketed to the masses. It's meant to be marketed to those who already play or have played in the past. By proxy, this will affect new player growth. I would like to see retention stats based on connection in Wurm. If a player in a deed begins playing again after a long hiatus, how many of their friends/deed mates return with them? Are individuals really coming back to the game of their own accord, or is it groups? Perhaps their group expanded while they were gone, and they now have several new players who will try the game. How many new players join a deed when a group returns to the game?

 

I would bet that returning players affect new player growth more than any marketing done so far. This new branding doesn't speak to the community or the history, instead leaning towards new trends and styles. So yeah, this rebranding feels pretty off. It's a mass marketing attempt for a game where mass marketing wont hit the mark. Market to your current players, and let them market the game to new players. Wurm is a village, not a city.

[Damascus 381]

Sometimes I find myself wondering what the community of Wurm would be like if there wasn't an immense amount of history. If everyone just forgot the past and saw the game in its current form without the attachment of nostalgia or the bonds they've built with other players. A timeline where nobody had strong opinions, grudges, or "precedents" of how things should be done. Would most players continue playing? Would people want to engage with this game right now if not for its history and the part they took in it? Does it fit in the current ecosphere of the gaming market?

 

The game would been considered a demo or EA ..

Some people say they should change engine to UE5 , could it handle the terraforming aspect of wurm and let the people playing it still do so ?

 

Because you can try to deny it but terraforming is one of the  if not main aspect  of wurm .

 

I do not think so  , few games have tryed voxel and gave up saying game would not be fun , in reality they could not do it without the need of strong system on players side .

 

I am worried for wurm but will stay playing till the end or i die first .

 

But this rebrand seems nothing more then a PR stunt for share holders .

 

 

[Gevard 32]

This game needs new players so badly, i dont get why people be like " this niché game is for niché people dont make it mainstream, new players are bad somehow "

 

I've shown Wurm to my friends and they were like " what is the appeal, this doesnt look fun at all "

and that's it. it doesnt appeal to mainstream. where is the fun? if you've played it for a time you discover its fun but this is nowhere to be found on the surface for others to see. Also it's not fun inherently.

 

you have to wade through so much difficult stuff because reasons.

 

I'm a new player i wanna go explore -> a hellhound killed me. No exploring i am too weak.

I wanna go dig a mine -> no bueno it takes soooo long

I wanna go build a house -> this spot is already taken, please travel for miles on end while also avoiding spiders and no, just avoid anything. good luck.

I wanna join a deed and not make my own thing? -> this is possibly where people start to stick when finding a deed welcomeing them.

This is how i got arround. and i dont know how i stayed around tbh.

 

On some new servers i grinded out weapon smithing and boy was it bad. i mean i snorted sleep powder like no tomorrow and was one of 3 highest weaponsmiths i guess. but competition was fierce and once i started to not "no-life" i was falling behind so hard, but i made arround 5 gold and also spent stuff on sleeppowder and so on and so forth.

 

i totally got my enjoyment out of this but i wont ever do that again. and this also made me leave because why is everything such a grind.

 

how are new players supposed to grind through this.

 

combat is sooo sooooo unforgiving so you need good weapons and armor and possibly lifeleech enchant. because you dont get healing suppliy items easily, because why? why is this such a grind to do anything.

 

this game offers NO easy fun. you can have fun once you start buying "the right" stuff or joining a deed and leeching off of them until you can contribute which maybe take years. <- this is what i actually think.

 

and even then if you die once your shiny enchanted stufferino is inside a body bag guarded by whatever killed you. also good luck finding your corpse if you didnt remember to lay out and plan your adventure because haha hahahaha. where is the corpse? didnt remember where you were adventuring? oops.

 

dying and losing stuff is so easy. getting said stuff back is sooo sooooo hard. why play? where is the fun in losing everything because you didnt know the game wont help you navigate in your most troubled times.

 

there are soo soo many ways people can say "this is it, this was the last time i let this game devalue my time"

because dying isnt only making you remember where you died and possibly lose your stuff (without helper priests)

but you also get to enjoy skill loss TM. hmmm remember the grind for weapon smith you did, you grinded a whole week for +x skill? is gone, gg. but you get it back 3 times as fast. wink wink

 

i get it, i get it. just git gud and not die. but is this fun for new players?

 

i remember not knowing priests couldnt do certain tasks. "why play priests?" was my first question.

priests can cast spells. oh cool, but somehow this is an even longer grind than weapon smithing. fun.

 

then priests can link up with other priests and use them as batteries. which to me sounds realy fun to play a battery char.

i thought pay2win was bad. but somehow batterypriests are fine. and dont tell me people just wont play 6 chars at once.

i did it and it sucked. i hated every minute of it because it was soo good. i could actually start casting faster or mine shafts faster. it was a rush.

 

but is this fun as a new player to be told "just dont multibox" but also " this is the most efficient way because not enough people "

batteries are your friend.

 

i have many issues with this game and frankly i dont know how to fix them or even if my feedback was good.

but i know the entrybar for new players is just too high for most to stick arround.

 

just try to get a new players perspective.

 

everything is hard as can be

you cannot settle easily

if you die most of your "new" gear is gone and possibly guarded by a gulag-boss

building is not fast

getting tools is not fast

getting a boat is very not fast

getting somepalce elsewhere is a burden

try riding as a new player

try controlling a cart as a new paly

try telling people why they cannot do it and how to get there fast.

generally try to tell people how to grind faster.

most of the time you only know whats happening because you know how the game works. not because you can tell by animations or field of view or logic, there is this thing. Wogic. Where did it came from? why is this acceptable.

try telling people they cannot make a farm, sow crops, and harvest in one playing session.

explain cooking and cooking skill bonuses and how to reliably get them and then also cook for others to reliably get them

the wonders of smithing and why jewelrysmithing is its own thing and has nothing else to it and also wasnt incorporated into other smithing skills.

 

dont get me wrong, i enjoyed this game for what it was.

i enjoy complex systems and then finding clever solutions.

but some of these systems and mechanics wurm relies on just seem complicated because they once were complicated and changing this to allow for a better flow for new players gets blocked by old players who are like "nyah, it was hard for me, it shall not be easy for others, they shall suffer as i have sufferd, mnyeh"

 

*i forgot about meditating

just imagine me saying everything again but this time with meditating.

 

ultimately would you play this game if it were not for your connections you made or nostalgia?

[Finnn 3,321]

@Kristeryou need a Sue.. except you need one who reads/listens/takes notes/is not biased and hopefully wont go crazy or depressed from the feedback.

You just read the notes and do your thing, it's investment, direct contact will likely remain the same, unless you find it interesting to experience Sue's job.

 

Great series btw https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8879940/

 

[Archaed 2,284]

Just now, Finnn said:

@Kristeryou need a Sue.. except you need one who reads/listens/takes notes/is not biased and hopefully wont go crazy or depressed from the feedback.

You just read the notes and do your thing, it's investment, direct contact will likely remain the same, unless you find it interesting to experience Sue's job.

 

Great series btw https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8879940/

 

The game has had a community manager for about 8 years now lol, that was me and is now demona. 

[wipeout 1,355]

4 hours ago, Damascus said:

Some people say they should change engine to UE5 , could it handle the terraforming aspect of wurm and let the people playing it still do so ?

 

Because you can try to deny it but terraforming is one of the  if not main aspect  of wurm .

 

I do not think so  , few games have tryed voxel and gave up saying game would not be fun , in reality they could not do it without the need of strong system on players side .

Just because other dev's gave up with their voxel games doesn't mean that wurm would not work in something like ue5 for its client. You said yourself their games would not be fun and you can not build a game just on terraforming you need content around it a reason for it and well wurm kinda has that kinda doesn't

UE5 can handle the terraforming aspect of the world so so easily with the use of voxel plugin 2.0 heck even 1.2 can do the job fine too for wurms use case I really do not know why so many people believe that ue5 could not handle such a basic system of wurm the terrain system it isn't some amazing piece of engineering one of a kind miracle if we wanted to recreate wurm's exact tile grid that we have we would use 4 sets of blueprints(tile, tile border, tile corner) that contain the information on what does what with the 4th blueprint being used to stich them all together in the grid pattern we have in wurm then the manipulation of digging and leveling is a simple increase/decrease of tile corners by 10cm each action and you recreated terraforming.

This is without the use of a voxel plugin which would give you a way bigger range and flexibility on how you want your world to be but if you wanted a really basic terraforming system its the above with some extra tweaking at that.

Nothing in wurm is impossible or insanely hard to recreate what makes wurm work is countless basic systems working together to make something complex but due to the self taught nature of rolf and notch(their first ever game and learning how to code java) and the developers afterwards being in a similar state a lot of the code that exists does not follow best practices or coding standards and thus we are left with janky code that does the job but does so badly but it works so no one bothers to recreate it in a better way.

A common misconception between gamers is that a voxel game means that all terrain will be janky looking and when they think of a voxel game they think of 7dtd but just cause 3 was a voxel game astronneer is minecraft is heck there is a 7 tweet tutorial on how to recreate a life sized mars in unreal engine 5 that is 3389.5km in radius and has full deformation and its voxel grid is triangles of big sizes because triangles are needed for a sphere.

The point wurm's terrain and terraforming are basic systems we just view them as complex because wurm's implementation of terrain makes it seem complex and is different from other games out there allowing precision control over how tall or low a tile corner is and in most voxel games you dont get control over exact voxel height and they set voxels close to each other in order to have smoother terrain.
But in wurms case we would have a 2d world(so no excess data from 3d stacked dirt) with voxels 2 meters by 2 meters apart and 4 voxels together make a grid tile and grid borders(tiles and tile borders) it would take a person a week to come up with and design the entire terrain and make it work flawlessly with the player having the ability to do terraforming like wurm does if even that im sure plenty can do it in a afternoon.