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Wurm: I lasted 30 hours on free play, it kicked my ***
mburress
Member Posts: 5
As a player playing for free this game was just too tough.
Wurm Online is a MMOSSS (massive multiplayer online survival simulation sandbox). You have to feed yourself, hydrate yourself and if you can find time protect your items and gain a health bonus with shelter. As a free player this is done by making lots of tools, i was able to make about 16 which i had to carry on my person. For example for food you need to mine clay for half an hour, then work the clay into bowls then improve them with a clay shaper tool, then improve them with a wooden spatula, maybe even improve them with something else (it randomly selects what improvements are needed, sometimes up to 8 improvements can be needed. you then fire the bowls in a forge or oven AND THEN you can prepare food. not good food, 1% health bar kinda food. to make the food you have to spend about 1/2 hour foraging/botanizing the ground away from town. Later on more nourishing meals are available but the only food that nourishes to full health requires a saucepan which cannot be made until the player reaches above 10 skill in blacksmithing (skill advancement is very slow, i got to 10 skill shortly before i quit). Skills are capped at 20 for free players.
The reason for having to make all these tools and work to feed/hydrate is theres only 3 ways a player can get cash to buy stuff in game:
1/2) try to sell to a npc merhant. They recieve 5 silver a month on a certain day and time and only certain players know when this is and will "sellout" the merchant. Some players have even fenced around the merchant with a lock so only they can access it. This is not a violation of the rules.
1) pay to play
2) sell items to other players - free players can only make/obtain items of 20ql out of 100 so noone wants to buy
or 3) work for other players
In most cases working for other players involves joining a "village" owned by a long established player. This work is mostly manual labor kind of work sometimes performed in a "work camp" environment where you live in a 1x2 shack and perform close to slave labor for food/ iron and copper coins.
So after 1 1/2 hours each login to feed/water yourself you have time which is mostly spent making tools at the forge. Eventually after 30 hours of gameplay you end up with 1 of each important tool (if one hasnt worn down in that time and needs replacing, like a pickaxe) and you can build a home for yourself. Without in game money this means that you have to live "off deed". Which means living in a location that is very remote and far from town. Which was more difficult than i thought - even outside the towns there is alot of development. In large areas that werent, it seemed people would try to place a deed at a choke point in the mountains in an effort to block that area from settlement. There was one huge valley south of bear mountain that was only accessible via a gated mining tunnel.
ug well im running out of words here so i guess ill stop ranting
Comments
You were pretty much well on your way and got a lot further than a lot of people. It's perfectly fine to not like the game which it blatently says that it's trying to be a simulation that cuts some corners so people(read people not neccisarily you) can have fun.
The game is meant to be hard, it's also not meant to be played solo. when I stopped playing a while back out of a little over 1,000 active players only a very small handful were living along. even with 2 and half years of fun out of the game and a few beta resets(which don't happen now) where I've lived by myself for a while at the start while waiting to decide which town to start. I wouldn't want to live by myself for long even though I had a nice farm going a house up with walls and the ability to keep going solo if I wanted to. The games just not meant for that even if it is possible but difficult.
The free is also an unlimited preview. due to the nature of the game and it's ecentricities which I perfectly understand why you hate a limited preview doesn't make sense. Basically it's on the radical end of world spectrums like EvE but further along the same path.
Basically the things you hate about the game are the same reasons the community loves it and why I don't regret playing the game for over 2 years. As for why I left games don't have an infinate play life even MMOs don't.
I find it amazing that by 2020 first world countries will be competing to get immigrants.
I guess alot of my frustration is that of all the games listed on this site as "free to play" (the ones with the beer mug symbol), this one is the only one that i've played that doesnt offer enjoyment in the long term as a free player. Games like Planeshift, Regnum Online, and even simple games like Dungeon Runners are still fun after 1 to 3 months of play without spending a dime. Wurm advertises a unlimited free play with a 20 skill cap. It does not say this is a "preview" or "trial". If it said that i wouldn't have bothered. Additionally a post further down in the forums by a player seems to indicate that the free play is enjoyable (which i don't see how).
The game doesn't get easier with P2P.
Even if you were P2P you'd still be annoyed by the same mechanics.
I find it amazing that by 2020 first world countries will be competing to get immigrants.
(maybe off topic)
PlaneShift had some similar mechanics to Wurm for tradeskills, yet i still was able to enjoy PS because the movement/speed/failure penalties were not as severe and i could spend my time roleplaying.
(Well, maybe not the speed of swinging a pickaxe, but at least i could sell the ore in PS...)
you have to be more patient
even as a free player you can have great time with wurm ^^ I was playing on free acc for lik 1 year before bought my first prem.. 
just calm down go to game and try again ^^
Well, if you are allready not having fun with the current limitations of a free account, it's just not going to get better once you upgrade to premium either.
Certain actions will require 27 or 29 Strenght (some ship building) and to get that kind of strenght you are looking at some serious Grinding (probably 40 to 80 hours of blue action bar) to get the skills and stats to do so.
Wurm is a good concept, however the current community and players managed to ruin the game by wanting skills to be slower and take more time to increase. It's funny how many of these players also tries to recruit new players through forums like these as they do benefit from every new premium player with more silver being added to the game and increasing the non existant economy.
You'r time is better spent on another game than wurm unless you actually enjoy tedious Grind.
This true. There was even a when the Sever dev wanted/did to make stuff easier(a lot of people had lots of fun that night). Only to be complained out of exsistance from the 1337 people contacting the developer directly and complaining. It basically made it along the lines of quality increases have a greater effect but when you failed to improve something you did a lot more damage to it.
those that played casualier loved it ofcourse including me.
I find it amazing that by 2020 first world countries will be competing to get immigrants.
You're pretty right there.
Sadly wurm has too many veteran players with their own agenda whispering things in Rolfs ear, and I don't really think the game has a good chance to get a large audience with the many problems it has.
The most important problems that have not really been adressed :
*Problems with the database and how the data stored is handled and sent to clients , which seems to be fairly unoptimized and can't handle large quantities of data (around 170 to 200Mb of Db size caused horrible lag on the server). If the server was lagging with 75+ people online simultaneous guess how bad it would be with 3x or 4x that amount.
*The changing rulesets , one day you are allowed to mine anywhere you want to, next day you risk getting banned because you happened to mine into one of your neigbours mines and into his personal animal spawn point.
*The many problems of balancing established veteran players (75+ fightskill and uber stats)with leet equipment and farwalker amulets / potions (allows them to use max speed for 30s in pvp) , vs newcomers to wild, it basically is down to join a established town or hide and pray for them not finding you with their map hacks and other cheating tools.
Wurm is a great sanbox game, however if you compare the game with others you soon discovers that it has been bypassed by many games allready in the crafting department with crafting that is both interesting and entertaining compared to the horrible chore grind that is crafting in wurm.
Btw, if someone was wondering, in order to make a 50 to 60Ql Sword you would be weaponsmithing for about 6 to 8 hours daily for at least 1 month (120 to 180 hours) and then to get up to 75 skill you would again need to do the same amount of hours (another 120 to 180 hours) and the next 12.5 Points would cost the same untill you hit around 90 skill or so. Every skill gets exponentially harder to achieve the higher it is and if you dont use the skill in a day or two it decays by 0.1 or less (or more).
If you happen to play alone you would also need around 75 mining skill (a full month of 8 hours daily mining or more) in order to get the ql of the ore to make the good weapons.
If you are looking for a timesink ( a huge one lol) then wurm is definitely for you, however if you are a casual gamer and likes to have a feeling of achievement (and not logging inn to see your belongings decayed to nothing) you would be better off with more casual friendly games that are not that crazy on the time required to play the game properly.
Firstly many new things occuring on wurm at present- new website design, new client with many improved features and alot of development to come in near future.
To answer the posts above though, I can't disagree it takes some effort especially in the beginning. I personally find that a reward in itself, I like going it solo and managing to overcome the difficulties, I like the necessity to improve various skills as in mine to up that skill then smith the ore to achieve objective. It does actually get easier, first hurdle is food as in real life, you dont eat you dont get far, once you get farming and cooking up everything becomes easier.
Overall though it has to be said as in the case with all things, you get out what you put in but on any time scale wurm can be fun its a mind set change that is required, it isnt meant to emulate your run of the mill mmos there is no goal no quests. You set your own goal and get personal satisfaction when you achieve that. It does give the option to go premium and wild server to face off against other players if that is what you like to do and yes there you may come upon the obstacle that many long established players have huge advantage but many wild towns take on new players and you can grow with their help, but it isnt a necessity and that is what the majority of the players love the absolute freedom to play the way you want, including adapting the ever changing , beautiful, landscape to your will.
ok i have been playing for just about as long as this version was out... i mean right after gold:) i was not very far from being the first new settler in roadside... i were there worked my ass off day in and day out... my reward at the end was a friend of mine who gave me a castle the size of the village i was working in... but i was not a prem so i could'nt repair it so i had to sell it:( and so i have buildt houses a lot of times i am a constructer.. but now recently i wa kicked out of the town because of stargate worlds:( and well... my opinion of the game is that i love it... i just hate the SKILL CAP!!!!! but everything else about this game is soooo coool:) like terraforming and well... fighting could improve but i cant complain since i am not a fighter type... but games that takes time to make beautiful that is my type of game i like sandboxes where players control everything (except other players and some miner things like weather)
but this is my kinda game... as long as food is available and water is there then i can survive a long time:P
This game definately has my attention at this time. I have opted to pay for 2 months premium ($14.00 US).
It is a tough game to play solo. It is even a tough one to play casually. I have a couple of friends and we are currently terraforming a plateau that one of them was able to wall off. We have the whole top of a hill and it is almost completely changed from its original look. There have been 5 houses built up there along with a farm. We are working on finishing touches to the place and I am working on farming and cooking.
It is tough and it is not fast... It is surely a great change of pace and interesting in its openness. You have more freedom than in ANY other game I have played. Yes, there are some players who have been around forever and have lots of skills and stuff. I found a good numbr of them extremely helpfuill and ready to offer ideas on getting started. Of course this is not on the wild server.
People come and go in this game all the time. With the free to play times there are lots of places where people start things and leave. So it is kinda fun to find all of the abandoned things lying around.
If I were trying to introduce you to a Blind Date I would describe it as .... The game has lots of character and a great personality.
Say hello, To the things you've left behind. They are more a part of your life now that you can't touch them.
Glad to see new players having a real go at this game and enjoying a real challenge. Personally I just got my permanent home built just to discover a goblin mound has appeared in my backyard....
i began this game long time ago right after the last version of it... first when i tried it i didnt understand a thing... then before i knew it i had a village and friends and worked hard... then my computer crashed:P when i got back in i was like WOOOW how much this village had grown... and it is still active today:D one of the few villages that are THIS old... that is still active... my village was ROADSIDE VILLAGE
but if i were to recommend it ofcourse i would... even though i stopped playing now (too booring if you play it as much as i have done and thats like from 4-5 hours EVERY DAY and thats kinda much so i suggest you keep it to max 2 hours:)
Lol, ima little burnt out as well, me and the village i founded got in a little... "disagreement" with the mayor of Roadside, got GM involved, we are waiting on their response. apparently, the mayor of mighty Roadside is a little upset that his-excellency has to wait one second for the gate we put up,to protect from troll attacks, to open. apparently, they use the road very frequently, and we are stopping their flow... Roadside... the gate has been there for 2 weeks, and the fillage a month... if we hinder your flow you kinda missed the boat on haveing us move...
if ignorance is bliss then may all happiness be doomed
i cant say anything for defence... i dont remember many roads we used frequently except the highway and the desert and 1 more way... dunno whats special there... but alot of member housings:? whait there is one more way... but that was used very little and there was a village somewhere there. dont remember name... actually the mayor are controlled by the council. so there are multiple member so behavior change may occur
ok... i dont remember names around so i dunno where it can be... but i am VERY familliar with the surroundings as i have had my time in roadside... but if it has a certain distance from roadside dont ask me i dont know anything 200 tiles on the other side of the tower:P
Other than a Rock Mine Door and chain jacket and pants I haven't ran across anything that I've wanted to make that I couldn't. Sure it probably took me about 2 hours to get a huge Axe made after failing so many times but I did it.
Also a fishing rod will solve all your eating problems. You don't even have to cook fish you can just catch some and then when you get messages like you're too hungry to mine or whatever you can eat a raw fish up to about 16% or 20% or enough to continue mining anyway. I still can't make very good meals but I'm getting there, so I'm still walking around with barrels of stew and goulasch instead of meals.
However the last 3 hours I played last night were foraging for healing covers and my severe wound is still severe so I imagine tonight will be another 2-3 hours of foraging for healing covers which sucks.
All I really wanted to say though is that a fishing rod makes the game much much easier. I had to buy the string from a vendor because I have never managed to botanize cotton. Actually I bought 6 strings and managed to get 3 fishing rods out of it, but my carpentry was about 22 since I spent most of my time making mine supports before I left the village to strike out on my own.
Which Final Fantasy Character Are You?
if I were to kill a titan tomorrow and no CCP employees showed up to say grats I would petition it.
Waiting for: the next MMO that lets me make this macro
if hp < 30 then CastSpell("heal") SpellTargetUnit("player") else CastSpell("smite") end
you know noobs quit because they never figure out you could eat and die's of starvation over and over again... i have seen to many noobs doing that... if people would be kind enough to teach them how to eat then they may actually continiue the gameXD well if every single one of the noobs had fishing rod the player problem wont be anymore most probably the servers will get filledXD
You can not die of starvation, it will just make stamina regeneration really slow.
Food can be a problem for newcommers, yes. But if you ask in the global chat you will most often get some meals.
how long have you played again?
That new change where some aminals can bash walls sucks. I had a lava fiend locked up cause I can't fight him and then he broke loose and killed me and I didn't make it to the water in time, so now I have to walk back from Alchemist Bay to the eastern edge of MR Home, screw that. I don't feel like RMT'ing a new village or building a guard tower anyway in order to protect myself, fencing up baddies was my best option. I was getting kind of bored anyway after making a ramp from the top of a mountain all the way down to the water made me feel like wurm life was complete when I finished it.
Which Final Fantasy Character Are You?
if I were to kill a titan tomorrow and no CCP employees showed up to say grats I would petition it.
Waiting for: the next MMO that lets me make this macro
if hp < 30 then CastSpell("heal") SpellTargetUnit("player") else CastSpell("smite") end