Roleplay Inn

(Four and a Half of Five Ales)

For those who know me or have read some of my other reviews, you might know I like challenging action oriented gameplay, and hate grinding. So with Wurm Online, the MMO I have the most fond memories of, you can expect... stale combat and the largest grind you'll ever find in any game.

So why do I love this game? Incredibly complexity and depth to the game systems. The best crafting system I've ever seen. The feel of truly being immersed into a game world. I don't really play Wurm competitively like I have many other MMOs. I play it to just exist and enjoy the world around me. And Wurm offers an amazing world to enjoy.

Innovation

(Five out of Five Ales)

While many of the features of Wurm may sound commonplace in a market filled with sandbox survival games, it's important to note that even now, Wurm is likely the truest sandbox MMO out there, and that when Wurm released in 2006, features like terraforming vegetation that spreads naturally to surrounding grass and dirt, and city building were not very common MMO features.

In fact I frequently argue that Minecraft is the father of modern sandbox games, and Wurm who's original development team included and likely inspired the head developer of Minecraft, is it's grandfather.

That right there in my opinion justifies the five out of five rating. This is a genre defining title that had wide sweeping implications on the rest of gaming. But the innovation doesn't end there.

Wurm's crafting system which I will elaborate on in far greater depth in the economy section is completely unique, and I would say amazing. Wurm's magic system brings in a lot of innovative concept by creating a low fantasy setting where even casters rely more on their skills with a sword or bow than their spells, and can manipulate the environment with the spells in ways unseen in other games such as filling caves with solid rock, making forests sprout up from saplings within minutes, or changing the land and twisting animals vile corruption of their dark god.

It's PvP servers have the best working thievery system I've yet seen with skills like lockpicking being useful but also giving people a lot of opportunity to protect themselves from it.

Cooking, once a weak spot in it's crafting system, is now a complex, unique, and interesting highlight.

Breeding is a major highlight with animals passing on positive and negative traits to successive generations, making well bred animals valuable and desirable.

It's health system is reflected by wounds which heal or grow worse depending on their severity and modifiers such as infection, with the main healing system revolving around treating wounds so they heal faster (or sometimes to slow the bleeding).

Overall if you've never played Wurm, you've never played a game quite like Wurm, and the games closest to it are likely attempting to imitate it. And for me at least, it's fun as hell.

Character Control & Combat

(Two out of Five Ales)

This is perhaps the weakest area of the game. How does this sound for an engaging combat system: Sometimes I go afk and come back to the bodies of slain enemies that attacked me while I was afk.

Yeah, it really is that bad. Combat is a combination of turn based and real time where your character takes actions in real time at fairly set intervals based on the attack speed of their weapon. Random chances happen and after they are filtered through your skills and equipment vs. the stats of your enemy blows land or miss.

You can be more effective by watching positioning, telling the game to aim at various points on the enemy etc. but, you can also just walk up to an enemy, watch your character do the fighting, and be ok.

Customization

(Four out of Five Ales)

Wurm offers very few mutually exclusive choices that determine what kind of abilities you will have. What it does offer is an astounding number of skills each of which would take an incredible amount of time to max out. So creating your character in Wurm is a function of doing things. You can't be a master of everything because you simply don't have time, and that is how you determine your "role" or "build" within Wurm Online.

The primary exceptions to this rule are priesthood and mediation. A priest chooses by becoming a priest to forgo the right to do certain action (as doing so will negatively impact their faith and ultimately cause them to lose priesthood) in exchange for the ability to cast a list of spells unique to each deity. Most players choose not to be priests on their main character but it offers a unique and engaging style of play to those that enjoy it.

Meditation is a skill available to everyone, though it takes a very long time to level it. Meditation offers various perks at different levels of your "meditation path" such as temporary damage buffs with a long cooldown or the ability to turn rock into lava. Players can choose the meditation path of love, knowledge, power, insanity, or hate and once chosen they are stuck on that path unless they choose to give up their path and start fresh on another path.

Challenge / Pacing

(Three out of Five Ales)

The main challenge of Wurm is it's complexity. There is a lot to learn, a lot of systems to take into account. If you really enjoy exploring the depth of a game you'll love that aspect of Wurm. None of the gameplay is anything I'd regard as particularly challenging though. It's more a game to sit back, relax, build that wall, polish that sword, mine that tunnel etc. Maxing a single skill is a major accomplishment and there are dozens of skills to use.

Monetization

(Three and a Half out of Five Ales)

Wurm is 8 euros a month (roughly 9 dollars) for premium. Without premium all your skills cap out at level 20 (As opposed to 100) and cannot be raised further. Characters with skills over 20 have them temporarily reduced to 20 until they are premium again, at which point their original value is restored.

Wurm also sells it's in-game currency (silver) on through its cash shop. Silver is used to buy various useful items, as well as to pay for deeds : large plots of land you can own where buildings do not decay and your belongings are protected. Players also openly exchange items and accounts for real world money, as the developers have decided to allow it.

Whether this is a bad thing or a good thing really depends on your approach to the game. If you aim to compete with others but don't want to invest money into the game, this is of course bad. But Wurm is really best approached with the mentality of "Lets do cool things and play the way I want, and do so in a game where I can trade, interact, and create alongside others." When approached with that mentality, these open exchanges of goods for money don't hurt gameplay at all, and can in fact be enhancing when you sell that boat you made in-game for the fun of it, to buy a pizza in real life.

Immersion / Artistic Appeal

(Three and a Half out of Five Ales)

Wurm was outdated graphically the day it released in 2006. It's seen a lot of visual enhancements since then, but they come at a rate slower than technology advances around it. Probably most limiting, the size of a "tile" that can be used for terraforming or building a structure has remained the same since 2006, causing major limitations in just how much you can control the minor details of the world around you in Wurm.

Outdated doesn't mean you will never stop to admire the beauty of the game from the top of a mountain, or rolling down a forest road in your wagon. Just that the beauty needs to be found in places other than how realistic the fine details on characters, terrain and models is.

The immersion is great. Things like planting a few apple trees to return a year or two later and find a forest of wild apple trees. The actual time investment that goes into crafting a quality sword. Slowing the bleeding of a wound. Wurm is a paradise for those looking to immerse themselves in a realistic and immersive game world.

Story / Lore

(Two out of Five Ales)

Why is it called Wurm Online? I've put thousands of hours into this game and I still couldn't tell you precisely what the Wurm is or why it's so central to the story that it merits calling the game "Wurm Online". What I do know is your characters are settlers from some distant land come to make a new life for themselves on the islands of Wurm. There is also a bit of history surrounding the PvP kingdoms of Jenn Kellon, Mol Rehan, and Horde of the Summoned. Overall though, the lore is pretty light, and the most important stories in the game is the stories players create through their actions.

Crafting / Economy

(Four and Half Out of Five Ales)

In choosing less than five ales, I'm declaring that crafting has never been done perfectly in any MMO I've played, because of all the games I've played Wurm does crafting the best. Most games revolve around gathering materials, and then crafting a sword, full suit of armor, battle station the size of a planet etc. in a matter of seconds once those materials have all been brought to the crafting table. A blacksmith isn't so much a blacksmith as they are a miner most likely. They'll spend 99% of their time acquiring the materials for crafting and 1% actually doing the crafting. Even games like EVE that draw out the crafting process just increase the length of the timers without increasing the amount of player involvement in crafting.

Not Wurm. In Wurm, if you are a blacksmith, you are a blacksmith. You will spend your time at the forge polishing, sharpening, tempering, hammering, and adding more high quality metal to the items you smith. Simple items can be made in minutes. Mediocre items in 20 minutes, 30 minutes or even an hour or more. Exceptional items could take days if you are really determined to make a max quality item.

I cannot describe in words how amazingly game enhancing it is to sit at a forge for hours working on a suit of armor or tools. To have that be such a valuable role that your village would supply you with the materials you need to do it.

Materials matter too. Though I have seen more depth in other games there are differences between an iron, steel, and silver sword. And reasons to make each. This gives reasons to explore and trade for materials you have trouble finding locally.

Most items can be enchanted too, with "favor" or the game's version of mana being something that regenerates slowly or requires the sacrifice of items of value to regenerate. Like items themselves enchantments have qualities and getting the right quality enchantment can be a major process that requires time and effort. There is even one weapon enchantment that is fed in power by killing enemies meaning a weapon with a max power bloodthirst enchant is fed through weeks or months of usage, giving it a bit of a history.

Stability / Performance

(Four out of Five Ales)

It's an indie game which means bugs are more prevalent. Most bugs I've encountered in recent years though have been getting stuck in a location I can't move from, or having a boat/cart get stuck. And the moderators are usually very quick to correct such issues. As far as indie games go, it's very stable.