User talk:Lainiwakura/Wossoo Review
Wurm Online
Wurm online is a fairly new MMORPG built in Java created and developed by Mojang Specifications. It is set around about the medieval era if not before that. Wurm Online is unique and stands out clearly from other MMORPGs because of the sheer amount of interactivity the game has. You can interact with literally every single item on the game. One of the key distinguishing features of Wurm Online is the fact that you have so much freedom to do exactly what you want. There are no quests to complete or missions. You can set your own personal aims and goals, which will change over time as you complete them. Some new players’ goals could be a simple thing, such as build a small house or cut down a tree. Veteran players’ goals may be as extravagant as be the best miner on the game, or make a full set of golden armour.
Wurm Online uses very advanced technology that I will not even try to understand, but you will find out about it all on the game website under “The Game” page.
The Wurm Online community is a very positive and friendly group of people. There are no particularly hated members. All members of the same kingdoms try to help one another. It is not, however, rare for people of opposite kingdoms to aid each other also. Usually those types of things end up in a mess.
Fighting is part of everyday life in Wurm. You need good fighting skills if you want to be properly defended and safe while exploring the forests alone, or travelling. On the home server the worst thing that could happen is that you are attacked by a very strong creature while walking along in the forest. On the Wild Server, walking through the forest alone is even more risky because you run the risk of walking into an enemy town, where you are very likely to be hunted down by human opponents. On the Wild server, opposite kingdoms raiding each other is part of everyday life, so you can expect to log off one night with lots of upkeep in the town, then log in the next with your towns upkeep drained and your town in a complete and utter mess. This type of devastation, though, is very rare.
Wurm online has no levelling treadmill. Players just gain skills in certain areas and this makes them better at the skill so they can craft higher quality items with a higher chance of success. There is also no traditional hit points system either (although you can now see what percentage health you have left), players get wounds that either can be healed by applying a healing cover, rags or being healed by a Fo priest. Wounds which are not very serious heal up over time, whereas bad wounds that are very serious continue to get worse if not healed or bandaged up. Another great thing is that if a player hits you in the legs or feet, your character tends to slow down while walking, and so cannot get away as fast. Head wounds affect the player more that a hit to the arm, for example.
Players can take on many roles in the game ranging from primary to secondary and tertiary industry. If you aspire to be a restaurant owner, you can train up your cooking skills, build a suitable sized house and name it “playername’s Restaurant” or something similar. Some players even decide to take on multiple roles in a town or village. Players that live a lonely life as hermits tend to be good in every skill, as they are independent, and do not rely on other players for much help.
Wurm Online has many skills and sub-skills. The three main skills that are used to get raw materials are Digging, Mining and Woodcutting. These are essentially the main things that you need to be able to do any constructions or make tools and most items. Farming, fighting and Nature related skills are useful to have if you want to be a cook. The smith skill is probably the skill that has most sub-skills below it, for instance there is Armoursmithing, Weaponsmithing, Locksmithing, Jewellery smithing and many others. Under these are even more sub skills which really gives you plenty of choice in what to do. You do not go out one day and say, “I am going to become a smith” because there are simply so many sub-skills to do with smithing you cant do every one and excel at it.
The only part of the world developers make is the base terrain, and trees which are there at the start of the game (I don’t mean models and coding, the developers obviously do that also). The rest is entirely player made. You can even activate a shovel and manipulate the terrain yourself. Any changes you make will be there forever unless another player decides to change what you have done. Trees in Wurm online age, and start off small, then they grow bigger until they reach a suitable size to be cut down which may take several days. Once a tree is cut down by a player, that tree will not grow back or respawn. Players may craft and use sickles to collect tree sprouts in order to plant new trees, although trees can automatically drop and plant their own sprouts without player intervention.
The Wurm Online terrain is vast, around 16km x 16km. It is split into tiles, which enables many things, for instance the manipulation of terrain. There are millions of these tiles. There is a large amount of tile types which players can use for certain activities. For instance you can make a field on a flat dirt tile, but not on others such as cobblestone or sand.
Another distinguishing factor about Wurm is the quality system in place. Every item has a quality. Some items can even have the quality raised by improving them. Though a player can only improve an item just above the skill needed to improve that item, for example, a stone wall needs good masonry skill to be improved, whereas a cart would need a player with good fine carpentry to be improved. All items that undergo improvement need certain tools for it to be done, plus some high quality raw material the item was made from. For example, you need a glowing hot iron lump to improve an iron chain gauntlet, and you need the necessary armour smith skill and tools to do so. Raw materials such as Wood, Stone and Organic items cannot be improved, but you can improve your chances of harvesting a higher quality raw material by training your skill in that area. Higher quality items are better than lower quality ones because firstly you have higher success rates using them and they decay slower. Higher quality items are also much more valuable than lower quality items.
The Wurm Online experience can be greatly enhanced by the huge amount of PvP action which goes on in the Wild Server. To get to the Wild Server you must be a premium account owner. Premium accounts are quite cheap at 5 Euros per month. Also, you can buy silver coins at 1 Euro each, but the minimum purchase is 10 Silver coins or 5 silver coins and 1 month of premium time. PvP makes up a large part of Wurm Online. Basically there are four gods, three are White lighter Gods and one is a Black lighter (Horde of the Summoned) god. When players get to the wild server they have the option of travelling to the Bone Altar to convert to a follower of Libila (Black light god) or to the Altar of Three to convert to either Fo, Magrannon or Vynora (White light gods). Each god has different advantages and spells. White Light gods usually have spells that are good for the White Light side. Black light spells are mostly all spells that are used in fighting and destroying White Light followers.
Another important part of the game is Towns, Villages and Homesteads. You can buy them from traders and cost from as little as 5 silver coins for a size 5 homestead up to over 400 gold coins for a very large town. When you buy a town you get a deed. You must then go and find a suitable location to set up your town and plant the deed, but deeds can only be planted on territory of your kingdom. This is not a problem on the home server. On the wild server a tower must be built to expand your kingdoms influence, if the place you are going to set up in is not already controlled by your kingdom. Once you own a town, you can invite citizens to the village and pay upkeep to the village so that you can get NPC guards to protect your land from human and other NPC intruders. Villages have to be placed 100 tiles apart and homesteads 20.
Almost everything in Wurm can be accomplished by equipping a tool then right clicking the item you want to do something with and selecting what you want to do from the menu which comes up. This makes things a lot easier and more convenient for the player. Equipping items is very easy, you just hit F3 to see your inventory, and then you double click the item you wish to equip. To wield an item for fighting you drag it to your body which is also above your inventory in the same window.
Wurm online has a large number of animals, ranging from the very weak animals to the strongest animals. The strongest animal in the game is currently the Red Dragon. Some animals are special and can do certain things. Recently hens, roosters, chickens and eggs were implemented. Hens can lay eggs, which take a few real days to hatch. When the eggs hatch a chicken comes out, this then grows into either a rooster or a hen. This is the first sign of animal breeding implemented into the game so far, and we know many more animals will be able to at a later time. Another fairly recent implementation regarding animals was taming. This allows players to use food to tame an animal. The animal then, depending on your skill, will either obey your orders or ignore you. Once you kill an animal, you can butcher the corpse with a butchering knife for meat and other various animal parts. Every single animal can be butchered and nearly every, if not every animal has special items you can get from butchering them. These special animal items range from pelts to teeth.
Graphically, Wurm online is brilliant. Every model is made to perfection. From huge guard towers to sickles, everything is done to the best possible standard. None of it is a half hearted job. The creature models are very detailed, and the dragon models are almost jaw dropping. Currently there are very few animations in Wurm, but the developers are working hard to implement them. The new client that was implemented just before release made Wurm appear many times better because shadows were put in and generally made things look a lot more detailed and realistic.
In beta there were many sounds which could be heard while doing many activities in the game. These were of high quality, from the chirping of crickets in the night, to the sharpening of a sword. Many sounds were lost at the start of gold. However, many have since re-entered the game.
Overall I think that Wurm online has a very bright future ahead. I know for a fact that there is an incredibly long list of features that the development team is working hard to achieve feature by feature. Games like Wurm online will never be finished as long as there are players to give suggestions on improvements and desired features.
I recommend that you try the game on a basic account first, to see if it is right for you, then consider buying premium to enhance your game pleasure and experience that extra bit more. It is undoubtedly worth the 5 Euros per month.
Good Job Mojang.
By Wossoo.
24/07/2006