July 2023

The Demise of Wurm Online?

stargrace July 27, 2023 No Comments

I’ve been away from wurm online for two entire days – and in that time period shit hit the fan. I’m still trying to figure everything out, but between the forums, and the Wurm Online discord, what I assume is that some staff were presented with options / happenings from the ‘new’ CEO / company, disagreed with what those were, and decided to take a stand and leave. An enormous number of staff have left this week, more than I’ve ever seen before in the history of Wurm Online – and that worries me. The overall health of the game worries me. As a 15+ year player I am considering that it might be time to move on before it gets bad. I’m not one to make that decision lightly.

I like Wurm for what it is now. Yes, more players would be great. Yes, it’s old, and it’s niche, but I’m happy with it (usually) and I enjoy it for what it currently is. I do not want to see it change THAT much so that it loses the soul of what I consider to be Wurm. It’s an old niche game and I am so thankful it is still around when so many others are not. I do not think it’s healthy to think it can ever be something like Valheim or similar. Most of the staff of Wurm Online (including but not limited to developers, forum moderators, discord moderators, etc) are volunteers. They do this as a passion project, and get experience. They are there because they WANT to be. It makes sense that if the future is not one that they feel the same passion about, they would leave. I wish them nothing but the best, no matter how involved they were.

I’m incredibly concerned about the future of Wurm and the direction that it is headed. I understand that a lot of players are excited about what might be and how it can potentially grow, but I personally love Wurm for what it already is. I would be incredibly sad to see it lose what makes it special.

For now, I’m not doing anything about these feelings except listening closely to the forums and discord to see where we’re headed. We haven’t been given a lot of information on the specifics as to WHY staff left (for obvious reasons people cannot talk about it or don’t want to talk about it) but I know it couldn’t have been an easy decision.

I guess we’ll just have to see.

6th Annual Friendalong

stargrace July 24, 2023 No Comments

Today is the 2nd last day of a player run event on the Pristine server called a ‘Friendalong’ it’s an impalong with games, arena fights, and of course working on skills and improving tools and items for other players. The last impalong event I went to was the Deliverance one, and this one is quite a bit different. One of the games I really thought was fun, called slap slap. Two players will strip down, turn on auto fight, and be handed some sort of fish. Then they have to dual each other, and the host will pick a body part (kept secret). First person who slaps them with the fish on that body part wins. It was cute and fun, I’d never heard of it before.

Some of the events are frustrating for me, including the main one to find tickets each day. They’re out in the bay, and you’re allowed to submit one a day to the grand prize drawing. The problem is I tend to stick close to the sermon area for folks, and I can’t see very well even with settings adjusted. I stayed all 5 days at the impalong, but only had 2 tickets for the grand prize that other people donated to me since I didn’t find any on my own. I spent about 2h looking, but eventually wandered back to the sermon area. I’ve had these ticket type events before, and my preference is the one from the Deliverance impalong where they hid riddles all over the deed on signs. You would send in your answers to an player and they’d go over their logs at the end to see how many you answered correctly, then you earned a ticket for each correct answer. I thought that was a fair way of doing it so players still interacted but didn’t have to leave the event area.

I also absolutely loved a game called find the cheese that was at the Deliverance event. I wrote about it, it was so creative and fun. I found the events at this impalong a bit lack luster and repetitive. The hosts were briefly around but then had to tend to real life – which is also why I think impalongs are best served in shorter bursts, 3 days is about max. This event is running for 6 days, with the same 6 events scheduled for each day.

There was a dragon slaying but I didn’t make it for that event, I did participate in horse racing but only the 1st place winner received anything. Lawn darts was a lot of fun to watch, but I didn’t want to risk dying. I do wish there was a bit more creativity to the events, how about a fashion show where people vote for the winners, or something involving treasure maps. I know impalongs take a LOT of time, effort, and coordination and I appreciate all the efforts that are made but I felt a bit let down.

That being said, I DID have a good time. I love visiting with everyone, but I know one of the hosts is dealing with a family medical emergency, and I’m not sure what happened to Sidereal, they insisted they’d be there but they’ve been gone for 10 days now and I’m concerned. I hope everything is OK.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.