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.