Wurm Online – Please Do Better

I love creator programs, and I think they’re a wonderful way to foster community – if done properly. Here’s an example of one I applied to back in November 2023 that I think could use a lot more work to foster that community and communication between game / players. If you’ve been reading the site for any length of time, you know I’ve spent years (10+) posting about Wurm Online and how amazing the game is. Unfortunately, they don’t treat people very nicely unless you’re part of the elite few and belong to the inner circle (names and addresses blocked for security reasons of course).

Now, maybe I never had a snowballs chance in hell – and that’s OK, but at least have the decency to follow up with people who are promoting your game (for free), who took time to reach out for a program that was advertised for applicants, and let them know that they’re not important enough to qualify.

Since then I’ve stopped writing about Wurm Online. The game may be one of my favourite, but they treat their players horribly, and I deserved better than that, as a player, and a content creator.

Wurm Online – Node Update

When it was first announced that the way botanizing & gathering on tiles would be changing, I was a little reluctant to get excited. I decided to play it safe and just approach it with a ‘let’s wait and see’ approach, and I’m so glad that I did.

Normally characters would run around, right click and interact with a tile, and you’d botanize or gather on that tile with no real visual indication on if you’d receive anything, and it felt like a lot of RNG. With this latest change, players will be able to SEE if the tile contains a node you can harvest, and then the amount of items harvested, quality, and specific items, are skill based.

I love it. I love being able to visualize what’s being harvested, and being able to head directly to the area I want instead of trying every single tile where I might not get anything at all.

After a few minutes of running around, I had a good selection of harvested items. It doesn’t feel too underwhelming, and while the items I harvested were nothing exciting, my skills are also not that great, so it felt on par as far as balance goes. This gives me a renewed reason to wander around exploring and harvesting the bits and bobs that I can SEE instead of passing them all by. Maybe you can teach an old dog new tricks after all.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Archaeology in Wurm Online

The goal for this week in Wurm Online is pretty simple – I have 1400 archaeology fragments that need to be identified. Identification has two steps, the first step uses a stone chisel, and then you need a metal brush. I want to get all 1400 on the metal brush stage. I have 300/1400 done at the time of this post. It will take some time, each action in Wurm takes a bit, but I’m hoping by the end of the week I can complete the first step of the task – then next week I can complete the second step of the task (completing identification by using the metal brush) and then I can finally put all of the pieces together.

Right now I have 61.51 skill in archaeology, and 61.52 skill in restoration. I’m not using sleep bonus or buffs for this first step, but I will for the subsequent steps. I’m hoping this will inch me closer to 80, but we all know that Wurm Online is a pretty slow moving game on the best of days.

The fragments themselves came from an explorer who was mapping out the island I live on. They had no use for them as they don’t really do archaeology itself, so they scattered the bits all over the place and I would go around each day collecting them. Hopefully I get a few neat bits and bobs out of it in the end, even a statue or two completed would be nice.

As always, happy gaming – no matter where you find yourself!

Games – What’s Going on in August

Despite what the past week or so has shown, I DO tend to write about video games here, so let’s do a little update on that.

World of Warcraft – I’m “playing” but not really. I haven’t kept up with content or story, instead I do some pet battles and marketing bits. As much as I love World of Warcraft, and I do, the game is old and it shows. It’s comfortable, but there’s nothing innovative and I always get a little bored mid way through expansions. It happened with Shadowlands and I’m not exactly surprised that it’s happening in Dragonflight either. Don’t get me wrong, I think DF is an amazing expansion (compared to previous ones) and I’ve had a lot of fun, but it doesn’t seem to last.

Wurm Online / Wurm Unlimited – I’ve been cautious about playing much WO because I’m not exactly convinced that the ‘new’ CEO won’t completely change the game that I love and adore, so to scratch some of those WO itches I’ve been playing a bit of WU, where the Sklotopolis server is my home and I have a small deed there I’ve been working on. WO has done some great QoL changes over the years that I really wish WU would be able to pick up on, but the Sklotopolis server developers have done well given their restrictions. They can only do server side changes with the way things currently are.

FFXIV – My husband returned to this game sort of out of the blue, because two of his RL friends are playing. I decided why not, and my little bard is mid-way through Endwalker and level 86. Most of my time is still spent crafting and harvesting, but the game is lovely. I’d like to get more into housing (so far I only have an apartment) and I’m learning the markets. Having 40(60) sale slots has been an interesting restriction that I’ve been having fun working around/with.

Baldur’s Gate 3 – Like a lot of others, I picked it up just before release and then held off playing so that progression wouldn’t have to start over. I have a 4 person campaign with some friends, and a 2 person campaign with my husband. I’ve been having an absolute blast, and while I know there are some issues that hardcore D&D players take issue with, I’ve just been relaxing and enjoying the narrative. Combat did take some getting used to, but now that we’re no longer in the tutorial and we’ve been adventuring together for a bit, it’s much more fluid. I play a wood elf druid in my group campaign, and a human paladin with my husband. Probably one of my favourite games this year.

Cook Serve Delicious 3 – When I don’t want to be around people this is the game I head to. I enjoyed the previous two versions of the game, and the third one follows a pretty dark apocalyptical timeline that I wasn’t expecting, but still enjoy. I appreciate that they have a ‘chill’ mode, and it’s just been a great little game to escape to.

School (and thus homeschool) will be picking back up in September, and this time I’ll have my 7 year old son and my 5 year old daughter so spare time (and thus gaming time) will go down as I do lesson plans and all that other fun stuff. I’m also trying to dedicate a bit of free time to hobbies, so games that I can get into (and out of) quickly are usually the winners. Baldur’s Gate 3 is (right now) Tuesday / Friday nights for 2h, and everything else I just sort of rotate around. Hopefully I can continue to balance it all, but we shall see. Life doesn’t always listen to me when I ask things to go a certain way.

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

The Demise of Wurm Online?

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.