Wurm Online
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Wurm Online | |
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| Developer(s) | Mojang Specifications, Sunsplash Creations |
| Designer(s) | Rolf Jansson, Markus Persson |
| Release date(s) | June 6, 2006 |
| Genre(s) | MMORPG, MMOFS |
| Mode(s) | Multiplayer |
| Platform(s) | Java |
| Media | Online Distribution |
| System requirements | Java (1.4.2_06 or later), Java Web Start, 512MB of RAM (1024MB recommended), 1Ghz CPU or higher, Graphics card with 32MB of Video RAM (128MB recommended) and OpenGL |
Wurm Online is a community-centric fantasy MMOFS developed in Java and OpenGL that strives to emulate real life in a fantasy medieval setting.
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[edit] Gameplay
Players start out in Newtown on an island full of forests, lakes and mountains. The players can create buildings, towns and items of the world. Wurm Online features a fully deformable landscape. Trees can be cut and planted, dirt can be moved to create pits and hills, and rock faces can be mined to create underground caverns or tunnels. Wurm Online has neither classes, levels nor hit points. Instead, characters have a set of skills that define them, and a list of any unhealed wounds they have.
Wurm Online can be difficult to play on your own, so players tend to gather together and form villages and towns. Players are able to purchase village and homestead deeds with in-game money. Deeded towns provide NPC guards to protect against wild animals and other players. The people and items inside the village remain safe unless the guards are killed. Outside the towns, however, they can do anything they want, but performing illegal activities will lower their status in the nearby villages.
There are two types of servers in Wurm Online. The Home server consists of a single kingdom where PVP and theft is limited, but not completely disallowed. On the Wild server, the two different kingdoms (eventually three) are at war with each other and are able to fight and raid each others towns. There are currently 2 servers, one home and one wild. Each server contains 256 square kilometers of land.
New players start out in Newtown on the Home server. From there, they can spread out and create their own place or join an existing town. It is difficult for new players to know what to do because there is no in-game tutorial although extensive information is available through the player-maintained Wiki.
Almost all items and structures are player made from raw materials gathered or extracted from the surrounding nature or creatures. Every item has weight, damage, quality level, size, temperature, possible enchantments, and a custom description. While it is quite easy to create a low quality version of most items, it takes more time, resource and tools to improve the quality of the item to make it truly powerful. Skills are improved faster by improving items other than by initially creating them to discourage the mass production of items for skill.
[edit] Graphics
Wurm Online is developed in OpenGL and can be rendered using either JOGL or LWJGL. While the game has some advanced terrain, sky, and weather effects, it lacks animations for the player and creature models. The JOGL renderer for the game does not work very well with many ATI video cards, but works better if the LWJGL renderer is used.
[edit] Development history
Wurm Online has been in development since mid 2003. It has a small team of developers all of whom work part time on the project. The game was in open Beta for several years before it officially went gold on June 6, 2006. There are both premium accounts and basic accounts. Basic accounts have a skill cap and are limited to what servers they can travel to. Premium accounts cost 5€ (approximately $6.48 USD) a month and in-game money can be purchased (but not sold back) at 1€ (approximately $1.29 USD) for 1 silver coin.
[edit] Problems
- Graphics - The game has a very long view distance and potentially allows large amounts of grass and trees to be visible. Running the game at "over-kill" settings can require a high end graphics card. The dense forests can make it difficult to see landmarks. There are highly customizable settings that allow the player to set their desired graphics. On most computers graphics are not a problem, but can make for tremendous lag in some areas.
- Crafting System - The game has a steep learning curve because of its complex crafting system. For example to make a sword, players have to go through a long process. They must create a mine, locate and then mine the required ore (the types include iron, silver, gold, etc.), make a fire, put the iron ore on the fire, create a mallet by cutting logs for a shaft and wooden head, use the mallet to create a metal head, use the metal head and a wooden shaft to create a hammer, make a small anvil, make the sword blade, and finally attach it to a shaft. It is possible to fail at most steps, causing the character to lose all components involved in the process of making it. In the very beginning, it usually takes 3-6 tries per step just to make some items.
- Lack of In-Game Tutorial(s) - When joining the game, players have the game's 'Wurmpedia' and the global chat to guide them. The community is extremely helpful, but most people have absolutely no idea what to do when they get into the game, thus they end up leaving it. A wealth of information can be found in the game's own wiki however.
- Inconsistent rules - In a sandbox type game as Wurm, there is quite a big debate on what should be allowed on the home server. PVP and theft are technically not allowed on the home server, but the enforcement of the rules is done by the GMs, not by the game engine. This has caused many debates and arguments about unclear or unenforced rules. Even on the wild server, the PVP server, there have been complaints about inconsistent rules.
