Not to get too philosophical here or anything, but when people say that ‘Wurm is different’, maybe they are referring to Wurm’s soul. I know this sounds like an absurd concept for what is essentially just a video game, but hear me out.
There is, without a doubt, something that exists within Wurm which sets it apart from most other games, at least that I have played. I admit, when I found Wurm at the age of thirteen , the only gaming experience I had was in games like Runescape along with various trivial browser games, so I could never have considered myself some kind of gaming expert. Nevertheless, for the last five years Wurm really has spoiled me in terms of what I find to be standards in a game, there is simply no other.
The (very old) screenshot which caught my eye. Click the image to visit Wurm's page on Gameogre.com
The beauty of Wurm
Surely there is a reason for this. When I joined in 2005, Wurm’s beauty was, perhaps, in it’s simplicity and the huge freedom offered by the game, and the fact it was anything but trivial, which at least to me was, at that time, unprecedented. The deal clincher for me was a player’s freedom to modify the terrain, and build their own house. The fact that I was torn to pieces several times by a black wolf, and suffered a PvP death in my first 24 hours of gameplay did not phase me at all. In fact, this challenge just ignited the flame.
But the reason Wurm has a soul runs far deeper than that. Wurm is not, and I desperately hope will never be, developed by a cold corporate giant. Sure, Wurm development has been slowed due to funding restrictions which do not allow Rolf to hire his own team of server developers, but at least the Wurm community knows who is who. Take any MMO created by a larger company and I guarantee you that you will never have a conversation and actually get to know the developers, and feel like your opinion actually matters.
Truly player driven
In a sense, Wurm is mostly run by the players in terms of game play and game development. The Wild Server, for instance, has had a dynamic history and has an unpredictable future longer than both of my arms, all due to decisions made by individual players and more likely groups of players. Similarly, most of the development team joined Wurm initially as players, who later volunteered to use their talents to improve Wurm online’s future. This is the type of thing you just don’t see in most games.
Perhaps Wurm’s soul could derive from the fact that it displays perhaps one of humanity’s most important traits; it has flaws. While none of these are fatal in nature, there’s no avoiding the fact that in Wurm, everybody looks the same. There is basically no visual customer characterisation at all, and Wurm is not (yet) exactly renowned for it’s graphics, or being free from bugs and problems. Rather than being overly negative, this indeed provides Wurm with a very distinct and human ‘personality’.
Wurm’s character
One of the driving forces behind Wurm’s very distinctive personality is it’s tightly knit community. While it is possible to play Wurm alone, it is not advisable, and the vast majority of not all of Wurm’s greatest players are only in that position due to the support of many others, who help them to run their settlements, produce their equipment, or fight alongside them on the battlefield. Remember; nothing in Wurm appears out of thin air. There are no equipment vendors. It is all made through hard work by you or another player.
Maybe Wurm benefits from the grounded reality that ‘life isn’t perfect’, which adds massive depth to the game. Indeed, we can quote from Wurm’s early days that it leads the world in being perhaps the first self-styled MMOFS (Massively Multiplayer Online Fantasy Simulator) or to quote from the website “an Alternate Way of Living”. In this respect, Wurm is a game which you either love or hate. You either enjoy the challenge of living in a hostile environment, spending many hours to forge your own destiny, or you simply prefer to load up a first person shooter and kill people for an hour.
By the way…
If you haven’t seen the new website design, you should really check it out. It’s awesome!
