Build With Friends, Or Not: Wurm Unlimited Released
A wee gamebaby
Craft-o-fight-a-build Wurm Online is one of the MMORPGs I've always been more interested in hearing stories from than actually playing myself. Go read Graham's heartwarming tale, perhaps, or Quinns's murdertale. On the flipside, I've heard too much griping about grinding and frustration. Well, spin-off Wurm Unlimited [official site] can change that if you want, perhaps making it the friendlier face of Wurm.
Released yesterday, Wurm Online lets folks run their own servers, whether simply to play alone or to tweak settings and make life easier for their chums.
Wurm is sorta Minecraft at a glacial pace (former Minecraft head honch Markus Persson had worked on Wurm before). You can dig, build, terraform, craft, and all that, but it's real work and effort. There are benefits to this, as Graham notes in his tale of a community coming together to raise a town. Finishing anything is a real accomplishment.
If you want to speed things up, though, Wurm Unlimited will let you do that. The options for running your own server include loads of settings to fiddle with, from skillrate gains to creature counts, as well as magical GM powers. It also opens up the possibility of modding, which players are already investigating.
Beyond that, hey, it's Wurm! If you've been curious about it, you can now poke around with more freedom. The original Wurm Online is still running, mind - its site is over here. While some worry that Unlimited will leech players away from Online and leave its world emptier and less interesting, others are happy that they'll get to be alone.
Wurm Unlimited is £20.24 on Steam right now. Developers Code Club are pointing folks towards DL Gamer, who are new to me but do offer a Steam key for only £17.99.
