How I became wurmian

When you don't like reality, virtual reality is good place to hide (and to spend time before enjoying dream reality at night). Some games are better than other (depending to your individual taste). I ended up spending quite a significant portion of my "free" time on Wurm Online.

You can say its Minecraft for adults (and its not that far off - Notch even worked with Rolf on it before switching to more mainstream version). Wurm is not your average MMO. Everything in it takes time and sometimes quite significant time. Its one of those survival / crafting games of old (more than 10 years now running!) in medieval times with some magic. Genre that is getting to spotlight lately.

All skills (more than 130 of them in now - see for example my current character stats) are increased with use, so no levels as in standard RPG. When you just kill what you see you only get better in killing and still don't know a thing about building houses. Skilling most skills also improve body / mind / soul statistics. Those also help you survive (for example body stamina increases your HP).

Land is divided into squares 4x4 meters and its fully modifiable by players. Nearly all you can see around is player-owned and player-made (only a few NPC in starter town are provided, the rest is just untouched nature at start).

All Wurm servers are connected now. Every one is one island in big lake (fresh water you can drink). Sailing to border will get you to other servers. Most of those servers are PvE, just a few PvP (where players can kill you or steal you things from your corpse / house / deed).

For a newbie, it takes quite some time to get its bearings and start enjoying the game. Even building the most basic house is not easy. You need to:

• find good place first (with some resources and water nearby) that is not owned by anybody (you can purchase - deed - land for in-game money)
• find / make 1 flat tile (digging must be learned on flat land first to enable you to dig in greater slopes)
• make 20 planks for each of 4 walls - you need to cut down some older trees (young trees do not give enough wood) to make logs then saw them to planks
• find iron ore (in mines or rummage around), smelt it to iron lumps, make anvil and from more lumps create large nails, 1 set for each wall
• plan your house with mallet (make one if you don't have already)
• plan your 4 walls (don't forget doors)
• attach all remaining planks to walls
• great satisfaction when you finally done that all!

And that just a start. Imagine your first 8x8 tiles 13 floors mansion finely decorated and finished after a few months of hard work. But it all gets faster and easier with higher skills, higher quality tools and materials and knowledge.

Best thing about Wurm is its community. Always some people around that help you (whats crap for them is treasure for newbies) or even invite you to their village (to get your bearings faster in safer place). And people do commend you for your achievements because they know how hard is to get there.

This game is "unlimited demo". If you do not mind, that your skills are capped to 20% (and a lot of good stuff starts above that) you can play for free as long as you want. To get higher, you must pay for premium time (see official Wurm Online Shop). I paid 3rd day I was there.

As people know that getting high quality / quantity stuff is not easy, they pay you for your work. And you can then buy (after some months getting your way around) your premium time just by in-game work.

Its now more than 5 years ago I discovered this marvel. I don't play it now continuously, but in small doses (always 1 or 2 months premium then 1 or 2 months pause) and I love it! Maybe you will like it too?

And if you want to know how I fared in Wurm, you can read it here.