In the end, my first character became Dwayne Johnson Junior. With the epic Elder Scrolls music in background, it’s off to the prison – of course. Fortunately ZeniMax Online Studios listened to the beta-feedback which now made it possible to skip this introduction after the first visit which undeniably had become tiring after a few times.

As the usual Elder Scrolls tradition, you’re not in the prison dungeon for a long time. With the help of a blind man we manage to break out, then it’s off to Tamriel; a large and impressive world to explore. The graphical part is very impressive to me, especially given its size and how well the game flows on. But even the wide variety of landscapes makes me pleased, because if there was something that Skyrim could be criticized for, it was its somewhat monotonous terrain. Several different areas was visited during a relatively short period and then later return to it.

With my allegiance to Daggerfall Covenant, one of three different factions, I begin my adventure for real when I reach its capital Wayrest located in a lush green landscape with many hills and trees. The other factions are; Aldmeri Dominion, whose members will find themselves in deep forests, and Ebonheart Pact, whose country stretches over for instance Skyrim and Morrowind. And in the middle of Tamriel, Cyrodiil – a gigantic province for proper fights between the three factions.

If you have played The Elder Scrolls V, you will feel at home in The Elder Scrolls Online. With the help of established game mechanics from Bethesda’s popular role playing game Skyrim, ZeniMax Online managed to create a unique MMO and the result is a healthy and necessary change. For some years now, role-playing games have put some more weight on the skills with a dynamic gameplay, a trend that The Elder Scrolls Online continues. It calls for active blocking, the interruption of the opponent’s special attacks and somersaults to avoid injury.

The Elder Scrolls Online deserves much praise for its combat system, which is well done and entertaining, even several hours into the game. Unfortunately, it feels more like a classic online role-playing game than I had hoped for – projectiles are a little too homing and regularly ignores blocking terrains and hits me against all logic. I have also experienced times where my attacks are not met, even though they should.

With this modernization, there are also reforms in both character levels and missions systems of Lutheran proportions. Since ages now, online role-playing games have stuck to steep experience curves and chores with repetition as keyword, something that has given this genre a bit boring reputation. Newer online role-playing has been pretty good to introduce variety and the latest one to join them is The Elder Scrolls Online, that’s serving a large plate of mixed tasks and data that would get the food pyramid to turn green with envy.

Obviously, good old favorites are returning where a specific number of something is to be collected or killed, but these are clearly in the minority. First of all the missions are handed out relevant and doesn’t make you wonder why the client didn’t do them himself. We all know these lazy missions where someone asks someone else to slay five hamsters that are a couple of meters away, while the task giver just relaxes and watches. No – instead I help Captain Farlivere to rescue hostages from bandits or evacuate residents from a burning village, just like it should be.

What defines a MMO for many is its repetition when it comes to advancing in levels. This so-called grinding is something that many developers of various kinds have tried to get rid of. In some games, the experience curve is straight (instead of the usual steep hill which build up to the Mount Everest), while other games have simply tried to hide or downright escape character levels.

The Elder Scrolls Online uses Skyrim’s proven model The Elder Scrolls Online uses Skyrim’s proven model in related skills and allow unlocking of other skills. Each weapon type has five active skills and two passives to unlock, these can also be modified subsequently to fulfill various tasks. Then there are about 30 skills for each of the four classes and four passives for each race.

Personally, I complement my rock hard visage with a two-handed weapon – beard and big sword is a decent combination. The general level plays a minor role, the skills that are unlocked determine what role you fulfill, no matter what you start as, so that you can shine with all kinds of weapons. It is irrelevant if you are a Templar or the Nightblade.

That all races and classes can implement such a nuanced way of playing, The Elder Scrolls Online misses the wide range of classes at the beginning of the game like many other competitors boasts with. My sorcerer can carry the same heavy armor as my Dragonknight and it’s the same with their weapons. If I want to walk around with a useless stick, it’s completely up to me. Of course, race-and class-specific skills cannot be ignored. If you want to fiddle with magic, the Sorcerer class is to prefer, but The Elder Scrolls Online has the potential for exciting combinations.

Whether The Elder Scrolls Online is worth the monthly fee is a question that is left unanswered, the future is something that I do not have insight in. Before the game was released it was declared as a flop from many places online that just seems to believe in the widespread free model. But you must not forget that The Elder Scrolls Online is an online role-playing of very good quality that doesn’t mimic the Titans, but instead leans against the acclaimed Skyrim. The result is an online role-playing game of top class, which can be enjoyed either as a group or on your own. Now just to see if The Elder Scrolls Online gets the audience it deserves.

If you are looking for a new online role playing game, The Elder Scrolls Online is an excellent alternative. Tamriel is a huge and vibrant world with a background story that surpasses most in the industry. This is packed with engaging missions thanks to a skillful pen and relevant objectives and the battles are exciting and challenging, thanks to skilled gameplay. The Elder Scrolls Online is a successful recipe.

You can begin playing Wurm by creating an account on their website. When you launch Wurm you will start in an enclosed area where you are taught various controls and maneuvers to traverse and survive in the vast world. You can expect to finish the tutorial in about 10 minutes, after that you are let loose to roam the starter server or leave to the mainland of Freedom Isles. Once at the Freedom Isles the sky is the limit as long as you don’t fall off of a cliff or drown.

Once you’ve played around a bit you will notice the almost overwhelming amount of tabs, bars, and options, this is where the enormous learning curve begins. Seriously, there is a lot of info to cover. But all you have to worry about are those three bars in the top left, those are your food, health, stamina, and water bars which is why this game is about survival (Note: you can’t actually die from starvation).

The community of Wurm is, for the most part, a helpful pack of people, HOWEVER there are many thieves, and greifers out there which you will have to worry about once you own a few items worthy of snatching. You interact with people by chatting, trading, fighting, and building. A downside to the community is that there seems to be a lot of xenophobic people who don’t like you getting near their plot of land (which is understandable with the thieves), expect to be asked to move if you try to build too close to another person’s property (less than 11 tiles usually), however, the map is nearly 15 square kilometers so just find another place or try to find a town to live in.

One thing you will definitely notice about Wurm gameplay is the lack of motion…THERE AREN’T MANY ANIMATIONS. There are basics one for walking, fighting, taking, etc. but other than that the characters walk like they’ve got brooms up their bums, doors magically fly open for them, towns are built without a single bent back and it all takes away from the immersion.

On the other side of visuals, the lands of Wurm (even on low settings) can be pretty damn pretty. A large variation of trees sway in the wind, distant mountains loom over you, towns and other structures seamlessly and naturally blend into the environment. Many animals move across the lands randomly. A full weather and time system. Well hell, even the stars in the night sky are purdy.

The interface of Wurm is a generic “point-click” type, usually to craft an item you double click to activate one material and right click another to access the crafting options. Crafting is based on a percent chance of successfully creating or failing at crafting, you skill in that category of craft will increase your chances of success. Sometimes the suspense of seeing if you’re going to successfully create something is nice, and sometimes you want to rip your eyes out when you fail.

Some more things I do LIKE about this game:

-I love the challenge it offers. This game is often times difficult and time consuming but eventually you are rewarded with a feeling of accomplishment when you finally make that pinewood spindle or that clay bowl.

-I love the setting. Everything you make is primitive which helps to immerse you in the world which, to me, is something like 14th century Europe.

-I like the freedom of being able to, at any time, ANYWHERE (with a few exceptions such as water and cliffs), construct any of the large variety of buildings or items.

-I like deformable terrain, dig (or mine) to the center of the earth.

Some things I DISLIKE

-I HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE the time-consuming nature of Wurm, this is a big thing about this game. If you don’t have at least a few hours of leisure time a week just forget it because this game is a TIME DRAIN. For example, building a house, you want to make a 2×2 tile large house, well you need a hammer, at least 8 nails, and 160 planks, THAT MEANS you have to mine the ore for iron, cut the trees for wood, make the iron into nails, make the wood into planks, make a hammer, and begin to construct. That doesn’t seem like a lot but when you’ve got to wait 20 seconds between each action plus failing 30-40% of the time you’re looking at days.

-I don’t like the fact that this game has been around for around 8 years and still lacks models for some items.

-I don’t like decay however necessary it may be.

-I don’t like the low-poly count on some of the items but I guess that’s best for optimization.

-I don’t like being eaten, falling off cliffs, drowning, being caved-in on, bleeding out, or incinerated in lava but I do it all anyway.

In conclusion, Wurm is a great experience with rich detail and a fun community and whether you just try it out or stay forever. Just make sure you’re prepared to spend a lot of time on some things. This game gets 8 guys falling off a mountain-cliff out of 10.

Firstly, Gameplay: 10/10
While technically, while I was endlessly cooking and chopping wood, I was grinding, there was something strangely satisfying about it. Also, my goal was clear while I was working. I wanted a house. Granted, I never achieved it, but having a goal ahead of me made it all the more worthwhile.
But the thing I like most about the gameplay is how open the world is. You can tunnel anywhere, go anywhere, cook anywhere. Except just like the real world, there are common rules in place to stop people abusing the openness. Just like how people can’t steal in real life, if you go and steal in this game, people are going to come after you. This is what makes this game special. You’re not actually BOUND from doing anything, rather, you’re allowed to do almost ANYTHING, except that to maintain society, you probably wouldn’t do illegal things.
The community of this game is great, as a result of this. And it’s by banding together, combined with the openness of this game, that could potentially (I haven’t experienced this for myself) lead to some incredibly fun gameplay.
Finally, if you do build your own house, or if you go further, I imagine it’ll feel like a great achievement, and you will want to protect that property of yours. Again, another powerful element of this game.
The only problem is that this game has a steep learning curve. Also, when you start out, it could be very difficult to even survive because your skills start out really low compared to what you would really need, and it’s really hard to even get food (which is needed to stop yourself starving, which while not killing you, will significantly reduce the speed of the things you do), and even harder to get money. The community will teach you things, but in the end, starting out in this game is very difficult, and you will struggle. However, I believe this niggle is unimportant faced with the advantages of this game’s gameplay.

Graphics and Sound: 2/10
I’m going to be honest here. The graphics aren’t very good at all. I turned it down to the lowest settings, because my computer is crap and slowed down at anything else. But still, the character models and even the creatures aren’t very pretty at all.
I appreciate that gameplay is much more important than graphics, but the graphics of this game at least weren’t very good.
As for the sound, they sounded average. Nothing special really.

Replay Value: 9/10
This really depends on whether you like the game’s style of play, and whether you can get over that immediate hurdle at the game’s start. However, if you can, and you enjoy the game’s style (which I personally do), then you will come back to this game over and over.

Environment: 10/10
While the graphics are rubbish, you do get the feeling that this world is ‘real’. The game has a realism that isn’t present in many other games, which is in part thanks to the difficulty level of this game. There are many mechanics in this game to make the world feel real, such as slowing down when not on roads, and on top of that, most of the property is owned by other people, and that makes the world feel real, and alive.

Conclusion: 9/10
I would really like to give this game a 10/10, because that’s what I feel it deserves. However, I haven’t got onto the later islands, or even very far at the start. Therefore, I haven’t experienced the problems that some people mention below. That is why I’m rating it a bit lower than perfect.
I do feel this game is a very good project though, and a stand-out from the many boringly stale MMOs out there right now. I would recommend trying this game out at least before you rate it.

I give a rating of 2 for the following reasons.

I concur with a couple other reviewers that it is ridiculous to put this much effort into a game and to give every single PC avatar the exact same 2 faces (depending on male or female). I am a Java 3D developer, and totally static (non-morphing), low-res humanoid models like Wurm uses take very little effort to create.

I emphatically concur with some other reviewers that there are some serious bugs that effect non-afiliated players (i.e. players who are not also GameMasters or developers), and, as it doesn’t effect their own game play, they really don’t give a fXXX. They concede that these bugs are fatal to game-play for the many people who complain, but they just don’t give a fXXX. As noted elsewhere, if some noob harvests a GM character’s fruit tree or something– watch out, the apocalypse is here!

Finally, whereas I am of the type who would willingly, and in fact have, contributed many hours to building my character up; terrible game balance regularly eliminate the fruits of months of online work. It is VERY EASY to get killed by super-strong monsters randomly spawning where you can not escape them. If you try to run and get killed in the woods, you can easily lose hundreds of hours of belongings because you can’t re-find the corpse before the allowed timespan expires. If you join a community, you will mostly need to beg rude privileged players for the privilege of being allowed to get the resources needed so you can invest continual hours of work to just keep your own house secure and maintained.

But,

I am very glad I made it through the first few days. This is the kind of game that makes me wish I had millions of dollars to spare. I would approach these guys and beg them to use this game’s core to create the most in-depth mmo in the world. And that satisfaction that it existed in the mainstream would be all the return on investment I would need for my money.

If you enjoy being able to do more of what you want to do then you need to try and learn this game.

Want to hollow out a mountain as your base of opperations for your solo raids into nearby villages? Do it.

Want to band up with a community to undertake massive structural projects? Do it.

Want to infiltrate an organization, collect information about it and then organize a war against them? Yea..that’s right…do it.

This game takes character diversity to a new level and with the support of more players I’m confident that Rolf would run with the opportunity and just keep making things better.

You can call this game crap if you want, but it would only display you inability to learn how to play a new game. If you had taken the time to learn it you would have to concede that it allows you to do more than any other MMO in existance. As a beta researcher I can almost guarantee it allows you to do more than any game currently in production too.

It’s not the prettiest or most user friendly game out there. So if your looking for flashy and trendy the go elsewhere. If your looking for quality and depth then stop at this game. You found it.

Gameplay 9/10
Very cool, you can do basicly anything you want. Farm, blacksmith, fish, pottery, mine, cook, and the coolest concept of this game is the “terraform” ability to change the terrain….you could move a moutain if you got enough people with shovels XD

missions N/A

Community 10/10
Everone is nice and willing to help ( Un-like runescape where everyone is running around screaming NOOB! NOOB! YOU SUCK NOOB!)

Population 10/10
The most people i have ever seen online is 150 on the Jenn-Kellon server, so you could build a house basicly anywhere.(i hate overcrowded games) Oh yeah, there are no NPCs so almost every town in the game was built by people from the reasorces around them

Overal-9/10
GIVE IT A TRY, i know you will like it =D
My name is Alucard and i llive north of White Hill

You make a little settlement and spend your time gathering resources to make items, which will improve your skills, which in turn allows you to make more powerful items. Everything in the game is made by players, there are no NPC towns, all towns (even the beginner town) are built and run by players. There are very few NPC’s in the game.

Because the game is rather time consuming, it’s important that you join with a bunch of friends, or join an existing village/community. The game is very complex and has a steep learning curve, so it’s very hard to try and figure out everything by yourself.

Perhaps the best thing about Wurm Online is it’s completely deformable terrain. When you dig somewhere, you actually change the terrain and make a small hole. If you mine into a mountain, you will start creating tunnels, and you can eventually create massive mines. Players really have that much of an impact on the terrain.

When you play the game, you have the option of being a basic or a premium player. Premium players can train their skills much higher than a basic player, but they will have to pay a monthly fee of 5 euros per month. Basic player characters are still free and allow you to do almost everything, however you will not be able to play on all servers.

I suggest you try it out, but remember, you will have the most fun if you play this game with friends rather than by yourself.

So come and take a look at wurm, playing it 16 months now and i love it. Its something different from all the monster killing MMORPGs out there.

Wurm Online uses very advanced technology that I will not even try to understand, but you will find out about it all on the game website under “The Game” page.

The Wurm Online community is a very positive and friendly group of people. There are no particularly hated members. All members of the same kingdoms try to help one another. It is not, however, rare for people of opposite kingdoms to aid each other also. Usually those types of things end up in a mess.

Fighting is part of everyday life in Wurm. You need good fighting skills if you want to be properly defended and safe while exploring the forests alone, or travelling. On the home server the worst thing that could happen is that you are attacked by a very strong creature while walking along in the forest. On the Wild Server, walking through the forest alone is even more risky because you run the risk of walking into an enemy town, where you are very likely to be hunted down by human opponents. On the Wild server, opposite kingdoms raiding each other is part of everyday life, so you can expect to log off one night with lots of upkeep in the town, then log in the next with your towns upkeep drained and your town in a complete and utter mess. This type of devastation, though, is very rare.

Wurm online has no levelling treadmill. Players just gain skills in certain areas and this makes them better at the skill so they can craft higher quality items with a higher chance of success. There is also no traditional hit points system either (although you can now see what percentage health you have left), players get wounds that either can be healed by applying a healing cover, rags or being healed by a Fo priest. Wounds which are not very serious heal up over time, whereas bad wounds that are very serious continue to get worse if not healed or bandaged up. Another great thing is that if a player hits you in the legs or feet, your character tends to slow down while walking, and so cannot get away as fast. Head wounds affect the player more that a hit to the arm, for example.

Players can take on many roles in the game ranging from primary to secondary and tertiary industry. If you aspire to be a restaurant owner, you can train up your cooking skills, build a suitable sized house and name it “playername’s Restaurant” or something similar. Some players even decide to take on multiple roles in a town or village. Players that live a lonely life as hermits tend to be good in every skill, as they are independent, and do not rely on other players for much help.

Wurm Online has many skills and sub-skills. The three main skills that are used to get raw materials are Digging, Mining and Woodcutting. These are essentially the main things that you need to be able to do any constructions or make tools and most items. Farming, fighting and Nature related skills are useful to have if you want to be a cook. The smith skill is probably the skill that has most sub-skills below it, for instance there is Armoursmithing, Weaponsmithing, Locksmithing, Jewellery smithing and many others. Under these are even more sub skills which really gives you plenty of choice in what to do. You do not go out one day and say, “I am going to become a smith” because there are simply so many sub-skills to do with smithing you cant do every one and excel at it.

The only part of the world developers make is the base terrain, and trees which are there at the start of the game (I don’t mean models and coding, the developers obviously do that also). The rest is entirely player made. You can even activate a shovel and manipulate the terrain yourself. Any changes you make will be there forever unless another player decides to change what you have done. Trees in Wurm online age, and start off small, then they grow bigger until they reach a suitable size to be cut down which may take several days. Once a tree is cut down by a player, that tree will not grow back or respawn. Players may craft and use sickles to collect tree sprouts in order to plant new trees, although trees can automatically drop and plant their own sprouts without player intervention.

The Wurm Online terrain is vast, around 16km x 16km. It is split into tiles, which enables many things, for instance the manipulation of terrain. There are millions of these tiles. There is a large amount of tile types which players can use for certain activities. For instance you can make a field on a flat dirt tile, but not on others such as cobblestone or sand.

Another distinguishing factor about Wurm is the quality system in place. Every item has a quality. Some items can even have the quality raised by improving them. Though a player can only improve an item just above the skill needed to improve that item, for example, a stone wall needs good masonry skill to be improved, whereas a cart would need a player with good fine carpentry to be improved. All items that undergo improvement need certain tools for it to be done, plus some high quality raw material the item was made from. For example, you need a glowing hot iron lump to improve an iron chain gauntlet, and you need the necessary armour smith skill and tools to do so. Raw materials such as Wood, Stone and Organic items cannot be improved, but you can improve your chances of harvesting a higher quality raw material by training your skill in that area. Higher quality items are better than lower quality ones because firstly you have higher success rates using them and they decay slower. Higher quality items are also much more valuable than lower quality items.

The Wurm Online experience can be greatly enhanced by the huge amount of PvP action which goes on in the Wild Server. To get to the Wild Server you must be a premium account owner. Premium accounts are quite cheap at 5 Euros per month. Also, you can buy silver coins at 1 Euro each, but the minimum purchase is 10 Silver coins or 5 silver coins and 1 month of premium time. PvP makes up a large part of Wurm Online. Basically there are four gods, three are White lighter Gods and one is a Black lighter (Horde of the Summoned) god. When players get to the wild server they have the option of travelling to the Bone Altar to convert to a follower of Libila (Black light god) or to the Altar of Three to convert to either Fo, Magrannon or Vynora (White light gods). Each god has different advantages and spells. White Light gods usually have spells that are good for the White Light side. Black light spells are mostly all spells that are used in fighting and destroying White Light followers.

Another important part of the game is Towns, Villages and Homesteads. You can buy them from traders and cost from as little as 5 silver coins for a size 5 homestead up to over 400 gold coins for a very large town. When you buy a town you get a deed. You must then go and find a suitable location to set up your town and plant the deed, but deeds can only be planted on territory of your kingdom. This is not a problem on the home server. On the wild server a tower must be built to expand your kingdoms influence, if the place you are going to set up in is not already controlled by your kingdom. Once you own a town, you can invite citizens to the village and pay upkeep to the village so that you can get NPC guards to protect your land from human and other NPC intruders. Villages have to be placed 100 tiles apart and homesteads 20.

Almost everything in Wurm can be accomplished by equipping a tool then right clicking the item you want to do something with and selecting what you want to do from the menu which comes up. This makes things a lot easier and more convenient for the player. Equipping items is very easy, you just hit F3 to see your inventory, and then you double click the item you wish to equip. To wield an item for fighting you drag it to your body which is also above your inventory in the same window.

Wurm online has a large number of animals, ranging from the very weak animals to the strongest animals. The strongest animal in the game is currently the Red Dragon. Some animals are special and can do certain things. Recently hens, roosters, chickens and eggs were implemented. Hens can lay eggs, which take a few real days to hatch. When the eggs hatch a chicken comes out, this then grows into either a rooster or a hen. This is the first sign of animal breeding implemented into the game so far, and we know many more animals will be able to at a later time. Another fairly recent implementation regarding animals was taming. This allows players to use food to tame an animal. The animal then, depending on your skill, will either obey your orders or ignore you. Once you kill an animal, you can butcher the corpse with a butchering knife for meat and other various animal parts. Every single animal can be butchered and nearly every, if not every animal has special items you can get from butchering them. These special animal items range from pelts to teeth.

Graphically, Wurm online is brilliant. Every model is made to perfection. From huge guard towers to sickles, everything is done to the best possible standard. None of it is a half hearted job. The creature models are very detailed, and the dragon models are almost jaw dropping. Currently there are very few animations in Wurm, but the developers are working hard to implement them. The new client that was implemented just before release made Wurm appear many times better because shadows were put in and generally made things look a lot more detailed and realistic.

In beta there were many sounds which could be heard while doing many activities in the game. These were of high quality, from the chirping of crickets in the night, to the sharpening of a sword. Many sounds were lost at the start of gold. However, many have since re-entered the game.

Overall I think that Wurm online has a very bright future ahead. I know for a fact that there is an incredibly long list of features that the development team is working hard to achieve feature by feature. Games like Wurm online will never be finished as long as there are players to give suggestions on improvements and desired features.

I recommend that you try the game on a basic account first, to see if it is right for you, then consider buying premium to enhance your game pleasure and experience that extra bit more. It is undoubtedly worth the 5 Euros per month.

You get a lot of freedom compared to other games, and the concept is very good.

My suggestion. Allow this game to die its already slow death. Hopefully some professionals will see it and make a REAL game out of the concepts.

I don t understand how anyone could post about the graphics being bad though. They look great unless you compare them to HL2, which is an absolutely rediculous comparison.