I don’t know what was going on with me during the week of September 16th, but I completely missed the news about fantasy sandbox MMO Wurm Online repackaging itself as a sort of modernized Neverwinter Nights. Wurm Unlimited is not only coming to Steam on October 21st, but it’s offering up the chance for players to run their own private servers and use GM tools while customizing the experience for themselves and/or their friends.
This is basically my MMO holy grail, as I can skip life-wasting progression grinds and ruinous cash shops and get right to the roleplaying, the city building, and all the other fun virtual world stuff that I used to enjoy before MMOs turned into skinner box monetization experiments.
What about you, MOP readers? Will you try Wurm Unlimited?
Every morning, the Massively Overpowered writers team up with mascot Mo to ask MMORPG players pointed questions about the massively multiplayer online roleplaying genre. Grab a mug of your preferred beverage and take a stab at answering the question posed in today’s Daily Grind!
Omedon Honestly, I completely understand where you are coming from. Personally, my answer to all of that is yes. The main reason this type of sandbox-environment is attractive to me is because then I have control over who is on the server. I have been trying out various games that have the ability to run your own private server, and administer my own for a group of friends while we test them out.
The main reason I avoid getting too into most “MMOs” (your definition, that being massive community) is because there are always people who want to ruin your experience for their own enjoyment. And that is fine, its just not my cup of tea.
All said and done, I would much prefer to host my own server locally, and password-protect it so that my friends, or other people we screen, to join the server so that we can have less worry about griefing.
We are also very much into the challenge, so for Wurm Unlimited, we have attempted to mimic Wurm Online as close as we can with the settings, and in some cases, made it even more difficult then the MMO version. That coupled with the very low population, comparatively, makes for a much more challenging gameplay.
Yes. Trying to work out the best way to host my own server on a permanent server somewhere for private use for myself and some friends.
I’m forever grateful Jeff, that you’re here, on Massivelyop, dutifully representing the voice of my niche playstyle.
Don’t disagree at all, but it’ll be a future that will have an uphill job manifesting when potentially mistreated and overworked server admins eye AAA games that “will do all of this for me.” At least that’s what lured me and my NWN admin team away.
Tools for GMs can’t possibly get too easy to use, but also bear in mind that a self-entertained populace can be a non-lucrative populace. That was one of the first things Shards opened with: “the big companies won’t give you this much control.” So far, they haven’t been wrong.
I still wanna see it happen, though.
Yes.
Nope.
SallyBowls1 The “people that don’t fit into gen pop” are the ones who will be left playing YOUR games.
Omedon Small, player run servers are the future. The MMO companies and communities have done it to themselves, with toxicity, excessive monetization and lack of meaningful cooperative play. Despite the characterization by some in this thread, (that it’s merely a haven for the maladjusted) I’m looking forward to the changes.
Estranged Yes because what you really want in a survival game is God powers….
ManastuUtakata SallyBowls1 Wratts IMO most MMO discussions tend to exclude WoW and/or EVE as such extreme outliers and I now include SC in the list of unique situations.
At 270 people, the burn rate at CIG is probably 40-50M per annum. So they need to be idk say bigger than LotRo and over half GW2 for steady state. Not in any way claiming not viable, but at that size/scope I think of it more as a differently-funded AAA game than indie. Although one of its biggest strengths (and arguably weaknesses) is that it is literally independent. I just tend to think more scrappy/shoestring with “indie”.