I have played this game for over 1000 days worth of in-game playtime (24,000 hours) on the Non-Steam (Java) version. Take advice from someone who has seen the highs and lows of this game, and hear me when I say the highs are a thing long in the past.

This is going to be extremely long winded, but I'm hoping to provide as much context and supportive evidence as I can in this review so that people who don't know what they're getting into can understand the game at the finer level that I understand it and its community, having played Wurm for over 11 years.

My first experience logging into this game was simply magically intoxicating. I have no other words to describe it. Digital avatars bustling up and down the streets of what was then just called "Freedom" but would later be renamed to "Independence". People selling things, buying things, transporting things/animals, people building things... 5 minutes into this game and I was hooked. It was more alive than any other game I had ever seen, with a very close and tightknit community. Deeds were scattered just about everywhere, all along the highways, and in the forests.. ALL of them were populated, no village was empty. Very rare was it to find a deed where just a single person lived, because they were costly enough that people usually had to pool their efforts to get one. This was 2009.

Fast forward 11 years to 2021. You could put yourself basically anywhere on any server, choose a former metropolis even if you'd like - You'll not find a single soul in your local for many miles. The game world feels empty, and abandoned. Peak population is less than half what it used to be. The people that still care, all live at deeds by themselves, since a deed is so cheap now that anyone can have 10 if they want. Good luck finding a spot where you have some friendly neighbors, either. The game's culture itself has taken a turn for the worse and settling within local of someone else's middle-of-nowhere-deed will usually net you a hostile response from said individual.

What I am trying to get across here is that the Developers over the past 5 or 6 years, have been consciously making choices which have been driving players away from their game, new and old alike. The game has their own official forum, there is a section called "Suggestions and Ideas" - inside that subforum there are 298,446 posts, of which many have been liked by the community countless times and advocated for. Of those nearly 300,000 posts, there are maybe about 50 suggested features that have made it into the game. It's not because there haven't been any quality suggestions, or things that the community has really gotten behind. No, the Developers of this game simply do not care about providing quality content. They do not care about the community behind the game, or those that pay them money. The game has not seen a significant content update in... years.

The last piece of endgame content the game had added to it was Rifts (some 3 years ago now) and they are complete and utter trash. No one in their right mind would ever spend 5 to 6 hours staring at their screen while their equipment takes absurd amount of damage... all for... what's the reward? Oh, right lol. There really isnt one. Nothing that a Rift could provide you would ever be useful to you once you're strong enough to actually participate in one.

Then there was Jackal. Jackal was the new content after that. Basically you got to start over (uhm, thanks?) from nothing and try to gain skills on this weird alien planet, with the promise that some of the skill you gained on Jackal would transfer to your original character. Well, what they forgot to mention to any of us was that the amount of skill that would transfer was so low it was virtually nonexistant. Most people who skilled up to 70 in something on jackal gained maybe 0.3 of a skillpoint if they were below 90. If you were already above 90 you just didnt gain anything. 10 of 10 ENDGAME CONTENT

As if you needed any more reasons to avoid this game, there are in fact more. There are numerous well-documented cases of nepotism and favoritism amongst the development and GM teams within Wurm. You have to keep in mind that all the Devs and GM's of this game, are players too. There is a special select group of "Golden Bois" whom you cannot question or speak contrary to in this game. Doing so results in a permanent ban from the game and all traces of your existence permanently deleted. Doesnt matter whether you've been a paying subscriber for 5 or 8 or 10 years.

On the PVP server Chaos, our main enemy was predominantly the GM/Developer teams. The weapons and armour our faction used were nerfed when we started winning fights.. funnily enough med mauls (the weapon our enemy mainly used) got a 45% damage buff. At one instance a number of our players had their main weapons Removed from their hands, BY THE HEAD GM because they were bugged weapons that we had obtained FROM THE ENEMY FACTION. Enemy faction was told they were allowed to make/use said weapons with impunity. Soon as we got hold of them, they were taken from us.

Our kingdom's chancellor was a GM, who had played the game basically since its inception. One day he was randomly stripped of his GM powers and within 2 hours of this happening, his deed is "raided" and hundreds of EUR worth of ingame assets were stolen from him. This was done through the use of an exploit which allowed a group of "Golden Bois" to basically walk through the mine defences as if they weren't there. None of the players involved in the exploit, were ever banned. They all still play the game to this very day. None of the items were ever found or returned. They possess the power to retrieve it all and give it all back to him in the blink of an eye - but they won't because of an ingame factional line. They treat us as second rate players when all we've ever done is pay them money to try and enjoy their game.

The reality is, at this point, there is no way to ever "redeem" or "save" Wurm. No amount of doing it right could ever repair the damage all the corruption, apathy, and ingenuity have done to your game title over the last decade. You simply waited far too long. Eventually your players get fed up with your inactivity and decide to seek better pastures. This is what has happened to Wurm, en masse. I was told by the CEO that there was potential they might do something to address the "dwindling community" aspect of the game, after steam. Alas, here we are, a year after steam. Nothing has changed, even in the slightest.

Please try to understand my reasoning for the above negative comments. I have invested a decade into this game only to watch it be ruined. That said, Wurm has some incredible potential - even though nearly all of it has long since been squandered away by an incompetent dev team. Here are the notable highlights, before I run out of characters:

Non-XP-based skillsystem, skills feel natural and good to grind. Every action makes you better at what you do.
Items all feel much more real and tangible than those in other games, enchant system and mod system a major plus.
Everything you see was made by a player. Anything you see can be destroyed.
Game has no embedded lore - the history of the player's actions becomes the lore and stories retold.
True freedom in a sandbox fantasy RPG-type environment.
Incredible level of fidelity and miniscule detail to the environment.
Game used to have really strong community interactions and a great neighborhood-vibe to it. Not anymore sadly.
No class system, train any combination of skills to any level you desire.
More than 200 skills! Seriously, if you like grinding you will never run out of stuff to do in this game.

EpicPhail (Felinas)

[h1]TL;DR:[/h1] I have played this game for over 1000 days worth of in-game playtime (24,000 hours) on the Non-Steam (Java) version. Take advice from someone who has seen the highs and lows of this game, and hear me when I say the highs are a thing long in the past. [h1]Warning:[/h1] This is going to be extremely long winded, but I'm hoping to provide as much context and supportive evidence as I can in this review so that people who don't know what they're getting into can understand the game at the finer level that I understand it and its community, having played Wurm for over 11 years. [h1]Summary:[/h1] My first experience logging into this game was simply magically intoxicating. I have no other words to describe it. Digital avatars bustling up and down the streets of what was then just called "Freedom" but would later be renamed to "Independence". People selling things, buying things, transporting things/animals, people building things... 5 minutes into this game and I was hooked. It was more alive than any other game I had ever seen, with a very close and tightknit community. Deeds were scattered just about everywhere, all along the highways, and in the forests.. ALL of them were populated, no village was empty. Very rare was it to find a deed where just a single person lived, because they were costly enough that people usually had to pool their efforts to get one. This was 2009. Fast forward 11 years to 2021. You could put yourself basically anywhere on any server, choose a former metropolis even if you'd like - You'll not find a single soul in your local for many miles. The game world feels empty, and abandoned. Peak population is less than half what it used to be. The people that still care, all live at deeds by themselves, since a deed is so cheap now that anyone can have 10 if they want. Good luck finding a spot where you have some friendly neighbors, either. The game's culture itself has taken a turn for the worse and settling within local of someone else's middle-of-nowhere-deed will usually net you a hostile response from said individual. [h1]Developer Choice:[/h1] What I am trying to get across here is that the Developers over the past 5 or 6 years, have been consciously making choices which have been driving players away from their game, new and old alike. The game has their own official forum, there is a section called "Suggestions and Ideas" - inside that subforum there are 298,446 posts, of which many have been liked by the community countless times and advocated for. Of those nearly 300,000 posts, there are maybe about 50 suggested features that have made it into the game. It's not because there haven't been any quality suggestions, or things that the community has really gotten behind. No, the Developers of this game [b]simply do not care about providing quality content.[/b] They [b]do not care about the community[/b] behind the game, or those that pay them money. The game has not seen a significant content update in... years. The last piece of endgame content the game had added to it was Rifts (some 3 years ago now) and they are complete and utter trash. No one in their right mind would ever spend 5 to 6 hours staring at their screen while their equipment takes absurd amount of damage... all for... what's the reward? Oh, right lol. There really isnt one. Nothing that a Rift could provide you would ever be useful to you once you're strong enough to actually participate in one. Then there was Jackal. Jackal was the new content after that. Basically you got to start over (uhm, thanks?) from nothing and try to gain skills on this weird alien planet, with the promise that some of the skill you gained on Jackal would transfer to your original character. Well, what they forgot to mention to any of us was that the [b]amount of skill that would transfer[/b] was so low it was virtually nonexistant. Most people who skilled up to 70 in something on jackal gained maybe 0.3 of a skillpoint if they were below 90. If you were already above 90 you just didnt gain anything. [b]10 of 10 ENDGAME CONTENT[/b] [h1]Developer Corruption:[/h1] As if you needed any more reasons to avoid this game, there are in fact more. There are numerous well-documented cases of nepotism and favoritism amongst the development and GM teams within Wurm. You have to keep in mind that all the Devs and GM's of this game, are players too. There is a special select group of "Golden Bois" whom you cannot question or speak contrary to in this game. Doing so results in a permanent ban from the game and all traces of your existence permanently deleted. Doesnt matter whether you've been a paying subscriber for 5 or 8 or 10 years. On the PVP server Chaos, our main enemy was predominantly the GM/Developer teams. The weapons and armour our faction used were nerfed when we started winning fights.. funnily enough med mauls (the weapon our enemy mainly used) got a 45% damage buff. At one instance a number of our players had their main weapons [b]Removed from their hands, BY THE HEAD GM[/b] because they were bugged weapons that we had obtained [b]FROM THE ENEMY FACTION.[/b] Enemy faction was told they were allowed to make/use said weapons with impunity. Soon as we got hold of them, they were taken from us. Our kingdom's chancellor was a GM, who had played the game basically since its inception. One day he was randomly stripped of his GM powers and within [b]2 hours[/b] of this happening, his deed is "raided" and hundreds of EUR worth of ingame assets were stolen from him. This was done through the use of an exploit which allowed a group of "Golden Bois" to basically walk through the mine defences as if they weren't there. None of the players involved in the exploit, were ever banned. They all still play the game to this very day. None of the items were ever found or returned. They possess the power to retrieve it all and give it all back to him in the blink of an eye - but they won't because of an ingame factional line. They treat us as second rate players when all we've ever done is pay them money to try and enjoy their game. [h1]The Road To Redemption:[/h1] The reality is, at this point, there is no way to ever "redeem" or "save" Wurm. No amount of doing it right could ever repair the damage all the corruption, apathy, and ingenuity have done to your game title over the last decade. You simply waited far too long. Eventually your players get fed up with your inactivity and decide to seek better pastures. This is what has happened to Wurm, en masse. I was told by the CEO that there was potential they might do something to address the "dwindling community" aspect of the game, after steam. Alas, here we are, a year after steam. Nothing has changed, even in the slightest. [h1]It's not all bad:[/h1] Please try to understand my reasoning for the above negative comments. I have invested a decade into this game only to watch it be ruined. That said, Wurm [b]has some incredible potential[/b] - even though nearly all of it has long since been squandered away by an incompetent dev team. Here are the notable highlights, before I run out of characters: Non-XP-based skillsystem, skills feel natural and good to grind. Every action makes you better at what you do. Items all feel much more real and tangible than those in other games, enchant system and mod system a major plus. Everything you see was made by a player. Anything you see can be destroyed. Game has no embedded lore - the history of the player's actions [i]becomes[/i] the lore and stories retold. True freedom in a sandbox fantasy RPG-type environment. Incredible level of fidelity and miniscule detail to the environment. Game used to have really strong community interactions and a great neighborhood-vibe to it. Not anymore sadly. No class system, train any combination of skills to any level you desire. More than 200 skills! Seriously, if you like grinding you will never run out of stuff to do in this game. EpicPhail (Felinas)