By Danny "Ralsu" Gourley
Wurm Online is unlike any other game I have played in a
long while. The offering from OneTooFree AB offers players a sandbox
world, an unsettled land for gamer-pioneers. Ten Ton Hammer needed a
pioneer to explore the world of Wurm
Online, and I answered the call.
Download and Installation
Before downloading any game, it's always best to check out the system
requirements. Things work a bit differently for
style="font-style: italic;">Wurm Online. The
game is based entirely in Java. And aside from knowing that you need
Java, the official Wurm
Online website doesn't reveal much else. I've listed my
system information, which is likely far beyond the minimum requirements
of the game, below:
4 3GHz
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style="font-style: italic;">Wurm Online
delivers better graphics than most gamers imagine when they hear a game
is Java-based. (Picture from Wurm Online Wiki)
Gamers can download Wurm
Online
directly from the official
website. The download is a small Java panel file.The install size on my
hard drive is a little over 100MB. It's really small. Players
double-click on the installer, which unpacks a few files
style="font-weight: bold;">and serves as the
launcher.
After two tries (the first try failed) and ten updates were downloaded,
I was ready to play. I just had to make an account for myself. The
account creation was a little different than normal. I was asked to
pick a character name instead of a login and a password. And there some
unexplained string of letters and numbers on the account creation page.
I wasn't sure if I would need that information or not. My confirmation
email told me that my account was active, but it did not specify what
my login and password were. I tried my character name and that password
and got into the game.
Character Creation
Character
creation for Wurm Online
is completed during account registration. It would seem that gamers get
one character per account. You are asked your gender during account
creation, which may affect the appearance of your avatar, but I was
unable to test this as the game is played in first person and players
do not see their avatars.
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Gamers experience an
undeveloped world that can look very real in
style="font-style: italic;">Wurm Online. (Picture
from Wurm Online Wiki)
Interface and Controls
The first thing I saw when I started Wurm Online was a blank white
screen with a mouse pointer seeming to highlight an object called
roughly "paved stone." After about 5 seconds, everything on the screen
had drawn in for me, and I could actually see the path in the town with
the stone my mouse was hovering over. Aside from that initial draw
time, I did not experience any other significant delays or hitching. It
is worth noting that I was running on 1280 x 1024 resolution with all
graphical settings at their maximum.
The interface for Wurm Online is simple. A text box on the bottom left
of the screen keeps up with area chatter. Another on the bottom right
displays system messages. A menu object at the top of the screen
reminds players which function keys to press to access the Console
(F1), skills (F2), inventory (F3), or quit the game (F12).
Characters move by using the WASD keys with Q and E, but there was a
major hitch here for me. Unlike almost every other WASD-based movement
game I have ever played, the A and D keys in Wurm Online are for
strafing. Players have to learn to use the Q and E keys to turn while
walking. It's a little awkward, and it was a major strike against the
game for me.
There's
more to Wurm Online.
Keep reading.
To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our Wurm Online Game Page.
