Tag: Wurm Online

I’ve had a lot of Wurm drama the last week and I’m a bit tired of my usual posts so I decided I’d write about it (pictured above, my deed on the Independence server).

In Wurm Online there are very specific rules players have to follow to keep stuff safe. Number one, try to own a deed. You have special rights that way. Number two. Lock things up. Number three, don’t let things decay to the point where they crumble and just allow anyone in.

So I find a deed that’s got an unlocked gate and crumbled walls – and the owner has decided not to build anything on the actual deed itself (aside from their house) but to stretch their fences onto the perimeter, which technically players don’t “own”. You CAN secure these areas, but again you have to follow the rules. Since the gate wasn’t locked, it was already free game.

People who know me outside of a video game situation (and even in) know I’m a pretty nice person. I typically help out, and am quite generous. However. If you don’t take the time to secure your things, in a sandbox game like Wurm, I WILL come by and salvage what I can. I also don’t feel bad about it because it is the players responsibility to keep their stuff secured.

Now. Does this make me a bad person? That could be debated.

The person whose items I took absolutely freaked out over it. Part of it was my fault because I openly admitted that I took items from the perimeter she had failed to secure. I also showed them where their unlocked gate was, and explained to them about how to secure everything for the future. They decided to get a GM involved, but since I had not broken any rules (I’m very aware of the rules of the game) nothing could be done. Then said player decided to tell everyone in general chat about what a horrible person I was for taking their unsecured items, and told everyone that it was not her fault that she had unsecured items and didn’t know the rules, because she was disabled.

Wow.

Whether or not that’s true doesn’t matter. What matters is that you can’t claim you’re immune to the rules because you’re disabled. In the help channel this is what she said:

“Note to game moderators: Advertizing this game, it should be advised that this game is not appropriate for the disabled as it is monies falsely accrued.”

Through all of this I said not a word, I actually put the player on ignore, but the ignore function does not work when dealing with the CA help channel. The next day the drama mounted. She decided to tell everyone in any channel she could that I had been bashing her walls down. Now, I admit outright that I WILL pillage and salvage – but I always do this within the rules. Even though the rules say players CAN bash an unsecured fence – I’ve never done it. I just don’t see the reason to, there are loads of falling down places that have access already there without me having to bash stuff.

So this time I sent in a  support ticket, asking for someone to come check her deed and confirm that I had not been bashing her walls and give her some peace of mind. The CA who tried to deal with the case was not helpful at all and never forwarded it to a GM which was my request, but at least now things have died down. I hope.

There are consequences to salvaging items that belong to players. You have to be prepared to deal with that sort of drama and be 100% certain that you’re not breaking any rules. Whether or not it’s “right” to take items from players is something we each have to deal with individually.

I know, I haven’t been keeping frequent with my posts what so ever. We all know how busy the holidays can be, and mine is no exception. That doesn’t mean I haven’t been getting my game on! Oh no, in fact the opposite is quite true.

In Wurm Online I currently have FIVE premium characters. That’s three more than I had originally planned for, and two more than I’m going to keep in the end. My goal (roughly) is to keep one main character (in this case, Stargrace) for an all-around skiller, and then Arysh as my Vynora priest, and Faralithe, as my Fo priest. Right now I also have a Magranon priest, and Blesse who is my character on Pristine. Holding down the fort until it merges with the rest of the Freedom servers, when ever that may be.

Things have been busy, there’s been deed building and the impalong, neither of which I’ve spoken about much – but I will do that another time. What I wanted to write about today was my plundering adventures of last night.

See, Faralithe is on Independence attending sermons with the hope of one day becoming a priest. In order to get her there quickly, I dropped her off without any gear at all, and then /suicide to the starter deed. Then walked to her sermon location. That means no tools, as she had given up the beginner tools quite some time ago. So I put a challenge forth to myself – how long would it take me to pillage all of the items I needed in order to form a ‘comfortable’ life on Independence.

Answer was roughly two hours.

Independence is the largest Wurm Online server, and it’s also the oldest. There’s LOTS of crumbling down old places just waiting for eager hands to come and make use of items. The screen shot above is a list of all the neat items I found, and that doesn’t include the large cart with 7 rafts that I filled with seeds and veggies. Also a horse.

I even got some rope! I was pleased with that. Oh and some 30 ql chain armor that isn’t listed because I forgot to open the body section of my inventory. I found a trader who had a bit of coin on him (about 50 copper) and managed to walk to the Freedom Market and purchase the lantern from a trader for 10c.

Some of my main pillaging goals included a backpack, a compass, a lantern, and rope. Now the items above may not be the best quality, some are even part of the starter pack you get when you finish the tutorial, but I was still really happy to have found such great spoils.

It’s amazing to me how many people do not properly secure their stuff. For an experienced player, it was like Christmas (har) at this one deed I found. There was an actual deed which of course prevents any stealing – but the player had extended their living space beyond the deed, into the lands of wurm, which is free game if not properly secured in an enclosure. They did have gates all around their property BUT one of these gates was unlocked. Not attached to a house. That means anyone could come in and take items off of the area they had built on. There were thousands of veggies, seeds, animals, iron items, all scattered all over this land they they obviously think is safe.

It’s not.

Now, is it cruel that I’m “stealing” items from players? Maybe. But the game has very specific mechanics on what ‘stealing’ is and is not. I never break the rules, and I would never suggest that people break the rules. Players DO need to learn to keep their items secure, and just like I had to learn my lesson (my animal pens have been broken into before and all my animals scattered) so does everyone else. I don’t have any guilt about it and I don’t think I’m overly cruel about it. In the deed mentioned above, I didn’t take everything (or even close to everything) and I didn’t touch their animals. What I did was take the bits and pieces I needed to equip myself, and left the rest.

Needless to say, it was a very profitable night.

Days like yesterday make me wish we had a 3rd person view for Wurm Online. Let me paint the scene for you.

I’ve recently started playing with an alt on Pristine, the latest server to open. It’s not attached to the Freedom cluster even though it is a Freedom server, to give players that “new” player feel. Without me getting into the whole “us vs. them” debate, I will say that it’s been interesting.

Being a new server means there’s no rope to lead animals, so people are frantically growing wemp and cotton. Leather is pretty easy to come by. Not being able to collect animals via rope has been really nice. I did remember something yesterday though. You don’t need rope to ride a cow and you need very little body control. Less than 20. So I grabbed a pile of strawberry seeds and headed out into the wild to find a cow to bring home. See the problem with no rope means you can’t lead animals into pens. You can build the pens around them but animals won’t walk through buildings or fences with the “go here” command. I learned that the hard way with a few chickens of mine.

Found a cow. Tamed it. And started riding it! Yeeha! Now cows move VERY slowly, but my purpose wasn’t to actually ride it for speed so much as just ride it into a pen of mine.

Then the spider saw me.

So there I was, no armor, riding a cow up a very steep mountain side to get to my deed (on the other side of said mountain) WITH a giant spider chasing me. It was an epic moment. Which brings me back to the point about how I wish there was 3rd person view.

I now have two happy cows grazing in my pens. They’ll probably mash down all the wemp I’ve started, knowing my luck.