[modi123_1]

Was? Was ist DAS?!

It seems they super secret ploy of Wurm Online to have only a minimal amount of folks beta testing was a success. I haven't heard of this game, but now.. now it intrigues me.

Is anyone in on the beta?
Heard much about this?
Is this just really "3-d minecraft"?!
Anyone looking to start playing?

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We offer no character classes, quests or a pre-built environment. Instead, we offer players the opportunity to choose their own direction and to train any or all of the skills they desire while living in a breathing and evolving world entirely built and maintained by the players that inhabit it.

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About their beta being up (and when):

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Wurm Online is a free MMO in which everything is crafted and created by players. After existing as an open beta since 2006, it will finally get an official 1.0 release next week on December 12th.

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Interestingly they use a Java client to run this game.
http://www.wurmonline.com/about.php

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What can I do in Wurm?

• Explore huge, diverse landmasses extending over 512sq km in total!
  
• Modify the terrain; dig, raise, flatten and sculpt the land around you!
  
• Make your home on either the PvP or PvE server.
  
• Craft and use thousands of unique items.
  
• Wage war on other kingdoms, and lead yours to victory.
  
• Discover and fight over religious artifacts on the PvP server.
  
• Capture and breed animals from the environment.
  
• Train 133 Skills, 10 Player Characteristics, and 3 Religion Characteristics.
  
• Follow one of four unique deities and religions.
  
• Hunt creatures such as the unique red dragon, forest giant, kyklops, troll king and others!
  
• Become a priest or champion of your religion and learn powerful spells and enchantments.
  
• Choose one of five meditation paths and take advantage of special meditation abilities.
  
• Earn as many of our 200+ skill and achievement titles as you have time for!
  
• Mount various creatures, from horses and carts to unicorns, bears and even dragons!
  
• Construct, crew or even captain six different ship types with other players, from small rowing boats to impressive caravels.
  
• Build a variety of structures, from guard towers to stone houses to fences and statues.
  
• Found your own settlement wherever you desire; own land, build a farm, a castle, or perhaps an entire village!
  
• Pave roads to connect settlements and plant signs to improve local infrastructure.
  
• Live off the land by creating fields to farm a variety of crops including potatoes, garlic, cotton, wheat, strawberries, pumpkins and more!
  
• Cook food using a huge range of ingredients.

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[jon.kiparsky]

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Explore huge, diverse landmasses extending over 512sq km in total!

16 X 32 KM is a huge landmass? That's about the area served by the T, here in Boston.

[modi123_1]

It's about the size of Warsaw.. so a pretty hefty space.. though I am unclear how this breaks down - if each server has 512sq km or if that's spread out over that space. Not to mention it sounds like there's some depth to this space.

Side note - a guy that compared world maps size to some varying degrees of success.

http://www.giantbomb...ating/30-49712/

[jon.kiparsky]

He left out Strategic Conquest.

(hands up anyone who's actually played Strategic Conquest? Thought not...)

[magius96]

I came across Wurm Online a while back while it was in it's Beta testing, and I did sign up and create an account. I probably played it for about 3 hours before I decided it wasn't for me.

I'm sure it is a game that others would find appealing, but to me it's controls were overly complicated, the game world seemed a bit slow, and it was heavily reliant upon a fast internet connection. Of course, I was on the game while it was in beta testing, so those issues may have been resolved since then.

[ishkabible]

How is far cry two bigger than oblivion? That doesn't add up. It takes a good bit longer to get to across cyrodiil than it does the far cry 2 maps. Just cause it freaking huge though...HUGE.

[magius96]

You can't compare the size of maps in two games based on how fast you get across the map. Travel speeds are different in each game. Sure, it might take me an hour to walk across Cyrodiil, but it takes me half that flying it on the back of a dragon. That doesn't mean the map is any smaller while on a dragon.

If we're looking for the game with the largest maps, then I have to chip in with Sentinel Worlds: Future Magic. This thing boasted three full worlds that probably consisted of millions of miles, along with thousands of miles in space to fly around in. Oh sure, when you were driving around on the surface of a planet each move might have consisted of a quarter of a mile, but that doesn't lessen the overall mileage of the map.

I will agree with you however if you were to say that the mileage of a map doesn't matter as much as the time it takes to walk from one side to the other. It doesn't matter if the map does span five trillion square miles if you move from one side to the next in less than twenty minutes. Essentially, instead of measuring maps in how many miles it spans, we should be measuring maps by how many hours it would take to explore the whole map while traveling at a constant rate without any interference or blockages.

[Atli]

If that's the criteria then EVE Online beats all those puny earth based games. Sure, it's mostly empty space, but it's there nonetheless, and traveling across it at a constant "rhythm" (as it would take years, if not decades, to do it at one speed, without jumping across systems) would take ages.

[magius96]

Ok, sure so it's all there but empty, but can you actually explore it in the game? If it's not actually playable area it doesn't count.

[Atli]

Sure, it's all playable. If you have the patience or skill to get there, you can explore it all. Though it's so vast that you can only realistically travel between known objects or randomly spawned astronomical events and NPC complexes. Even with that restriction, the amount of area you can cover (however you measure it) makes even the largest earth based RGP insignificant in comparison.

But it's a different kind of game. You don't go around exploring empty space looking for NPCs and quests. The players are the content, so you go looking for them.

[modi123_1]

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You don't go around exploring empty space

... except I think that's how I would play. I would saddle up and just drive to farther and farther unknown space... You know - to keep the voices in my head to a minimum.

[h4nnib4l]

I was going to mention X3 for the same reason. It takes half a couple of really fast ships several days at 10x speed just to fly through every sector to drop satellites. I have months logged into my last set of saved games and still haven't hit every one. Granted, a vast majority of the space doesn't have a lot going on, but any specific spot may or may not have something worth doing at a specific time should you chose to visit.

[ishkabible]

I judge a games map size based on detail and content I suppose. If I can enjoyably walk for an hour a across a map it seems that much larger than something where I'm going super fast with very little detail.

even still running/walking across Cyrodiil takes longer than running/walking across the Far Cry 2 maps. therefore in my book Cyrodiil is bigger even by size.

This post has been edited by ishkabible: 11 December 2012 - 10:07 PM

[magius96]

I've played a game once where if you walked outside of the initial game map, additional areas would be drawn but it would have very little if any detail. This continued area drawing went on forever. Does that make the map in that game the largest? No because those areas are devoid of any real content or details. Oh sure, it would draw rocks and hills and a few trees here and there, but it wasn't actually drawing anything that would catch your interest. For this reason, when playing games I don't count any regions of the map that are essentially devoid of content or detail.