Wurm Online will be a community-centric fantasy MMORPG fully developed in Java. Gameplay will be free at first, but when you wish to develop your character beyond basic skills, you're going to have to pay a monthly fee.
The world will have a real economy with a fixed pool of money and resources, and almost all items in the world will be created by other players. When the game is first launched, it will pretty much just only be a huge forest, and it will be up to the players to build the towns and create the items needed for both everyday use and more exotic practices.
Wurm Online will neither have levels nor hitpoints. Instead, you have a set of skills that define your character, and a list of any unhealed wounds the character has.
Gameplay is expected to be very down to earth and community-based for most players, with each town serving as a small community. Towns will also remain safe as long as the computer controlled guards are alive. You won't be able to attack other players or perform any other illegal activity inside the town without first killing all the guards. Outside the towns, however, you can do anything you want, but performing illegal activities will lower your status in the nearby villages.[/quote]
The world of wurm is incredibly expansive taking as much as a few hours to cross the map, along with terraforming so you can morpg the ground to create mountains if you found it nessicary.
When you start out in the game you spawn at a town called Newtown with a few tools to help you get started, than you set off trying to survive in the expansive environment, you have to drink water and eat on a regular basis and you have a stamina meter determining how fast you are running.
After you set out you realize food isn't as easy to come by as you may have thought, you need to find clay and make clay bowls to cook your food, and you need spices with fish or meat to create something edible to survive.
After you get going you can start making houses and walls, nothing in wurm is instant so creating a giant town could take you a few weeks or as little as a few days depending how much time you wish to put into it.
Wurm trys to veer away from the typical quests and NPCs making the game almost entirely player build and ran, so don't plan on trying to find a quest to make a few iron coins.
The world of Wurm has just gone gold meaning you do have to pay at a certain point, but they do allow plenty of access to basic accounts, the team behind Wurm is http://mojang.com/ who have been working on this game for around 5 or 6 years now, the team is made of only four people but they still manage to create one of the most submersive environments to be seen in a videogame.
Pictures
Taken in-game by myself
Looking out at sea
A Pirate Outpost that I had been building before the game went gold
A picture From My Travels
Sunset at Newtown (Beta Map)
Overview of 1//5 of the beta map
Go to http://www.wurmonline.com click register, create an account, once you've registered hit launch and enjoy.
Since Wurm is such a massive game it has a fairly big hardware requirement to play with high settigns, and if you have any problems they have a bugs and problems section in the forums.
Useful Links
Useful noob stuff
http://www.wurmonline.com/wiki/index.php/Useful_N00b_Links
The Complete Database
http://www.wurmonline.com/wiki/index.php/Complete_DB