The PC Gamer Village

PCGWurm.com will regularly play home to tales from the world of Wurm Online – sometimes from the PC Gamer Village residents, sometimes not. The first is a story written by PCG Village resident Frenzorz, charting his attempts to trade with Zephyr during the early days of the village.

Ah, Zephyr. God of the colossal statue, lord of all that is wonderful, his benevolent arse looms down on our little village like a smiling father. His statue’s arse, that is. Zephyr is, from what I have learnt in my first week of Wurm Online, a very powerful man. On the starting server, Golden Valley, he is the only person to ever have orchestrated the construction of a colossus, the giant statue that strides across the large mountain where the PCG village resides. Every morning when I emerge from my small wooden shack overlooking the western sea, I get a nice good view of that behind; hands firmly placed on hips, staring out across the lake in the east over Zephyr’s island villa.

For such a powerful player, Zephyr lives only a stone’s throw away from the PCG village, choosing the free server instead of the premium subscription servers in which to build his domain. From what I’ve gathered, he is always willing to help us – for a price. The deal today was a simple one. We were to deliver a number of felled trees from our forest to his chosen location, after which he would give us a number of seeds. Yes, seeds. Seeds are incredibly important in Wurm. Without seeds you cannot plant crops, and we rather need a source of food at the moment. The PCG village is, uhm, starving to death. Other than the plants and herbs one can forage for in the forest, perhaps to make a simple stew or casserole, we have no source of food. We’ve got plenty of rock from the mine, and a shed load of wood (pardon the pun), but no food. Those seeds were a matter of life and death.

HulkMcCracken organised the pickup. He was already too weak from starvation to do anything useful, so he’d sent his friend Jimmie to cut the trees as he sat in his house cooking seven stews on an open fire. He was a hungry man. It was dusk by the time we were ready to set off, Jimmie and I hauling two large wooden carts laden with trees. We set off into the forest. Despite getting lost a couple of times in the dark (Wurm has no map, as the terrain changes daily), and Jimmie taking us a very strange route through the forest that was well away from any of the cobblestone paths that wind their way around the Golden Valley, we made it to our destination.

It’s a strange place, Glitterdale. One of two starting areas for all the characters on the Golden Valley, it is one of the only places on the server that you cannot build. The laws of physics change here, ghostly figures patrol around the outskirts; silent guardians protecting the clueless newbies from wanton destruction. We found the dropoff point, a small cobblestone plaza outside the ‘technology building’, a large wooden lime green affair that apparently contained a number of wooden carts and barrels. Technological progress, eh?

We dropped the carts and proceeded to place the trees outside the building as required. I opened the cart, and right clicked the tree to pick it up. Nothing happens. I try again. Nothing happens. It seems Jimmie is having the same problem. As I mentioned, the laws of physics change in Glitterdale. Apparently once something is placed on the ground it cannot be picked up, ever, because it is considered stealing. All the trees we’d cut down and laboriously carried to Glitterdale? They’re stuck there. The village carts? Picking them up would be stealing. From our own damn village?! Zephyr, you bastard. We left the carts and the trees to rot, trudging back up the mountain through the night to break the news to poor starving HulkMcCracken. He wouldn’t be getting his seeds today.

But that’s Wurm Online. Often you can put in hours of labour for little-to-no character benefit, other than the odd skill increase. Just ask M_the_C, who spent weeks with Klaatu digging a huge tunnel underneath the PCG mine, with the vain hope of creating a route to Glitterdale that didn’t involve climbing up a sheer mountain. It’s not even a quarter of the way there yet. We still mine it, of course, gradually chipping away lumps of rock to create bricks for our paths and ovens and statues of dogs.

You know what, though? Even though we didn’t get our seeds, and M_the_C hasn’t yet seen his tunnel, we’ve all still had a great time. He got to see the village grow from an empty expanse of forest to what it is today. I got to stumble around in the dark for half an hour and feel like an intrepid pioneer, travelling to a distant place on an important mission. Hauling lumber. That’s the wonderful thing about Wurm, it’s why people call it the anti-WoW. You create your own quests, your own stories, and your own experiences. The game is as fun as the people you play it with.

It turned out Zephyr had forgotten about Glitterdale’s reality-bending properties. He offered to reimburse us for the carts, and asked for a substantially smaller amount of lumber in exchange for those seeds. Will we finally get them and start a farm? Will any of us ever get a decent meal? I don’t have a clue, but I’ll enjoy finding out. Now, to get to work on that stone dog.

Thanks to Frenzorz for submitting the story. It’s worth noting that it was written some time ago, and that the PC Gamer village eventually gained its farms and is now no longer starving to death. If you have a story you’d like to tell, please email me.