Compendium:Recollections 0943
One of my strongest Game Memories is playing Wurm Online with my brother, being crazy hermits of Tutorial Island.
In the earlier days, a fresh character would spawn in a little town that taught you the basics of the game, and then when you'd done it you could wander out and try your hand at it. When you were ready, you could take the one-way portal in Noob Town (my name) to the greater world, where all the player factions and big towns and bulk of game was.
Well, I spent my first day just... wandering around the immediate area of Noob Town, just seeing all the decaying homesteads. Fields that were farms, fragments of roads, buildings in various states of decay... it was fascinating. Eventually I found a spot on the coast that seemed nice. There were roads going up in the hills that suggested prior mining efforts, and what was either a natural growth of trees in a flattened out ex-farm, but became a perfect tree nursery. We almost starved to death until a brave soul came over the sea (around the island) to our pier with seeds and string (for us to make a fishing rod). Or when we were trapped in our house because there were wolves outside that wouldn't leave and we were rubbish men who'd barely made a fence. Spent several hours jumping out, slapping the wolves then running back inside to smear each other in shitty poultices and waiting for the lesser wounds to heal.
At some point, the gates to Noob Town were closed, because they were moving the "feel it out" part to the Big Map, but they didn't kick out the people that were already outside the walls. I think they set up a portal, but a few of us... just hung around seeing out the actual decay of Noob Island.
It's not a lot of games that really let you actually explore ruins that are real. STALKER has a few big empty buildings that feel like they were used, and some Minecraft stuff does similar, but this was a real tiny world that I witnessed the death rattle of.
It was kinda cool.
