fun fact. Notch worked with Rolf on Wurm They ended up having a spat and notch left to make minecraft.
The spat was notch wanted to fix all the bugs on things before releasing new content. While rolf wanted to add things and fix them later.
Well, everyone knows minecraft and no one knows wurm.
Good luck with wurm. Takes 3 months IRL playing 8-12 hours a day every day to get 90 in a skill. and some skills take 2-3 years to get 90.
Unlimited is the standalone of the MMO by almost the same name, Wurm Online, so you could give WO a try if you're thinking about Unlimited to see if you'd be interested (I'd consider doing that since WO has an actual tutorial to start you off)
Personally, once you've got your server/world settings tweaked to where you like them and (optionally) some people to play with it can be pretty neat. I find it nice even by myself as sometimes I just want something to occupy my attention for an hour or two
Word of warning: it's another one of those 'place you in the middle of nowhere and it's up to you to figure out what you want to accomplish' sort of games (so here's hoping you can set goals and such or have friends to keep ya company) and Online is kinda grindy but, thankfully, you can tweak a bunch of things in Unlimited to set the level to where you'd want it.
Graphics/Animations will also come off as really dated/lacking and the UI, IMO, is probably one of the worst things about it in terms of things to get used to (it is much better than it used to be). The game itself runs in Java, if you have any qualms with those kinda things
If you don't like games where you're probably going to need the game's wiki open so you can tab to it to figure stuff out, then this probably wont be for you. There's a lot of things not quite explained in the tutorial Online offers (mostly crafting instructions/recipes) so some research/digging on your part needs to be done unless you have friends/server members with more experience.
If you know EvE Online, I can say it's kinda like that kind of sandbox element except medieval/not in space and not everyone is wanting to screw you over
Well, this is highly personal of course. If you are not interested in a sandbox game or good graphics are a must.. then you may stop reading here :)
If you're still reading I'd like to pitch Wurm Online. It's a huge living world where you decide your style and role. Seasons come and go with their own characteristics, weather changes (you probably shouldn't go sailing in a thick fog), animals are born as babies and grow to die of old age if they're not met with an untimely death, trees grow and die and if all of them are cut down and not replanted desertification will set in.
Every item, building, roads and bridges are player made and depending on their materials and quality they last from minutes to months before decaying away (if not repaired). You decide where you build your home (no areas are instanced), the size, the materials, the furniture. All the objects have models too so if you kill a boar and get his tusks you can place them as a decoration in your home or craft something out of them.
You can terraform, mine, fish, hunt, build, craft, farm. Everything is skill based (around 140 skills IIRC). You decide your own fate :)
Players hold events like the one where experienced and newer players gather in a large hall and skilled players improve newbies' tools for free. Veterans get experience, newbies get better quality tools. Everyone goes happy on their merry way afterwards.
If you start on a PVE server but would like to participate in PVP, no problem. You build a boat, pack your stuff in it and sail across the server boundaries to a PVP server.
If you're intrigued, you can try it for free. Download's not that big. Word of warning though, you will be very lost at the beginning. Find other players and collaborate :)
Weren't those removed from the game?
https://www.wurmonline.com/category/news/feature-introduction/
https://forum.wurmonline.com/index.php?/topic/174099-patch-notes-03mar20/
>With this we will be also beginning to phase out the existing referral system, with ingame purchases as well as the new introductory offers via the shop no longer giving a referral.
EVE Online has stood the test of time to date and is more horizontal:
https://support.eveonline.com/hc/en-us/articles/203217062-Skill-Training
Wurm Online is quite good:
https://www.wurmonline.com/features/skills-and-characteristics/
To be perfectly honest, the market is dominated by the big themepark styles because that's where the investment bucks went for these expensive risky projects - make everything more "common denominator" to tap a wider user base.
So it's less that frequency indicates "worse design" than other factors literally "neutering" options and development iteration of non-vertical progression systems.
Wurm Online which was partly made by Notch before he made Minecraft couple years later is a decent game. Lots of grinding but good game that hooks you in. Basically a more realistic version of Minecraft with few hundred people. You and your friends can make a deed and build it together or they can make their own deeds. Game community is kind of shrinking, but they trying to improve that with some changes.
Best part it's a true sandbox and you can literally do anything with the game world like in Minecraft.
if you want the ability to get tons of crap and then lose it all brutally in a hard-fought battle check out https://www.wurmonline.com/ free-loot corpses and people can literally knock down your house, raze your fields and kill your animals.