Wurm

I've been playing Wurm for the past 2.5 months or so--the first online game I've ever paid for...for 2 months anyway. Wurm is an MMORPG which it claims it is not but, rather, a "fantasy simulation"--but Wurm is an MMORPG for all intents and purposes. Unfortunately, like Second Life and Active Worlds, its development is lacking, slow, and underdeveloped. And with only 1 developer I can't see supporting such an unorganized buggy still-beta (despite going "gold" in June 2006) game. Wurm has potential but its learning curve is way too high and requires far too much time and energy to be any real fun.

I used to call Wurm "fun work" but now it's just plain work for the most part. Practically everything decays and has a quality level (QL) to it, with lower QL things decaying faster than higher QL things. However, to get things to a high enough QL that they don't decay in, say, even a month, requires paying for a premium account and then, of course, building up one's skills in order to create/improve things, which takes months by itself. Obviously, the developer, Mojang Specification (1 person now, basically), thinks players won't have any life other than Wurm.

Combined with game/chat masters and players who mostly don't seem to care if newbies cut down all the trees in the area, Wurm just isn't worth continuing for me.