Wurm was indeed fun, but since it was an MMO, it felt like I needed to have friends playing it in order to enjoy it.
I wouldn't exactly say that, at least for me, I pretty much solo'd my entire Wurm life and enjoyed it thoroughly. I never liked the idea of joining a village, so I just went off on my own since none of my friends wanted to play it and had a blast. It is harder, and you do end up more of a jack-of-all-trades but once your skills get built up a little bit and you have some shelter it's still pretty easy to do what your passionate for in between misc obligations.
Once you get settled in and people start passing through or moving into your neck of the woods, It's pretty easy to make friends. It's pretty funny really, I'd help out anyone in my local looking for it and be generally nice to everyone and give new people fishing rods and such and once in awhile, I'd hear about one of them griefing other people and just thought it was funny that I managed to avoid their poo-list by helping them out with easy things. (also goes to show how many griefing cases are probably caused by people treating the pre-griefer poorly, and probably pissing them off)
After awhile I had plenty of friends and no village obligations, I did go on to eventually make a series of villages though. I guess I'm a control freak since village life annoys me unless I'm at the head of it, lol.
Anyway, just thought I'd share my thoughts on it. Different strokes for different folks, take any useful information from it and disregard the rest haha.