Now that Glitch is dying I'm trying to get my mother to try Wurm as a replacement. We live in different countries and we're not exactly emotionally close, so playing Glitch together was the one bonding activity we had (replacing playing Tetris together when I was a kid). She's not a gamer and Glitch was perfect with the easy learning curve, cute graphics and humor that made her happy without having to put too much effort in.
Sadly there doesn't seem to be a similar game to replace Glitch, so we're looking for something else. She told me she loved building and designing stuff in Glitch so I thought of Wurm. We can build a little homestead with a farm, cook, take pretty pictures, go exploring. She'd rather not pay but she says if it's worth it and subscription isn't expensive she might eventually be willing to pay.
The problem is that she's not a gamer. She's never played RPGs and the interface for Wurm looks really complicated to her. We're 6 hours apart so I won't often be able to directly be there with her to help her and show her around. My hope is that the tutorial will make her feel more comfortable and I can answer her questions when I have time, and most importantly, we can build a safe little home base for her to play around in. Knowing her, she'd be content with a small farm and a little house (which between the two of us would take ages to build anyhow). She never even did the quests in Glitch - she was content just walking around and enjoying how funny everything was.
My question is, how crowded is the game right now? I know they're opening a new server soon, but as it stands at the moment, what are the odds we'd be able to find a relatively safe little spot which hasn't already been claimed (and isn't overrun with spiders)? We really would not need much room, but I remember years ago when I used to play Wurm I'd spend hours wandering looking for a little corner to call my own and constantly being chased off by players who said that while I was not on their deed, I was still on their "claimed" land which extended for hundreds of tiles and anything I built there would be THEIRS and they'd take or destroy it.
Alternatively, can anyone recommend a different game which might be better suited to our needs? It has to be pretty or mom won't touch it, and there has to be something interesting for her to do. She was very specific that she wants it to be something that we can play at different times but still interact with each other by leaving notes and gifts, etc., and somewhere she can build/craft/design things and modify the world to some extent.
EDIT: Come to think of it, maybe I should start a new topic looking for games for us, so I get responses from more people than just Wurm fans who are already reading this thread. : )