A while back we sort of made a Bay 12 settlement on Wurm, but it kinda died off after the 'leader' had computer problems and people kinda lost interest.
I really want a game like Wurm, but Wurm isn't the game I want, if that makes sense.
How long ago was that? The game received major updates recently, and its about to get some more.
The game might have only 5k players, but its actually grown quite a bit from what it was before. There was a massive increase last November after the 1.0 update, where the fancy new models and multistory buildings were added (Look at the video above to see how it used to look like). After the hype from the update was over, a few players left, but there are still more active people than there were before. Since Wurm is so difficult, its only natural for people that don't have the patience for it to give up after trying it for a little bit. In my opinion, its this difficulty that makes the game so great. That's what that post on the forums about "player count going down" is about. Wurm isn't going anywhere, and has actually grown over the last year.
Premium Player Count for 1 year (measured daily):
(chart taken from here:
http://jenn001.game.wurmonline.com/mrtg/paying.html)