Alpha is a series of maps which existed prior to Gold 1 & 2. They were the earliest playable maps, and few examples of their data remains.

This is the very first Alpha test-island, which was a very small (512x512) map that existed briefly in 2003 for the purpose of testing and creating the terrain system. The screenshots of the game from the original dev page, were taken on this island. Notch used to host a copy of this image on the Mojang server in a personal directory, presumably because he was mainly responsible for originally coding Wurm's terrain system. The image has been the source of speculation and wonder in several Forum threads. We have restored the map to use the modern color palette, and extracted the heightmap so it may be viewed in 3D, while also providing the original.