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**The Burning Question** (seriously, I have 3rd degree burns from it!)
Fadedbomb
Member Posts: 2,081
If you enjoy themeparks such as WoW, Rift, Aion, SWTOR this question is directed at you.
Why do you like themeparks so much? What about them is superior to any other model, and have you ever played a "Sandbox", "Sandpark", or game that promoted "Emergent" gameplay? If so, what caused such a negative experience for you? If not, are themeparks all you know?
My Guild and I have always been curious as to why people enjoy linear Developer created content so much rather than emergent gameplay that spawns from player experiences & activities.
Would you rather have an "Event" system designed by developers that tells you when another realm of players can invade your realm, or would you rather leave that up to the players themselves?
Questions questions, too many questions for a Wednesday 
!
The Theory of Conservative Conservation of Ignorant Stupidity:
Having a different opinion must mean you're a troll.
Comments
I love seafood. Did you know some people just hate it? Those people are weird. How can you NOT love seafood? I kind of understand it if it literally maks you sick, othewise those people are just missing out. Oh well, more seafood for me.
Different people enjoy different things. It really is that simple.
It isn't so simple. There's a specific reason generally given for hating "Seafood" or some other generalization thought to be an immediate comparison to my question.
The purpose of this question is to get a response that might be useful
. Simply saying "People like different things" isn't an answer, and it isn't as witty as you believed it to be unfortunately.
The Theory of Conservative Conservation of Ignorant Stupidity:
Having a different opinion must mean you're a troll.
I like both styles, but here let me tell you why I do also like themeparks, and do not just play sandboxes.
It's pretty simple:
I like content.
And I mean content that's professionally created. Not "player-created stories" - which is just emergent gameplay... Those are not real stories in the sense that a novel is a story, they're more like "hey, you know what happened to this stupid friend of mine the other day?" stories... Granted, they can be dramatic or even interesting, too, but they lack theme, depth, substance and most importantly creativity. I like deep, expansive, over-arching stories with characters, metaphors and even subtexts.
Some people say "go read a book then!" I can't agree more! Do go and read books, that's the best sort of recommendation you can provide!
Thing is, I read more books than almost any other person I know, and I still enjoy having a story in games I play. I have been profoundly affected by some story-telling games, so I'm convinced games are a solid medium for telling stories as well. I love the rush you get in EVE or the sense of that "living, always shifting universe", but having a good story is a different joy altogether - when I go through a good chain of quests in TSW or SWTOR I am thrilled as a gamer just like I'm thrilled trying to survive Hulkageddon in EVE! 
So, that's my two-penny dreadful...
You don't find it extremely limiting to be forced into following someone else's story that everyone else and their brother will follow in almost an exact same fashion?
Or, do you not think about it as something you're doing, but merely an interactive "book"?
The Theory of Conservative Conservation of Ignorant Stupidity:
Having a different opinion must mean you're a troll.
I never really enjoyed Themeparks , but I know people who do IRL , and the first thing they tell me is how great it is to macro/bot while they are at work , get back home and got some levels without doing anything. Those IRL friends today aren'y my friends at all. People play themeparks because it is so easy to level up and max out inside of a month without even trying to max out. Anyways there is alot more to what I can write here, but I think your getting the hang of what I'm trying to type here.
Themeparks have become a EZ-mode haven filled with kids and QQ-babies. And if you go "too" emergent the same kids will check out forums and spam world chat on how to do a quest. Yep , that's how pathetic MMO's have become for the past few years.
To answer your question I think it comes down to quality. EvE is the only quality sandbox game I know of and not everyone likes Sci-fi.
One big answer:
A lot of players, and specifically a lot of important, strongly invested players in MMORPGs are not very mature and break any kind of immersion, making you prefer to have pro devs make content for you instead of these guys.
My personal experience comes from FoM, in which I joined a faction for one or two weeks. It wasn't bad, people were nice, mostly fun (although not very RP, which is already a problem) but I quit when we started playing a big planet takeover event. Our leader, who was a very dedicated guy, who had been in there for years, and etc.. was just shouting "f**k" and rageing blindly whenever things went wrong. How can you feel that you are in a true battleground in a combat unit when your boss sounds like a 15 years old and has matching leadership skills? By which it seems evident to me that even the most goodwilled players can just make things work out wrong.
Now it doesn't mean that I believe any kind of sandbox does this, and maybe someday I'll find a home in a sandbox, but yeah I mostly prefer dev-created stuff, even when doing it with other players, because it's just way easier.
Oh and there's the fact that playing a sandbox casually is really difficult, because you often end up having to spend your life there or doing very little.
ROFL
@OP - I do enjoy the games you mentioned to a certain extend. That is, play slowly though the content, explore all there is to explore and when I hit cap, NOT fall for the treadmill of daily instances/dungeons/quests. FFS man, if I've done it once I won't do it again, or to quote Dr. Sheldon Cooper "I'm learning Finnish now. When I've finished that, I won't do it again."
On the other hand, I did give EVE online, MO and DF a try and I thought those were letdowns as well. No direction (or minimal) on what to do, and I got bored of the skill-grind pretty quickly. I even dare to say that these 'sandbox' games are as bad as the 'themepark' games, where the thredmil of 'end-game' has been exchanged for skill-grind.
I personally like the hybrid games more. As you can see in my signature, I've played Lineage II for 3800 hours, and enjoyed it a lot. It's partly themepark (linear leveling, some quests), but also holds a lot of sandbox features (political system pvp/pk and such). An other hybrid I liked as well was SilkRoad (once again, leveling and questing-based, but classes are defined by weapon & skill choice). And now there's GW2. Though more leaning towards themepark, it also has sandbox features (mostly because of the level scaling and thus kinda making it 'level-less'), where exploration and your personal story choices are the key features.
It *is* limiting, but games are all about limits. Because by definition they *consist of* rules. Tetris is extremely limiting but I'd say it's a better game then many MMOs out there - as well as one that I play more than many.
Ultimately it's not about what limits I am spared by design, it's about what there is to do and the quality of it. And of course, the question of whether it appeals to me. A game can let me do a lot of stuff, but if none of that appeals to me, what's the point? Freedom to do a lot of unappealing things?
I sense you're trying to knock story-telling-game design by calling it an "interactive book". See, thing is, books are great, and in my opinion there's nothing wrong with the concept of an interactive book. Not to mention it's obviously adding at least another layer on top of the "stuff" of a book!
As a closing point, I'd have to add that you *can* have liberties in a story-based game as well. Just not the same ones as you would in a game like EVE. See, WOW does give you liberties. You don't even have to do a single quest! Or you can go about doing quests in various ways. Other people do the same quests? Sure. But honestly, that doesn't bug me that much. Surely would be better if we could have an endless stream of quality stories that never repeat, but hey, that's nigh impossible.
And you know what? Players given freedom often repeat themselves as much as developer content limits us. Just look at the history of famous stories in emergent gameplay, and you'll see some pretty depressing repetition.
I absolutely love a good virtual world sandbox game. Only problem is.... for me...there isnt one yet.
Hoping there is one one day.
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee