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how sandboxie is this game overall?
aspekx
Member UncommonPosts: 2,167
besides the character class and crafting schools you can obtain, i mean.
i know there is housing, but what other elements would make you call this a sandbox mmo, or would you not call it that?
"There are at least two kinds of games.
One could be called finite, the other infinite.
A finite game is played for the purpose of winning,
an infinite game for the purpose of continuing play."
Finite and Infinite Games, James Carse
Comments
You're better off asking in the Istaria forums. No one from Istaria really stops by here.
So far i ve realised that ISTARIA imo is an AAA sandbox game but...it is old...For the era it was launched, if it had today's state..it would certainly be an AAA sandbox game. Today where most AAA sandbox games are shriving to stay alive or shutting down(SWG) and the new indie companies a failing miserably to create a new sandbox experience(Xsyon) this game stands proud and improving day by day. It possible to have 1-2 developers working, but they do updates each month and even add content for free! I remember paying AoC subscription for the first year when the game was full of bugs and they gave us 2-3 updates in a year!! And that was a game that sold over a million copies at launch. Istaria's launch from what i hear was a bumpy one and people didn't have time or patience to forgive since WOW got out almost a year after
it depends on what you take as aa sandbox elements:
it has a lot of classes both combat and tradeskill and you can more or less take all of them
mobs more or less dont drop eq, only craft mats, recipes etc.
it has rather deep crafting system
it has in the world rebuildable ruins and also undead attacks taking over parts of the world
you can level by pure grinding and ignore the quests
Could you explain to me about re-building ruins and getting attacked by undead? I heard about it but dont quite understand how it works.
well, i currently dont play istaria, so i dont know if it is still so, but there were ruined/unfinished buildings in the world which worked more or less same way as unfinished buildings build by crafters - you were able to finish them and make them operational. (maybe in some cases you had to clear ruined parts and kill monsters first, dont know, never saw that)
as for the undead attacks, it afaik used to be more or less event - devs spawned special "structure" (i think it was blighted anchor), which started to change surrounding into blighted land and spawn withered aegis