A true sandbox game is one where the players can make things. Houses. Towns. Cities. Fortresses. Castles. Player Quests. Terraforming. Etc. That's why it is called a "sandbox." Think about what kids do in a sandbox. They use the sand to make stuff.
If the developer is having to make a lot of the content, then it's less of a sandbox and more of a theme park with some few sandbox elements.
It's rare to find a pure sandbox game anymore. Minecraft comes close. SWG had a lot of sandbox content but there were theme park elements.
I agree.
But a better way to interpet the OP is they're half-right. Sandboxes do need good content. Content, in this context, is not content you MUST do, nor does it railroad massive numbers of players in the same direction--even if it does have a couple options. A good sandbox game needs to have strong background content and player-made content. Keep in mind player-made content is content too, since usually player-made content relies on builtin assets and even lore--by contrast, second life is an example where the users can create everything. Background content can be interpreted as many things. Generally it's not content that directs a player, but it's there to make a player feel like they're directing themselves. Side-quests are background content. NPCs that're scripted to move around a city according to day/night cycles is background content. NPC traffic on roads in a city is background content. Pedestrians talking to each other emergently about lore or their own lives is background content. Beautiful scenery is background content. A base world to inspire the players imagination is background content. Lore is background content. A strong sandbox is not simply a blank canvas, relying completely on the player to create everything. Rather, a strong sandbox is more like a complete painting that the player changes, but only ever rarely fundamentally. A strong sandbox inspires us on its own, right from the start, without any need for playermade content. it's an interesting place to be and live. Without it, the OP is absolutely right, the game will suffer, even if there can be ample player-made content.
The OP does ignore playermade content. Huge red flag. His/her believing safezones are pivotal to high population (and success) was addressed in my prior post. Don't want to repeat.
I want to add for years I've plaeyd Wurm ONline. It's a good example of what amounts to a pure sandbox. Its PvE is weak. It does have FFA PvP on the PvP servers. I do think the weak PvE content hurts it. That said, I love how the trees can reproduce on their own and how animals migrate. I've always felt Rolf should have went further and actually implemented some kind of evolution or AI in the ecosystem. Despite its weak PvE, its playermade content probably outmatches everything else out there, if you just count things like structures--buildings, bridges, boats, mines, houses, etc. And the FFA PvP on the PvP severs has few restrictions, giving people like me an outlet. Technically, it has safezones in the form of PvE-only servers (with ability to travel to PvP server), but this ability isn't available on the Epic PvP servers. On the Chaos server anyway, if one does not use the PvE-only servers as safezones, it's an experience hard to find anywhere else, except in Rust, and even that's not nealry the same, since its progression is, by comparison, extremely lightweight. Rust is more like an FPS.
One thing I always cherished in UO was how players could make books. It's stragne to me there're no books yet in Wurm Online. How? Even games like Ahserons Call allowed you to inscribe items and write books. It's a form of playermade content that's tragically absent in a lot of sandbox MMO's.
It's possible the reason we don't find a lot of MMO's with the ability to write books and make paintings is because they're concerned about copyright issues. What if you copy a RL book, for example?
EDIT: Ok Wurm Online added books in mid 2018 I think. I started in 2012. So that's about 7 years whree it didn't have them. UO had them 20 eyars ago.
A true sandbox game is one where the players can make things. Houses. Towns. Cities. Fortresses. Castles. Player Quests. Terraforming. Etc. That's why it is called a "sandbox." Think about what kids do in a sandbox. They use the sand to make stuff.
If the developer is having to make a lot of the content, then it's less of a sandbox and more of a theme park with some few sandbox elements.
It's rare to find a pure sandbox game anymore. Minecraft comes close. SWG had a lot of sandbox content but there were theme park elements.
The problem is very few people want to play in an empty sandbox and those empty sandbox games fail over and over.
Sandboxes that come with toys, pre-built castles, and hidden surprises fair much better and are the only sandbox MMOs that have been successful. If you want to make a sandbox MMO that won't be shutting its doors in a year, it's probably a good idea to follow their example.
Or you could make another empty world and go "the players are the content! Wait why is nobody playing my game? Guess I'll die."
It felt weird saying sandbox but with "prebuild things".
I think the people that want to play sandbox are already doing that in minecraft. So when people say they want to play a sandbox mmorpg... They probably mean sandpark. Basically sandboxy themepark mmo.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
They fail because devs think Sandbox = FFA PvP and player grinding, sorry, player driven economies.
Sandbox = sand and tools to play in it and the shape the world.
The recent "sandboxes" have had very little sand and even less tools. You couldn't do, be or have anything that wasn't specifically intended by the devs.
UO was a sandbox because you could combine a dozen different tools to literally run a casino. The devs never "put in tools" to let players "run a casino." The devs just put in lots of sand and tools and the players build a casino.
A true sandbox game is one where the players can make things. Houses. Towns. Cities. Fortresses. Castles. Player Quests. Terraforming. Etc. That's why it is called a "sandbox." Think about what kids do in a sandbox. They use the sand to make stuff.
If the developer is having to make a lot of the content, then it's less of a sandbox and more of a theme park with some few sandbox elements.
It's rare to find a pure sandbox game anymore. Minecraft comes close. SWG had a lot of sandbox content but there were theme park elements.
The problem is very few people want to play in an empty sandbox and those empty sandbox games fail over and over.
Sandboxes that come with toys, pre-built castles, and hidden surprises fair much better and are the only sandbox MMOs that have been successful. If you want to make a sandbox MMO that won't be shutting its doors in a year, it's probably a good idea to follow their example.
Or you could make another empty world and go "the players are the content! Wait why is nobody playing my game? Guess I'll die."
There hasnt been any sandbox mmo's though..there have been a few survival multiplayer games masquerading as MMO's.
Everything is on a sliding scale between sandbox (freedom to make your own experience) and theme park (a guided tour curated by the developer) content. There has never been and will never be a perfect sandbox where you can do anything you can think of.
Games like Eve and UO lean heavily toward the sandbox side, but still have theme park elements.
WoW or FFXIV lean heavily toward the theme park side but still allow you a fair amount of freedom in how you want to enjoy the rides and which rides you want to enjoy.
BDO and ArcherAge fall in the middle with equal parts curated content and open world freedom.
On both ends of the scale is a break point where going beyond it sacrifices too much and you will fail to attract and keep an audience. A theme park where you don't get any choices and just have to play on rails is going to flop. A sandbox where you have nothing to do but be a murder hobo and stack rocks is going to fail as we've seen repeatedly.
Shadowbane pushed the boundaries of just how little content they could get away with, and it was effectively dead in 3 years (it went true F2P with no cash shop and Ubi kept it alive as a training ground for future development). Dark Fall didn't take the hint, pushed the boundaries further and died even sooner.
You are not going to build a successful MMO with nothing to do in it. MMOs thrive on content.
BDO is a sandbox, AAAA title. The main problem is the "goldie locks" syndrome. It's not the games, it's the players.
And here I was thinking, look how popular B rate MMOs such as BDO are.
Pro tip....its the games....
I disagree, the game is the objective work of the developer , a person not satisfied with a game is subjective to that person's taste.
What you are saying is a developer must cater to your personal taste so that your own opinion becomes objective since the game was developed around "the gamer" .
Very basic logic.
For my subjective taste, BDO hits all the marks. When I read over 10 years of this forum and what people "say " they want, they really don't want anything, but to complain about games that only exist in the subjective mind of a forum post .
Its OK, I am well used to people enjoying games I don't like, no accounting for taste or the lack of respect they have for themselves.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Most sandbox mmorpgs that are actually mmos(not survival games) tend to like said skimp out on content and focus on pvp aspects too much. Yes territory control and pvp should be a huge part but equally so.
A true sandbox game is one where the players can make things. Houses. Towns. Cities. Fortresses. Castles. Player Quests. Terraforming. Etc. That's why it is called a "sandbox." Think about what kids do in a sandbox. They use the sand to make stuff.
If the developer is having to make a lot of the content, then it's less of a sandbox and more of a theme park with some few sandbox elements.
It's rare to find a pure sandbox game anymore. Minecraft comes close. SWG had a lot of sandbox content but there were theme park elements.
The problem is very few people want to play in an empty sandbox and those empty sandbox games fail over and over.
Sandboxes that come with toys, pre-built castles, and hidden surprises fair much better and are the only sandbox MMOs that have been successful. If you want to make a sandbox MMO that won't be shutting its doors in a year, it's probably a good idea to follow their example.
Or you could make another empty world and go "the players are the content! Wait why is nobody playing my game? Guess I'll die."
There hasnt been any sandbox mmo's though..there have been a few survival multiplayer games masquerading as MMO's.
And another Bingo!
There are no sandbox MMOs - there are some that have some sandboxy features but not enough to be actual sandbox games IMO - there are always too many constraints in place.
ArcheAge and BDO are not sandbox games for example.
What are your thoughts on people's insistence that Ultima Online was a sandbox?
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
A true sandbox game is one where the players can make things. Houses. Towns. Cities. Fortresses. Castles. Player Quests. Terraforming. Etc. That's why it is called a "sandbox." Think about what kids do in a sandbox. They use the sand to make stuff.
If the developer is having to make a lot of the content, then it's less of a sandbox and more of a theme park with some few sandbox elements.
It's rare to find a pure sandbox game anymore. Minecraft comes close. SWG had a lot of sandbox content but there were theme park elements.
The problem is very few people want to play in an empty sandbox and those empty sandbox games fail over and over.
Sandboxes that come with toys, pre-built castles, and hidden surprises fair much better and are the only sandbox MMOs that have been successful. If you want to make a sandbox MMO that won't be shutting its doors in a year, it's probably a good idea to follow their example.
Or you could make another empty world and go "the players are the content! Wait why is nobody playing my game? Guess I'll die."
There hasnt been any sandbox mmo's though..there have been a few survival multiplayer games masquerading as MMO's.
And another Bingo!
There are no sandbox MMOs - there are some that have some sandboxy features but not enough to be actual sandbox games IMO - there are always too many constraints in place.
ArcheAge and BDO are not sandbox games for example.
Gotta agree with Kano here, people keep referring to several MMOs as sandboxes even though they really don't have much or any actual sandbox elements.
A game "with nothing to do in it" is not a sandbox, that's just a bad/empty game.
It's not just a matter of it being undirected content, but the actual gameplay elements that is implemented into the game to facilitate it. IE, features and tools that actually lets you shape the world content and help contribute to user experience.
This is the problem of people saying titles like EVE and UO are sandboxes, or that BDO is sandboxy. The game's leave you to choose how you progress through the game's content, but it does not give you any control or influence over the content.
The closest thing to actual sandbox content MMOs have had mostly rests in dungeon creation tools. Things that have allowed players to actually build and share a new user experience with other players.
Plunking a house down in a field next to a dozen other houses and farming up some cheese to go trade with an NPC, is not sandbox gameplay. Creating a economy network for your character off of predefined nodes in the game world and meandering back and forth between things to grind money and mats for crafting/enchanting, is not sandbox gameplay. Locking someone in a room with a hundred slime monsters is not sandbox gameplay.
Now, UO may be a good example of a title with more emergent gameplay elements, but how much of that game's user experience was defined by visiting places players had built, unraveling and exploring plots that players had created, or utilizing anything that was of a player's design? Player interaction may be a primary facet of the game, but player's contributing to the core content and user experience is very different, and not particularly common.
Just player and social interaction is not itself "sandbox". That's something any multiplayer game should have, otherwise it being a multiplayer is pointless. Letting players shape the world's content and have a hand in defining their own as well as the user experience of others within a shared world is more so a key missing trait there.
For example, what makes Minecraft have continued success where many similar sandbox survival games have failed? It obviously has not been the quests or the directed user experience, because it still lacks both of those.
Instead, it has a broad and reasonably well supported toolkit for players to sculpt environments/worlds, adventures, narratives, trials, etc. To create actual shareable content for other players to consume.
A sandbox requires that element, the ability to create. Otherwise it's just people throwing sand at each other. And that's something that hasn't really bled into MMOs much at all yet. Biggest step towards that anyone's made was EQNext, and that didn't even make it past back end tech development.
The closest thing to actual sandbox content MMOs have had mostly rests in dungeon creation tools. Things that have allowed players to actually build and share a new user experience with other players.
I think at this point I'll have to just reassert that it's all subjective and one person's sandbox is another person's, um, "not sandbox" simply because I don't agree with you at all.
There is a difference between being given tools to create content from outside the game, and being given a world where one can essentially "live in it" and affect that world from actually playing in the game world.
That's the problem with these arguments, people keep insisting that x is a sandbox and y isn't but then they just pull out their own opinions which always have their own preferences in mind.
"A Sandbox game has to have open world pvp because of x, y and z" "A Sandbox game has to have building otherwise yadda, yadda, yadda, ..." "Building? It has to have tools so that players can do whatever they want regardless of developer input ..."
etc, etc.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
The closest thing to actual sandbox content MMOs have had mostly rests in dungeon creation tools. Things that have allowed players to actually build and share a new user experience with other players.
I think at this point I'll have to just reassert that it's all subjective and one person's sandbox is another person's, um, "not sandbox" simply because I don't agree with you at all.
There is a difference between being given tools to create content from outside the game, and being given a world where one can essentially "live in it" and affect that world from actually playing in the game world.
That's the problem with these arguments, people keep insisting that x is a sandbox and y isn't but then they just pull out their own opinions which always have their own preferences in mind.
"A Sandbox game has to have open world pvp because of x, y and z" "A Sandbox game has to have building otherwise yadda, yadda, yadda, ..." "Building? It has to have tools so that players can do whatever they want regardless of developer input ..."
etc, etc.
That's the distinction, you are arguing discrete elements, I have asserted it only from the point that sandboxes generally need elements that lets one shape user experience. Your examples shows people picking discrete elements from within that which they have bias for as opposed to the broader scope of what those elements actually do and mean for the gameplay.
And that's also why my statement used "closest thing to" not "that is actual sandbox content".
And it just serves to extend the point instead, I would assert that no current MMOs actually let you affect the world you are playing in. Best any have done is offer a binary state for some things to exist in when it comes to PvE, and PvP generally boils down to territorial control. Things that exist as mechanics well outside the scope of sandbox content and gameplay.
Would you claim Battlefield is a sandbox just because it's PvP lets you claim nodes against an opposing team? Would you call claiming a vespene geyser in Starcraft to imply the game is a sandbox? If not, then why would claiming ownership of a planet whose full scope of existence just means you gain some resources every so often be sandbox?
That would be the point I'm getting at there. Sandboxes are not just game elements that lets a player interact with another player or dropping a house in a zone. You can objectively note that, because those exact gameplay elements exist in many non-sandbox titles. How those gameplay elements can be leveraged to affect the rest of the game ends up having considerably more meaning.
The closest thing to actual sandbox content MMOs have had mostly rests in dungeon creation tools. Things that have allowed players to actually build and share a new user experience with other players.
I think at this point I'll have to just reassert that it's all subjective and one person's sandbox is another person's, um, "not sandbox" simply because I don't agree with you at all.
There is a difference between being given tools to create content from outside the game, and being given a world where one can essentially "live in it" and affect that world from actually playing in the game world.
That's the problem with these arguments, people keep insisting that x is a sandbox and y isn't but then they just pull out their own opinions which always have their own preferences in mind.
"A Sandbox game has to have open world pvp because of x, y and z" "A Sandbox game has to have building otherwise yadda, yadda, yadda, ..." "Building? It has to have tools so that players can do whatever they want regardless of developer input ..."
etc, etc.
I can't agree with this line of reasoning as it concludes there is no such thing as a sandbox style game.
While the degree of sand certainly does vary, by common acceptance games like EVE, UO, and SWG have been long accepted as sand boxes, WOW, SWTOR and LOTRO, theme parks for sure.
There are certain characteristics shared between both styles, and some which when included in increasing numbers tilts the scales one way or another.
Think of it this way, is there no real way to discern between wolves, domestic dogs, coyotes, jackals or red foxes, or are the all just "dogs?"
Of course there is, each has some characteristics which they share with the others while also having others which help define their actual identity.
Same with games, lines can sometimes get blurry enough to require a hybrid definition, (see horse, donkey, and mule) but I can't agree it's entirely subjective to one's personal opinion.
Many people are just "wrong" you know, I've come to accept this. (And no, their opinions are not equally valid, some are quite deficient, present company excepted of course.)
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Theme parks also fail, despite most of them being AAA. 95% of the wow clones made in the last 20 years are dead or on the verge of dying.
The way you word that makes it seem like a 20 year old game isn’t s success if it shuts down... I wouldn’t call and mmo that profits for even 5 years a failure.
I thought of UO as a sandbox because it started out as a simulation. The simulation would respond to player actions.
Also, the flexibility of the character development seemed more sandboxy to me in that you could mix and match abilities for the creation of very specialized characters. For some reason the character development didn't feel like it was on rails.
I agree.
I think that the reason character development didn't feel like it was on rails was because, well, it wasn't. You advanced because you used skills. On anything, any time and any place. You got rewards under the same circumstances, any time and any place. Of course there were better places, but they were common and not placed on the rail system. And knowledge of the world becomes important in advancing faster, or getting ahold of special things you need.
In Themepark games they give you XP and rewards for running their quests, as the primary focus. So the quest system becomes like a railroad to advancement. And if you get off the train you suffer in advancement speed and reward. If you stay on the train, all is provided for.
There's a lot more to Sandbox design, if done well, than just that. As has been pointed out many times in recent posts around here. Sandbox games that are made well give the players a lot of freeform world interaction to play around with.
Comments
I think the people that want to play sandbox are already doing that in minecraft. So when people say they want to play a sandbox mmorpg... They probably mean sandpark. Basically sandboxy themepark mmo.
Pro tip....its the games....
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Sandbox = sand and tools to play in it and the shape the world.
The recent "sandboxes" have had very little sand and even less tools. You couldn't do, be or have anything that wasn't specifically intended by the devs.
UO was a sandbox because you could combine a dozen different tools to literally run a casino. The devs never "put in tools" to let players "run a casino." The devs just put in lots of sand and tools and the players build a casino.
Games like Eve and UO lean heavily toward the sandbox side, but still have theme park elements.
WoW or FFXIV lean heavily toward the theme park side but still allow you a fair amount of freedom in how you want to enjoy the rides and which rides you want to enjoy.
BDO and ArcherAge fall in the middle with equal parts curated content and open world freedom.
On both ends of the scale is a break point where going beyond it sacrifices too much and you will fail to attract and keep an audience. A theme park where you don't get any choices and just have to play on rails is going to flop. A sandbox where you have nothing to do but be a murder hobo and stack rocks is going to fail as we've seen repeatedly.
Shadowbane pushed the boundaries of just how little content they could get away with, and it was effectively dead in 3 years (it went true F2P with no cash shop and Ubi kept it alive as a training ground for future development). Dark Fall didn't take the hint, pushed the boundaries further and died even sooner.
You are not going to build a successful MMO with nothing to do in it. MMOs thrive on content.
Think about Fallout 4 MMORPG, where you have to group up to do Dungeons and quests.
But as you pointed out in your OP, most Sandbox MMOs don’t have much content, because developers see Sandboxes as a cheap way to make MMORPGs.
So instead of having Fallout 4 Online, we have Fallout 76.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
MurderHerd
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
A game "with nothing to do in it" is not a sandbox, that's just a bad/empty game.
It's not just a matter of it being undirected content, but the actual gameplay elements that is implemented into the game to facilitate it. IE, features and tools that actually lets you shape the world content and help contribute to user experience.
This is the problem of people saying titles like EVE and UO are sandboxes, or that BDO is sandboxy. The game's leave you to choose how you progress through the game's content, but it does not give you any control or influence over the content.
The closest thing to actual sandbox content MMOs have had mostly rests in dungeon creation tools. Things that have allowed players to actually build and share a new user experience with other players.
Plunking a house down in a field next to a dozen other houses and farming up some cheese to go trade with an NPC, is not sandbox gameplay. Creating a economy network for your character off of predefined nodes in the game world and meandering back and forth between things to grind money and mats for crafting/enchanting, is not sandbox gameplay. Locking someone in a room with a hundred slime monsters is not sandbox gameplay.
Now, UO may be a good example of a title with more emergent gameplay elements, but how much of that game's user experience was defined by visiting places players had built, unraveling and exploring plots that players had created, or utilizing anything that was of a player's design? Player interaction may be a primary facet of the game, but player's contributing to the core content and user experience is very different, and not particularly common.
Just player and social interaction is not itself "sandbox". That's something any multiplayer game should have, otherwise it being a multiplayer is pointless. Letting players shape the world's content and have a hand in defining their own as well as the user experience of others within a shared world is more so a key missing trait there.
For example, what makes Minecraft have continued success where many similar sandbox survival games have failed? It obviously has not been the quests or the directed user experience, because it still lacks both of those.
Instead, it has a broad and reasonably well supported toolkit for players to sculpt environments/worlds, adventures, narratives, trials, etc. To create actual shareable content for other players to consume.
A sandbox requires that element, the ability to create. Otherwise it's just people throwing sand at each other. And that's something that hasn't really bled into MMOs much at all yet. Biggest step towards that anyone's made was EQNext, and that didn't even make it past back end tech development.
Not sure why you would post this. Are you really high?
If you want a new idea, go read an old book.
In order to be insulted, I must first value your opinion.
There is a difference between being given tools to create content from outside the game, and being given a world where one can essentially "live in it" and affect that world from actually playing in the game world.
That's the problem with these arguments, people keep insisting that x is a sandbox and y isn't but then they just pull out their own opinions which always have their own preferences in mind.
"A Sandbox game has to have open world pvp because of x, y and z"
"A Sandbox game has to have building otherwise yadda, yadda, yadda, ..."
"Building? It has to have tools so that players can do whatever they want regardless of developer input ..."
etc, etc.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
And that's also why my statement used "closest thing to" not "that is actual sandbox content".
And it just serves to extend the point instead, I would assert that no current MMOs actually let you affect the world you are playing in. Best any have done is offer a binary state for some things to exist in when it comes to PvE, and PvP generally boils down to territorial control. Things that exist as mechanics well outside the scope of sandbox content and gameplay.
Would you claim Battlefield is a sandbox just because it's PvP lets you claim nodes against an opposing team? Would you call claiming a vespene geyser in Starcraft to imply the game is a sandbox? If not, then why would claiming ownership of a planet whose full scope of existence just means you gain some resources every so often be sandbox?
That would be the point I'm getting at there. Sandboxes are not just game elements that lets a player interact with another player or dropping a house in a zone. You can objectively note that, because those exact gameplay elements exist in many non-sandbox titles. How those gameplay elements can be leveraged to affect the rest of the game ends up having considerably more meaning.
While the degree of sand certainly does vary, by common acceptance games like EVE, UO, and SWG have been long accepted as sand boxes, WOW, SWTOR and LOTRO, theme parks for sure.
There are certain characteristics shared between both styles, and some which when included in increasing numbers tilts the scales one way or another.
Think of it this way, is there no real way to discern between wolves, domestic dogs, coyotes, jackals or red foxes, or are the all just "dogs?"
Of course there is, each has some characteristics which they share with the others while also having others which help define their actual identity.
Same with games, lines can sometimes get blurry enough to require a hybrid definition, (see horse, donkey, and mule) but I can't agree it's entirely subjective to one's personal opinion.
Many people are just "wrong" you know, I've come to accept this. (And no, their opinions are not equally valid, some are quite deficient, present company excepted of course.)
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I think that the reason character development didn't feel like it was on rails was because, well, it wasn't. You advanced because you used skills. On anything, any time and any place. You got rewards under the same circumstances, any time and any place. Of course there were better places, but they were common and not placed on the rail system. And knowledge of the world becomes important in advancing faster, or getting ahold of special things you need.
In Themepark games they give you XP and rewards for running their quests, as the primary focus. So the quest system becomes like a railroad to advancement. And if you get off the train you suffer in advancement speed and reward. If you stay on the train, all is provided for.
There's a lot more to Sandbox design, if done well, than just that. As has been pointed out many times in recent posts around here.
Sandbox games that are made well give the players a lot of freeform world interaction to play around with.
Once upon a time....
A Tale in the Desert
This is what should be used for an example of what a Sandbox MMO is.