Link:
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cf...-my-PreCu.html
Bottom line, the mainstream prefer quest-driven gameplay that holds your hand. SOE and any other big name company out there knows this. Most of us know this. I know this. I'm niche. I prefer non-linear sandbox (player owned or run, at least partially) worlds. I prefer to do what I want to do. I hate story-driven gameplay.
What did I want to accomplish with this post? Well, tell me about MMO's that're like sandboxes. Give me links. Let me know what you know.
Games that fit this would have features like this:
1) Custom classes or a skill-based system
2) Player-owned content like houses, cities, forts that can be modified or decorated (1*)
3) Most of the in-game items or a lot of them are player-made
4) Not story driven; players do what they want and progress isn't linear (2*)
...... (1) - The content exists in the world that players adventure in. Not in an instance!
...... (2) - Hard to find any two players that leveled up the same.
Here're a few that I know of (i'll update when I remember others or find new ones):
1) Eve Online:
http://www.eveonline.com/background/
2) Wurm Online:
http://www.wurmonline.com/
3) Dawntide (early beta):
http://www.dawntide.net/
4) A Tale in the Desert:
http://www.atitd.com/
5) DarkFall(?):
http://www.us.darkfallonline.com/
6) Ultima Online(?):
http://www.uoherald.com/
7) Xsyon:
http://www.xsyon.com/features
(for the record, i've only tried
a tale in the desert and
ultima online on this list)
(ultima online should probably be on the list because the houses in that game are/were in the same world that adventuring and socializing and trading were performed. Basically, the world could be changed by players and other players would see the changes because they're not in instances. Not only that, but Ultima Online also is very non-linear too. It's sandboxy, AT LEAST. You do what you want to do. So I'll add it.)
(i'm not sure if darkfall belongs there, but it looks like it does)
I know I'm missing a lot of others. There're probably dozens of them out there in obscure places. I also am not including games that're not driven dominantly by story-driven or quest-driven gameplay. I would say that eq in 1999-02 (as it's here at project1999) is definitely more up by alley and more non-linear, but it's not at the scale I'm getting at in this post. It's still too restrictive. Not enough player-owned content. I am not saying that I only play sandbox mmos either. The fact that I've been playing here at project1999 and played DDO a while attests to that. It's just that for the topic of this thread I'm sticking to mmorpgs that're sandboxes.
EDIT: I'll show here at the end of this post what others have posted in this thread:
1) Linkrealms:
http://www.linkrealms.com/
2) Shadowbane:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadowbane (Play To Crush, player-run server)
3) Fallen Earth:
http://www.fallenearth.com/landing/