You know what I mean, crafting, cutting down trees, building towns, developing economies, meaningful PVP?

Basically, what some people call a "sandbox game", and others call a "virtual world"

Now, I assume the answer is still no, but... I figured, I may as well ask every few months, and maybe eventually, the answer will actually be a "yes"

Oh, and before anyone mentions it, Yes, I have tried EVE, it's pretty good, but ultimately not based on a realistic economy (ie, you can survive purely on having a tough ship, and going out and killing things and reprocessing the loot. Now, I have no problem with killing things online, but I'm still holding out for a game where the killing happens in relation to crafting and control of resources)

Oh, err... I didn't mean to post this in the beta forum. If a moderator can move it to the general forum, that would be great, thanks.

Check out Second Life, if you want a world building scene with the opportunity to make RL money from an inworld economy, and you have some kind of skills, you will do well here.

If by cutting trees, you mean mining and by building towns you mean building stations ... yes.   EVE.

I would have said SWG at one point except for the PVP bit.  It was there, but meaningful? Not in my opinion.

You want a REAL realistic economy with the ultimate sandbox you may want to look into secondlife if you haven't already, but that's more a virtual world then an mmo.

Only a few mmo's come to mind that work somewhat like this Shadowbane and Anarchy Online, both have battles for land SB has battles for resources. The crafting is pretty much just stockpile and dumb into a merchant and AO's crafting system leaves a lot to be desired. Both are free to play though.

I would like a newer game like those, but that doesn't seem to be happening anytime real soon.

Originally posted by Koose

Check out Second Life, if you want a world building scene with the opportunity to make RL money from an inworld economy, and you have some kind of skills, you will do well here.

SL bleh, A complete world building MMO, well , I dunno about an ACTUAL MMO with full world building capabilities, but one game thats coming out where you can almost quite literally build your world and play god is Spore.  You should take a look at it if you haven't already.

link - City Building and Defense

Yeah, shadowbane was great for it's time.

Lots of flaws, of course, but really, considering that it's... what... 10 years old, it's not bad.

But... 10 years old... So... no...

I guess I can check out second life... I've seen adds for it, but I got the impression that

A) it was more of a design your own objects and whatnot kind of thing, as opposed to a realistic RPG/Simulation game.

B) mostly just a place for people to have online sex and make sexy looking avatars that wear next to nothing. Wich... while amusing to think about, isn't really my thing.

Originally posted by AmazingAvery

link - City Building and Defense

The instanced city building areas makes me worry that, once implemented, it'll end up sucking. But, all in all I'm really looking forward to seeing if age of conan manages to come together in the end.

Yes SB is pretty old, but still surprisingly has a following and flow of dedicated players.. and it's free so that helps.  Secondlife is A LOT of things... it's hard to put it into words exactly. There are of course like you said sex addicted freaks that like to whack off to pixels on there having sex with eachother, but there are a ton of other things to do.

Granted they just had to get rid of gambling which kinda sucks, but i am sure there's an underground for that going on lol Also CSI just got some sort of thing done inside SL where you can play out your CSI fun! There's an in game RPG called Everdark or something like that lol an MMO inside an MMO quite an interesting concept. Granted it's all based on an old engine and the graphics aren't the best out there muchless physics.

However, in the testing right now is the havok 4 engine so that's not too far off i'd imagine with many improvements to the game.

Granted either you spend real cash or you find a way to earn linden cash which now is boiled down to creating a unique fun game to play or interesting objects to sell etc... easy money is a thing in the past with SL :(

Originally posted by Denikin

 

Originally posted by AmazingAvery

link - City Building and Defense

Now, that's pretty cool.

 

 

The instanced city building areas makes me worry that, once implemented, it'll end up sucking. But, all in all I'm really looking forward to seeing if age of conan manages to come together in the end.

There are also the Border Kingdom area's where building are made by people, walls put up by people, set out how you like it - similar to SWG. Everything is destructable, Everything is player made - right down to siege weapons. Wood, Stone, Gold etc etc all cab be found for crafting.

You dont just have a couple of building that can be blown up - everything can be, you make your own siege weapons too, they arent just laying around for people to pick up.

PvE cities are instanced based against NPC's - Border Kingdom 'Battlekeeps' are OPEN against anyone during set periods, unlimited people.

Gameplay wise its not a clone unlike some newer releases : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFMoHGAUhCk

I think there is some weight for SecondLife considering the topic, also there is weight for metaverse upcoming from the mind of Ralph Koster and the talent with who he has surrounded himself. SWG was a good world builder, but the veterans of that game (ie, me) have pretty much done a superb job of making SOE feel like idiots (I know they are not, but the history speaks for itself on that one). There is always Entropia if you are rich and masochistic. It's a really bad bag to pull from at the moment. There are a couple of great games out there (perhaps 5/1000), but world building, or just simply building has been gimped from what I thought it would be by now. The success of WoW has somewhat diminished the ideas of what an MMO should be from 10 to 5 years ago. I am not bashing WoW, but I am bashing the games that felt the need to copy WoW, heck, I should even bash the games that decided to copy L2 for that matter. I nearly beat my head against a wall when I read the latest on Ryzom.

I am waiting for an immersive/freeform MMORPG as well. Age of Conan is looking compelling but areas being instances sounds like it will take away from any immersion or feeling of being in a "virtual world" and instead just another addictive MMO. Maybe it will turn out well - we'll find out at the end of March hopefully.

I'm putting my money on AoC being the next great solution to the OP's search. I know I'm drooling heavily over it.

I guess part of the problem with the world-building thing, is that what with MMOs being really popular, you have to take into account the relative maturity levels of the players.

I mean, a sanbox game really isn't fun if only 10% of the players are interested in building and 90% of the players are interested in knocking stuff down for no better reason then greifing.

So, when you say that people are making clones of WOW, that's true, but I think everyone needs to take the lessons learned from WOW and apply them, even to games of a different nature.

And basically, what that means is that you have to have some system to keep the game running smoothly, otherwise you end up with a really realistic game that's absolutely no fun to play, because of the greifers and people who have no interest in participating in the worldbuilding, but in causing trouble.

Like, the fact that WOW is fun specifically because there is no death penalty, whereas, with the maturity level of WOW players (or MMO players in general nowadays), if there was a real death penalty, nobody would actually play the game cause death happens way too often for absolutely no reason.

So, yeah, you can't have a game where anything really goes. The question is, can anyone design a game where the worldbuilding takes center-stage, but is still fun to play and balanced.

Maybe Age of Conan can do that. They've had to abstact a lot of things sure, but again, it's because they're trying to make a game that's actually playable. The questin is, at the end of the day, will their playable game still be anything like a real world building game?

Originally posted by modus

If by cutting trees, you mean mining and by building towns you mean building stations ... yes.   EVE.

I would have said SWG at one point except for the PVP bit.  It was there, but meaningful? Not in my opinion.

But EvE online takes forever to get to that point but yes it has allot of what you are looking for.

Try wurm online www.wurmonline it is basicly all building and terraforming land to your likeing and comunity is friendly too.

Originally posted by Denikin

Yeah, shadowbane was great for it's time.

Lots of flaws, of course, but really, considering that it's... what... 10 years old, it's not bad.

But... 10 years old... So... no...

 

I guess I can check out second life... I've seen adds for it, but I got the impression that

 

A) it was more of a design your own objects and whatnot kind of thing, as opposed to a realistic RPG/Simulation game.

B) mostly just a place for people to have online sex and make sexy looking avatars that wear next to nothing. Wich... while amusing to think about, isn't really my thing.

 

SB came out in March 25, 2003

The buildings and siege weapons in Age of Conan are placed in preset locations, you have some small choices of one preset plot vrs another but more or less its a scripted town. There are a limited number locations where you can build and those locations are always the same. You don't get any of the freedom you had in SWG to place things exactly where you want them, you couldn't just wander into the wilderness and say 'hey, this place looks cool, maybe ill build here'. So unless I was really drunk I wouldn't call it a worldbuilding MMO by any stretch of the imagination. Its more of a step back in mmo evolution in this area.

Originally posted by AmazingAvery

 

Originally posted by Denikin

 

Originally posted by AmazingAvery

link - City Building and Defense

Now, that's pretty cool.

 

 

The instanced city building areas makes me worry that, once implemented, it'll end up sucking. But, all in all I'm really looking forward to seeing if age of conan manages to come together in the end.

There are also the Border Kingdom area's where building are made by people, walls put up by people, set out how you like it - similar to SWG. Everything is destructable, Everything is player made - right down to siege weapons. Wood, Stone, Gold etc etc all cab be found for crafting.

 

You dont just have a couple of building that can be blown up - everything can be, you make your own siege weapons too, they arent just laying around for people to pick up.

PvE cities are instanced based against NPC's - Border Kingdom 'Battlekeeps' are OPEN against anyone during set periods, unlimited people.

Gameplay wise its not a clone unlike some newer releases : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFMoHGAUhCk

oh yay a post flaming WAR you are so cool..... a clone you say Its mythic their is no cloning there.

Go AoC Fanboi go you i wish i could be just like you.

Do your research.

Oh and ill probaly get banned cause they think i am flaming you! Its okay tho.