Sorry, I haven't played too many mmo's. I often read people referring to "sandbox" when talking about mmo's. What excactly does that mean?

Is WoW a sandbox mmo or the complete opposite, for example?

Ok, well, a sandbox is the opposite of linear (WoW) that means that you have no

storyline and skills based (multiples skills at once).WoW have no skills but lvls and

linear storyline ,it a lvl based game ,ex :for eve online it a sandbox game (skills

based and less storyline because you build your own ,so more freedom.

hope that help you:)

I don't mean to be rude, but if you perform a search for sandbox on the forms here you will find a few discussions where we beat this horse to death many many times.

The short answer to Sandbox is you have the ability to go anywhere do anything that you want in the game, the players really decide all the content and economy.  The closest thing to Sandbox MMO right now is EVE online, the truest purest form of a Sandbox MMO is Second Life but I don't qualify that as a game.

Wow is a structured hand held experiance which is the opposite of a Sandbox, same with LOTRO, Cabal, Wizard 101, Atlantica...etc.  Progressing thoughout these games is spoon fed to you.

Hope that helps you out.

Okej, thanks for  the answers folks!

As above. Sandbox means that there is no specific straight line to a end goal. For example, WoW is a typical linear (not sandbox) game where you start at level 1 and move to level 80. There are certain experiences that you can only enjoy once you attain a level and certain abilities you can have only with certain levels.

>5% of all MMOs are sandbox types. probably count them on 1 hand

Sandbox MMORPG is a style where the objectives are not predefined by the developer, you are given a world with some minimal predefined rulesets and you make your own game/story/adventure in it. Like a childs sandbox, which is just a box of sand, the actual game comes from the childs imagination and doesn’t have a set objective such as Ludo for instance.

And since I feel that the lack of imagination of most new gen gamers is sort of gone or none excisting I don't think we will see fullfledge sandbox MMORPG's, other then MMO's that might have certain sandbox feature's.