Truly wonderful article.  We need a "spiritual successor" to UO.

DF is a sandbox; it doesn't have enough depth to its non-PVP-related activities... yet. it'll get there though.

the other big difference between sandboxes and themeparks that wasn't mentioned is that themeparks start high and maintain that high through diligent addition of content or risk fading into irrelevance.

sandboxes start small and niche, and build up their content/mechanics/dpeth over time. people forget EVE started as a very niche game with not that much content, it's taken 5 years + 10 expansions for it to get to where it is now. DF's days as a sandbox are only just beginning.

point being that the spiritual successor to UO is not going to just magically appear on release day (just wait for the hardcore MO fans that have been bagging DF to face their own reality check...). the spiritual successor to UO is going to *evolve*, not be released, and right now, the most likely game to taken that title is Darkfall.

I couldn't agree more with the article. I'm seriously starting to believe I was literally in love with the game. I've tried to go back so many times but it's just not the same post-UO3D, even with the classic engine. The game's just changed too much. Pre-trammel and even the first year post-trammel were the glorious days in which UO claimed (and in my eyes, still owns) the title of "best MMOG ever."

I miss you, UO. :(

Originally posted by Loke666

Originally posted by Wraithone

Blizzard is all about making the most money. Thats to be found in the mass markets. Thus, thats what their focus is.  Niche markets seldom attract the attention of major investors.  All those investors care about is their return on investment.  Intone the mystic phrase; "Its just like World of Warcraft" and watch them go all starry eyed, and start throwing truck loads of money at you.

AAA class games are NOT cheap. They typically cost many millions of dollars(of other peoples money). Thus the suits involved are VERY wary of taking risks.  Theme park games like WoW have demonstrated a substantial return on investment.  Sand box games tend to be niche. Until that perception can be altered, I doubt we are going to see much progress.

 

Blizzard will today only makes games they know will earn moneys, things were different 12 years ago but this is something that happens with most companys that becomes to big. Also they lost Jeff Strain who kinda was a pioneer and wasn't scared of trying new things like Diablo who were rather different at the time.

So Blizzard can well make a sandbox game but only after someone else have a successful one running, Morhaime would not take the chanse otherwise because a Blizzard MMO today will cost 100K million dollars at least to make. A total failure would really hurt Blizzard, both in terms of cash and hurting the brand.

No, the hope of the sandbox fans are right now with other companies, like CCP. CCP will present their next game late this month, it is most likely "World of darkness online". If it will be a sandbox, a themepark or something else is still anyones guess but it is likely that it will at least have many sandbox features. It will however also likely have many RPG features (something that is rare if not non existing in a MMO) since it is made together with the pen and paper RPG maker White wolf.

As I see it there are other way than themparks and sandboxes also and mixes of both those and other types of games. A MMO doesn't really have to either be like EQ/Wow or Eve. In Wow your only freedom is to not take a quest if you think it is boring, I don't see the future of gaming in that.

$100 Billion to make a game?  Damn I can't wait until Blizz releases it :P

Originally posted by Squal'Zell  

 either way pvp limitations have to be placed to avoid gankfests like darkfall

On our server, in UO, we had a rather large guild dedicated to stopping gankers/griefers/whatever. What enabled this? Instant teleportation to a location of the players choosing [and of course the lack of long term power-up goals]. The community took care of itself even if the occasional "murder" was required to stop the more annoying members (exploiters and/or griefers) of the populace.

 I want my instant teleports to virtually anywhere in the world back. The players cannot do the "police" work when it takes 30 to 60 minutes to get places and players get rather bored when forced to sit around doing nothing but babysitting to protect against griefing. Mechanics will always fail in protecting against griefing. Give players the tools to handle such things. More sandbox please.

Originally posted by javac

DF is a sandbox; it doesn't have enough depth to its non-PVP-related activities... yet. it'll get there though.

 

the other big difference between sandboxes and themeparks that wasn't mentioned is that themeparks start high and maintain that high through diligent addition of content or risk fading into irrelevance.

 

sandboxes start small and niche, and build up their content/mechanics/dpeth over time. people forget EVE started as a very niche game with not that much content, it's taken 5 years + 10 expansions for it to get to where it is now. DF's days as a sandbox are only just beginning.

 

point being that the spiritual successor to UO is not going to just magically appear on release day (just wait for the hardcore MO fans that have been bagging DF to face their own reality check...). the spiritual successor to UO is going to *evolve*, not be released, and right now, the most likely game to taken that title is Darkfall.

Here's the thing, will today's anti-social, instant gradification mmo players actually give DF a chance to live long enough to become the next uo?

I just gave up on these new MMO's and went back to UO.  I like the freedom to do what I want.  

Originally posted by JGMIII

Originally posted by javac

DF is a sandbox; it doesn't have enough depth to its non-PVP-related activities... yet. it'll get there though.

 

the other big difference between sandboxes and themeparks that wasn't mentioned is that themeparks start high and maintain that high through diligent addition of content or risk fading into irrelevance.

 

sandboxes start small and niche, and build up their content/mechanics/dpeth over time. people forget EVE started as a very niche game with not that much content, it's taken 5 years + 10 expansions for it to get to where it is now. DF's days as a sandbox are only just beginning.

 

point being that the spiritual successor to UO is not going to just magically appear on release day (just wait for the hardcore MO fans that have been bagging DF to face their own reality check...). the spiritual successor to UO is going to *evolve*, not be released, and right now, the most likely game to taken that title is Darkfall.

 

Here's the thing, will today's anti-social, instant gradification mmo players actually give DF a chance to live long enough to become the next uo?

You are making the quite unwarranted assumption that the darkfall Dev's are capable of creating something on the order of the original UO.  Given the sorry state of the game as it exists, what makes you believe that they have the ability(let alone motivation) to advance to that point?  The reality is that darkfall is very likely to remain a gankfest niche game, which will slowly fade out as so many before it have.

Originally posted by veritas_X

I don't think its been that long since a proper sandbox was on the market, I'd say SWG circa 2005 fit the bill of just about everything you described.

Otherwise I agree with most of your points, with particular kudos to the non-combat options and XP as an anti-social mechanic.  Hopefully some development types hear you.

I was thinking the same thing and thats because SWG when it was first in development had a lot of ex-uo developers on its team. Its a shame that SOE beat the UO out of SWG because in my mind its what made that game great. I agree with Dana however... we need a new game that fits that bill.

It might be almost impossible to go back to what UO was doing and make a game with absolute freedom. I would take partial freedom over what we have today and the main problem is the reliance on quests. Before the quest phase started, games like EQ and Asherons Call offered quite a bit of freedom in the fact that people were allowed to level where and how they wanted. People became jaded with camping places for hours, but the thing is people could choose to move to wherever they liked. The game didn't demand they be there. Exploration plays another key role in this. MMO's today are typically designed where if you do every quest given to you, you see every part of the world. Exploration is no longer rewarded because the places you might find are the places the game eventually leads you to anyways. There is no mystery. Everyone knows everything even before they play it.

Dev's seem to think "Hey!!! MMO's are about bringing people together.". Then they use a level system that segregates the community into nice little slices. Lvl 20-24,25-29,30-34 and so on. Making sure that if a friend starts playing after or before you you wont be able to play together unless you make a new toon. Punishing you for having a friend join the game. A few exceptions, of course, but not enough imho.

New player's are then often attacked and berated going through the "group" content. Usually by the alternate characters of some kid who's ran toon after toon to max level, for not knowing about  some detail of the games mechanics.

Then you rely on expansions to place more of the same content in for the people that have been around awhile. Rehashing the "go here, kill this, get this item(maybe), repeat x20, run back then do it all again" quests we had to run to be "leet" in the first place. Maybe with a few extra bells n whistles, but a dog's still a dog.

I dont get it.  /shrug

By far the best thing about a sandbox game is the community freedom. You shouldn't have to push people into enjoying themselves. If what you made is fun, people will do it. If not, fix it or try again.  When's the last time you ordered a burger and they said you had to have extra pickle because they think it tastes better. Seems like every other industry work's for their customer. Movies, t.v. have groups telling them if their stuff is  good or bad. They don't like it, it doesn't go through. A musician writes a song no one likes, he/she tries again.

I haven't actually listened to "You'll do it and like it!" since I was 8 years old. And they want me to pay for it. lol.

Good summery of sandbox’s potential, with a nod that it may have not been as rosy as some people remember.

Some of the things he mentioned had a place in any game, what theme park would not benefit from a ‘trend’ like an invasion from the north? Giving the players a focus occasionally in any MMO would work well.

I think what has been forgotten though is how much all the old MMO’s depended on their communities of players. Without being able to revive that feeling of community a new sandbox game is going nowhere.

The expectations of a MMO for the younger generation are now vastly different. Instant gratification soloing and attention span of a four year old casualness are the order of the day. How many of those could we expect to bring on board? But I question if we need them, adventure games were never for pre teens, they once sold well. The market for an older players game is out there, it would just take a company the guts to want a slice of that pie and make something for it.

To this day no game has surpassed UO in terms of fun for me.  No game has even come close, really.

I would love to see someone take the T2A UO and put it into a modern 3D engine.  I think it would be great.

But.... It's been almost 13 years since this genre started and there really have not been any big improvements in game design.

Personally I would love to see something bigger than UO.  I want a fantastical virtual world.  I want a place to go to live another life, a life of a mage, or warrior, or an inn keeper if you choose.  A world as mirrored to an actual living breathing place as technology will allow.

I want a game that changes and adapts to it's players where there are realistic consequences for your actions and meaningful rewards for heroic deeds.

A world like the one found in 1/2 Prince or .Hack.

Do I ever thing this will happen?  Absolutely not. 

Originally posted by Jairoe03

Wouldn't this appear to be narrowminded thinking in itself on a concept based on an open mindset? I'm coming to think more and more "sandboxes" released are going to carry elements from the theme park mindset that do seem appealing and why not? There are good things that can carry over and as Eric has indirectly pointed out, MMORPG's regardless of theme-park or sandbox carry universal similarities within the MMORPG realm. Why can't a game without levels and open-ended skillset have an "end game" (perhaps you need to have so much combat skills and mining skills to mine incredibly hard to acquire ore in dangerous territory) or quest lines to follow that may not reward EXP but there's plenty of other things that can be used as reward (money is great last time I checked). These are just things I'm throwing out there, but would love to see the reactions to some of these questions.

I'd argue a 'sandbox' is more defined by what it does not limit than what it does, and some of those limits are more implicit in the 'game culture' than explicit in the skills sets and 'Terms and Conditions'.

The concept of 'end game' is a tricky one though - for some players, an mmorpg is (admittedly in a pretty limited way)  an alternate 'life',  and opinions vary greatly if either the 'artificial' or 'real' life should have a neatly defined 'end game'.

Problems come in with, to use your example, areas where you need high skills to go somewhere, or high mining skills for a particular ore. In the real world, people go to extremely dangerous places out of a sense of adventure and exploration, or to be known as the explorer/discoverer of something, or for profit from what they think is there - the latter is especially true for the 'rare mineral extraction'. But those are not ends in themselves, they translate into the joy of the experience, fame for the achievement, fortune from the profits - but they are not the end of the 'game'.

By advertising certain areas as the 'most difficult, greatest reward sources'  there is an automatic implied challenge in there - and given much of the audience is competetive-minded gamers, it's bound to  appeal - that this is where the 'best' players are to be found, and thus qualifying to be there and thrive becomes an aim in and of itself. But life really isn't like that.... or rather, it is for a small minority, most of us are not slogging out our lives desperately trying to get a particular house, car and lifestyle in the hope of looking impressive to the rest of the world. Many do it happily, in some cases almost obsessively, in a game setting, but simply because the objective is there and presented as a nice shiny medal to wear, and conveys a sense of importance or achievement, it skews the structure of the game world. The 'game objective' takes control more and more insidiously until to many it becomes the entire point - but in that, you lose the sandbox elements of freedom of approach, style and action that you can get by just setting up the core, very minimal, rules and leaving people to get on with 'living' in that world.

Sandboxes don't have 'winners' in the usual gaming sense, although they can have 'winners' in the sense that people regard their achievements in life as 'winning' - but that concept is not one that sells easily to sales and marketing people.

Each style of games tries to appeal to a different style of player, but at present, the most money is with the competitive, and thus widely copied, level/quest/item scripted model. The market for a real freestyle game is there, but much smaller - probably still enough to make a pretty reasonable living, but 'reasonable' profit doesn't appeal much to the corporate world.

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Originally posted by Khalathwyr

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Originally posted by Ozmodan

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Originally posted by eric_w66

As usual, Dana Massey is wrong on so many things that I wonder if he also believes that the Obama healthcare plan is going to be a glowing success story.
He keeps confusing "freedom" with "lack of direction".
Just because UO lacked any "end game" content and players had to resort to PKing to do something new doesn't mean it's the holy grail of gaming.
And he paints with far too wide a brush the point about levels mattering in EQ1 to mean that every game with levels has to use exponential power curves. I've played plenty of MUD's that didn't. And they weren't "sandbox"... They were far more like EQ1 than UO.
And his point about a writer in UO actually being a WRITER in real life... well hell, take out the "RPG" bit from the name why don't ya. Perhaps SOME PEOPLE might want to PLAY a ROLE where they have skills in GAME where they don't in REAL LIFE (you know, writing... poetry... picking berries.... SWORDPLAY....MAGIC USING...)...
And most of his points are already done in the level based games anyways. Berry picking? WoW has that. Fishing? Got that too.
And heck, you can't even (legally) MACRO those abilities like everyone did in UO...
 

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Here you go again.  You try to say the article writer is so wrong, yet you completely forget to provide any reasons why he is wrong.    I have to give your post the most nonsensical one of the day.  I don't even know why anyone bothers to read your posts, they never make any sense.

Problem with all these developers out there, they are afraid players can't handle a non grind game.  The genre has so conditioned players to expect such.
The Darkfall kids make me laugh, they think Darkfall is a sandbox game when it is strictly a pvp game with the elements needed to make it a true sandbox mostly missing.  I would not hold your breath waiting for Aventurine to add them either.

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And since he (eric) went there, I'll follow up using your quote that he exhibits the typical qualities of the Bush era administration of shaking your finger and proclaiming to the world someone is wrong but not having any idea why.

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I just wanted to note that this made me smile. I just cannot stand people like Eric.

This is a wonderful article on what a sandbox MMO is or might be - but it doesn't answer the question of its title:

Why not... build a sandbox MMO?

There are many answers to that question but here are just a few;

Because they are more expensive to design, make and manage than level-based themeparks

Because their revenues cannot be so clearly predicted as level-based themeparks

Because their dynamic depends on the participation of the user rather than the direction of the designer - and designers don't like to lose control of their game.

The best comment about sandbox mmos came in an article in the New York Times discussing the horrible fate of Star Wars Galaxies when SOE implemented the NGE:

'They took a virtual world and turned it into a virtual game'.

Thank you for your article, I thought it was very good.

I would love to play a proper sandbox game as I feel it would add a level of immersion which other games lack.

Best wishes

Moonraker

Originally posted by Torik

Originally posted by MindTrigger

Originally posted by Torik 

That is purely based on the game and a 'sandbox' game can limit your actions just as badly as any thempark game.  My primary problem with SWG was that whenever I tried to do something interesting (to me) in the game, it would throw a roadblock before me and seemed to channel me toward mission running and farming.

Interesting.  I played SWG for 3 years and never, ever felt like I was being channeled toward anything.  In fact, they had a few quest theme parks and the story arch quests, but other than that there wasn't much for questing out there. Yeah, we had to grind missions to skill up, but back pre-NGE you could get your character to max out your skill points in a few days of playing. Because of this people were encouraged to try all kinds of different skill tree builds until they settled on something they loved (Master Ranger/Master Riflemen was my fav hunting build).  I agree there was a grind element to SWG, but it didn't last long at all compared to the current theme park games which are all about grinding out quests until you reach the end-game. Hell, only a few percentage points of WoW's population, for example, ends up doing end-game so you have to wonder why they are designed this way in the first place. 

Funny enough Master Ranger/Master Rifleman was the build that appealed to me the most.  Sadly the very short ranges in which you could engage mobs made it not possible to play the role of Sniper I wanted so I was forced into a more traditional role for my character.

My beef with SWG is based on two things:

-I am a big fan of meaningfull crafting.  The SWG crafting system seemed like a perfect fit for me with all the customization options.  I was going to start out as a weaponsmith.  I gathered a stash of resources and started leveling it.  I was forced to make a ton of useless junk so my skill box could fill up a bit.  I probably could have handled it but the interface was so atricious that after 10 minutes of craft grinding my wrist started hurting.  For my pain I got a very small increase in xp and still no abiltiy to make anything meaningfull.  I finally chucked the profession and went with a combat build that while grindy would not leave me with physical damage to my body.  That was such an unnecessary grind that turned me off the most promising feature of the game.

-After you skilled up your character there was not much meaningfull to do after a while.  My Master Ranger/Master Rifleman got very good at hunting and harvesting biologicals but after a while I wanted something different to do.   I got a house and my guild build a full player city but that was a finite experience as well.  Since we could not level alts in the game, I would have had to chuck my Master Ranger/Master Rifleman to try a new set of professions and that just kills any immersion in the character.  The big exciting thing to try were the themeparks.  If my options are to do the same dull stuff I have been doing for months or do quest chains then I might as well go to WoW.  The social interaction is great but I can do that in any MMO.

I think the problem that you faced was two-fol;

Firstly, while the crafting system was rich and complex, it took a lot of grinding. That in itself was not a bad thing but the items that it produced had no game use and couldn't be sold.

Secondly, while a rifleman/ranger sounds excellent on paper, those were two of the professions that SOE never even attempted to balance so make them combat effective in either PVP or PVE. That was just an unlucky choice on your part.

I actually rejoined UO once again since I can't find that freedom in any other MMORPG. :)

I play UO alongside EQ2 and WoW...