The sandbox crowd is extremely small yet incredibly vocal on sites like this.
The best developers can hope for is a community the size of EvE online's and with todays mmo budgets being in 100+ million range I doubt 300k+ sustain subscribers would sound very good to investors when themepark games sell millions of boxes and sustain much higher than that.
The sandbox crowd is extremely small yet incredibly vocal on sites like this.
The best developers can hope for is a community the size of EvE online's and with todays mmo budgets being in 100+ million range I doubt 300k+ sustain subscribers would sound very good to investors when themepark games sell millions of boxes and sustain much higher than that.
I do some what agree with you in that the sandbox crowd is small and frankly most love sandbox MMO in concept, but then you look at what happened to Mortal. xD
Subscription based MMOs as a whole is a dieing market to begin with, production of mmorpg going forward be it sandbox or themepark need to be built from the ground up to be free to play if they want to have a chance in this economy. xD
The sandbox crowd is extremely small yet incredibly vocal on sites like this.
The best developers can hope for is a community the size of EvE online's and with todays mmo budgets being in 100+ million range I doubt 300k+ sustain subscribers would sound very good to investors when themepark games sell millions of boxes and sustain much higher than that.
I do some what agree with you in that the sandbox crowd is small and frankly most love sandbox MMO in concept, but then you look at what happened to Mortal. xD
Subscription based MMOs as a whole is a dieing market to begin with, production of mmorpg going forward be it sandbox or themepark need to be built from the ground up to be free to play if they want to have a chance in this economy. xD
Honestly I think the entire mmo genre is moving toward a Buy the box only or Free to play payment model. In ten years hardly any game will have a subscription. Seriously who wants to be saddled with a 15 dollar a month fee when they get to play oterh games for free or get to pay once and play forever?
If developers in this genre want to bring old sub-genres back they will need to do it that way. Look toward other genres like MOBA & FPS for the correct way to do a Micro transaction shop.
Every MMO beside WOW is niche! Every Themepark has failed compared to WOW and compared to the expectations investors and publishers had!
/snip
Yet for not having a massive Sandbox crowd: 6 Million people play Minecraft 10 Million people play Skyrim (sandboxy virtual fantasy world) 22 Million people play GTA IV (which is an open world game and therefore sandboxy) Unknown how many millions of people play sandboxy browser games.
/snip
And yeah, people just dont play shitty games!
Even if we ignore WoW, themepark revenue is way higher than sandbox ones.
Aion/DDO/Lotro/Rift all have 500k-2M subs each. Highest sub for sandbox is EVE with 400-500k.
Despite the millions who play 'sandboxy' non-MMO games, it doesn't translate into sales for sandbox MMO games.
Going by your logic, millions should play PlanetSide cause millions play COD/BF3 which isn't true.
Agree with your last point but being 'shitty' has nothing to do with sandbox/themepark.
Gdemami - Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
Indeed! I'm calling BS on the notion that there is this mythical mass of players that want a sandbox virtual world MMO. If there was one, I would hear about it, devs would see it, and there would be games for that crowd. As it stands, there's hardly one, and it has been like that for so long that merely saying there hasn't been the right one yet is not going to cut it. Many have tried, many have failed and even if these games were any good they would've showed much more interest from the public, don't you think?
So your viewpoint rests on 'if I haven't seen it it dosen't exist'?
That's cute. My 8 year old niece looks at things the same way.
Indeed! I'm calling BS on the notion that there is this mythical mass of players that want a sandbox virtual world MMO. If there was one, I would hear about it, devs would see it, and there would be games for that crowd. As it stands, there's hardly one, and it has been like that for so long that merely saying there hasn't been the right one yet is not going to cut it. Many have tried, many have failed and even if these games were any good they would've showed much more interest from the public, don't you think?
So your viewpoint rests on 'if I haven't seen it it dosen't exist'?
That's cute. My 8 year old niece looks at things the same way.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Indeed! I'm calling BS on the notion that there is this mythical mass of players that want a sandbox virtual world MMO. If there was one, I would hear about it, devs would see it, and there would be games for that crowd. As it stands, there's hardly one, and it has been like that for so long that merely saying there hasn't been the right one yet is not going to cut it. Many have tried, many have failed and even if these games were any good they would've showed much more interest from the public, don't you think?
So your viewpoint rests on 'if I haven't seen it it dosen't exist'?
That's cute. My 8 year old niece looks at things the same way.
I haven't seen Bigfoot and I doubt BigFoot exists. :P
If there was this untapped sandbox market, plenty of companies tried and none has seen the 500k-1Million+ numbers yet.
While themepark ones continue to do well.
Rift, Aion, LoTRO, DDO etc all having 400-2M+ numbers.
Numbers are what they are.
Gdemami - Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
Originally posted by Thorqemada Every MMO beside WOW is niche! Every Themepark has failed compared to WOW and compared to the expectations investors and publishers had! /snip Yet for not having a massive Sandbox crowd: 6 Million people play Minecraft 10 Million people play Skyrim (sandboxy virtual fantasy world) 22 Million people play GTA IV (which is an open world game and therefore sandboxy) Unknown how many millions of people play sandboxy browser games. /snipAnd yeah, people just dont play shitty games!
Even if we ignore WoW, themepark revenue is way higher than sandbox ones.
Aion/DDO/Lotro/Rift all have 500k-2M subs each. Highest sub for sandbox is EVE with 400-500k.
Despite the millions who play 'sandboxy' non-MMO games, it doesn't translate into sales for sandbox MMO games.
Going by your logic, millions should play PlanetSide cause millions play COD/BF3 which isn't true.
Agree with your last point but being 'shitty' has nothing to do with sandbox/themepark.
Rift is a hoax, its numbers way overstated, Trion is company of making PR. The other games be free to play and even if they have overall 2 or 3 million players it may be 500k that pay a monthly fee.
~50 million players that play sandboxy games do not translate into ~50 million subscribers. But WoD and Archeage may show how much is possible and maybe some people need to rethink their thougths. But at that time it will be way to late to produce another sandbox game bcs the target players have already been taken off the market!
"Torquemada... do not implore him for compassion. Torquemada... do not beg him for forgiveness. Torquemada... do not ask him for mercy. Let's face it, you can't Torquemada anything!"
Agreed, in fact I'm willing to bet that all four of those titles together have less than 1M active players (10+ hours a week) in total.
Can't really use the term subs when 3/4 of those are F2P now.
I won't call the sandbox game crowd massive, but I do think there's enough demand to support 2 or 3 solid titles with an average of 300K - 500K subs each. (which would be more subs than most MMORPG's out there today)
One problem with the MMORPG market right now is there are actually too many of them, and far too often they suffer in quality.
The market would be better served if it went through a retraction period and a lot of the chaffe were to drop away.
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
Indeed! I'm calling BS on the notion that there is this mythical mass of players that want a sandbox virtual world MMO. If there was one, I would hear about it, devs would see it, and there would be games for that crowd. As it stands, there's hardly one, and it has been like that for so long that merely saying there hasn't been the right one yet is not going to cut it. Many have tried, many have failed and even if these games were any good they would've showed much more interest from the public, don't you think?
How can you have a "massive" virtual world when you only have a handful of players to fill it. And how can you get funding to something that has such a small audience. You are doomed to wander from indie game to indie game...
Admit it. You are to rest of the MMORPG players what LARPers are to P&P role players. "Regular people" snicker at people who play D&D but everyone laughs at LARPers (no offense meant - but they do).
Ben "Yahtzee" Crosshaw hit the nail in the head: -"Eve players are to nerds what nerds are to normal people."
Even if some recent themeparks have failed or will fail in your eyes, I'm quite confident in saying that there will be no major shift towards sandboxes of any sort. People still love themeparks - they just don't like shitty games, thats all.
By all means, please provide an example of "handful". Where are you getting this guestimate from? The posters and threads on the MMORPG website? Or can you provide an actual number of the people who are pro sandbox and willing to bet their money on that style of game? Honestly I would be very interested in seeing some actual facts and studies rather than heresay and speculation.
Agreed, in fact I'm willing to bet that all four of those titles together have less than 1M active players (10+ hours a week) in total.
Can't really use the term subs when 3/4 of those are F2P now.
I won't call the sandbox game crowd massive, but I do think there's enough demand to support 2 or 3 solid titles with an average of 300K - 500K subs each. (which would be more subs than most MMORPG's out there today)
One problem with the MMORPG market right now is there are actually too many of them, and far too often they suffer in quality.
The market would be better served if it went through a retraction period and a lot of the chaffe were to drop away.
Aion had 2M last I checked their numbers (pre-F2P switch).
Think this is fairly accurate: mmodata.blogspot.com
'300k-500k subs each' sounds a lot but with the current game development cycle that is going on, I don't think it'll be worth it.
If you are involved in the game industry, or have experienced the development process, you'll understand.
I doubt a 16bit graphics game will achieve 300k-500k subs, I am not saying people won't buy a game (minecraft/Super Meat boy all sold millions) but they won't put a monthly sub on it.
Gdemami - Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
By all means, please provide an example of "handful". Where are you getting this guestimate from? The posters and threads on the MMORPG website? Or can you provide an actual number of the people who are pro sandbox and willing to bet their money on that style of game? Honestly I would be very interested in seeing some actual facts and studies rather than heresay and speculation.
Here's a question, do you have a sub to a sandbox game?
If not, why do you think any game developer should listen to what you want when you are not putting money on what you want?
I've always said, numbers are what they are.
Sandbox MMO crowd has never shown they are a large consumer base that'll buy a sandbox mmo game. As long as that continues, sandbox mmo crowd will always be a niche.
Gdemami - Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
I would agree that the market for a pure "virtual-world" MMO would be limited, because a game like that is not "casual friendly".
It takes a lot of player involvement and commitment to create and sustain "player-driven content", it's not the kind of scenario where you can drop in 2 or 3 times a week for an hour or so, because it relies on a fairly consistent presence to enable relations to form and be sustained. It's very limiting if you rely on other players to be able to reach your goals, and then those other players don't login for a few days... Anyone who has played EVE for any length of time as a member of an active medium sized corporation will understand what I'm talking about here.
However, I can see a huge market for "sandbox elements" to be incorporated in standard themeparks. Not to replace questing and raiding, but to supplement it. There's many people that would love to take a break from killing mobs 24/7. I know that because I've seen countless posts in game forums over the years asking for simple fluff features like fishing, player housing and decorating, mini-games in taverns, etc.
I suspect the reason why we don't see these "alternate activities" in most themepark MMO's is because the developers don't see them as central to the success of the game. Development time is always limited, best to spend it on "core" content like building more dungeons or combat encounters/systems or the never-ending struggle to balance PVP. And players are always hungry for more "core content", ironically perhaps because there's little else to do in most themepark MMO's...
Eve has 367,000 paying accounts. There are less than 10,000 total in all the other sandbox MMORPG. Add to that the 5,000 or so people who have contributed to Kickstarter sandbox games. Add in another 100,000 for Wurm Online, because hey, it's Wurm Online.
That's pretty much the sandbox market. World of Darkness, if it releases, will probably expand the market somewhat. Vampires are a good draw, and CCP has more than a decade of experience developing and running a large MMORPG. It's certainly more than a 'handful' of people. It's not enough to get funding for a AAA MMORPG though. I don't think this is going to happen unless the game is somehow self-funded by the developer like WoD.
However, while it may be true that the full-on sandbox MMORPG market is small, there is proof that the market for "not theme park" is probably much larger. The DayZ mod is a good example of that. From there, it's not a stretch that sandbox elements will show up in theme park games. The crafting system in The Secret World is very similar to the crafting in Minecraft. You can't modify the world, but if the crafting grid in Minecraft was larger, and you modded the game to add guns, it would look like the crafting from TSW.
** edit ** Er...and what SpottyGecko said.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Eve has 367,000 paying accounts. There are less than 10,000 total in all the other sandbox MMORPG. Add to that the 5,000 or so people who have contributed to Kickstarter sandbox games. Add in another 100,000 for Wurm Online, because hey, it's Wurm Online.
That's pretty much the sandbox market.
Well...add in the 350k or so SWG used to have? They're dispersed and elsewhere now, of course.
Being generous, call the whole market a million or so. And don't fall into the false dichotomy trap ("Sandbox players play ONLY sandboxes"--false). You can't even begin to guess how much overlap exists between two loosely defined groups that are themselves subsets.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Indeed! I'm calling BS on the notion that there is this mythical mass of players that want a sandbox virtual world MMO. If there was one, I would hear about it, devs would see it, and there would be games for that crowd. As it stands, there's hardly one, and it has been like that for so long that merely saying there hasn't been the right one yet is not going to cut it. Many have tried, many have failed and even if these games were any good they would've showed much more interest from the public, don't you think?
So your viewpoint rests on 'if I haven't seen it it dosen't exist'?
That's cute. My 8 year old niece looks at things the same way.
I enjoyed playing EvE for six years before I became bored of it, the nature of the game that let's you create your own stories, like waging wars against other alliances, playing the market, being the lone wolf looking for PvP around the universe, doing some PvE once in a while, exploring wormholes, crafting for profits, etc, etc, etc... In EvE you write history and make your name heard in so many different ways, and that's something you don't find in a themepark, especially when there's dozens of servers splitting up the community.
OTOH I've never stayed for longer then some six month in a themepark, as I've become bored very quickly after clearing the content, having all the shiny epics, left with nothing to do anymore. Themepark-MMOs are basically nothing else then RPGs with a multiplayer-mode. You play through the game one or two times and that's it.
The discussion was actual sandboxes vs. actual themeparks.
For one of them, people will pay ridiculous entrance fees to consume the content (ride rides.)
For the other...well for the other, there aren't really that many adults seeking them and if they do (going to a beach) it's for reasons entirely different from the sand.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
So now that you are done belittling everyone and their opinion and taste, do you have any arguments besides your "feeling" and the absence of evidence.
Because the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
So if I'm saying that there is no flying spaghetti monster, I need to prove there really isn't one?
The ball is in your court, man. You need to prove that there is one. You need to prove that there is a sandbox crowd worth making an AAA MMORPG.
People play Haven and Hearth despite the fact that it looks like a gameboy era handheld game. This is actually the only MMO I've played where I went over 10 hours without combat just because of how developed crafting is.
People play WurmOnline despite it being grindier than Runescape, being first person, being really obnoxious to just stay alive, and what rarely gets mentioned is that if you want silver you'll have to buy it with real cash.
People play Minecraft despite adventure mode being a tutorial-less hell if you have no idea what you're doing. Mincraft is pretty record breaking when you consider the return on investment when compared to AAA MMOs(one guy 2 years, only forming into a team structure after a hefty profit has been turned)
EvE Online continues to be one of the few major MMOs to grow. Despite a horrible release, lack of content on release, crash to blue screen bugs on release, and being so very very unrelatable to the normal MMOer due to only seeing a spaceship as your character.
Practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent.
"At one point technology meant making tech that could get to the moon, now it means making tech that could get you a taxi."
The game looks like it was made in 1992, yet has millions of online users... the company that figures out how to take its appeal and twist it into a modern MMO setting will probably have... the... next... big.... thing.
* and seriously... everyone know that companies have just been copying the WoW model for about 7 or 8 years now (chasing this imaginary golden goose)... there hasn't been a AAA sandbox effort.... ever.
Originally posted by fadis Ever heard of a little game called MINECRAFT?
The game looks like it was made in 1992, yet has millions of online users... the company that figures out how to take its appeal and twist it into a modern MMO setting will probably have... the... next... big.... thing.
Minecraft uses too much bandwidth to even be thought about as an MMORPG. It's not possible to compress the data that needs to be transmitted any smaller - so the pipe it's passing through needs to be larger, which would make it astronomically expensive. You can fit 3 people per 1Mbs of bandwidth. No time in the near future will it be feasible to squeeze a massive minecraft server into the world.
Aside from that, not one issue with sandbox mechanics is solved by Minecraft. It works because of the scale. People are playing with a small number of people and they are picking and choosing who they play with. Scale it up and you have all the issues you have with sandbox games in general.
Minecraft is a great example that people like sandbox games, a great example of indie development, and a great example that game play is at least as important as graphics, but it's not a good example of the desire of people to play sandbox MMORPG.
** edit ** I play Minecraft and run a server. I also play on other public servers. I'm not bashing the game at all. It just wouldn't solve any issues with sandbox MMORPG.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
"Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever." - Noam Chomsky
Comments
Its true.
The sandbox crowd is extremely small yet incredibly vocal on sites like this.
The best developers can hope for is a community the size of EvE online's and with todays mmo budgets being in 100+ million range I doubt 300k+ sustain subscribers would sound very good to investors when themepark games sell millions of boxes and sustain much higher than that.
Playing: Nothing
Looking forward to: Nothing
I do some what agree with you in that the sandbox crowd is small and frankly most love sandbox MMO in concept, but then you look at what happened to Mortal. xD
Subscription based MMOs as a whole is a dieing market to begin with, production of mmorpg going forward be it sandbox or themepark need to be built from the ground up to be free to play if they want to have a chance in this economy. xD
Honestly I think the entire mmo genre is moving toward a Buy the box only or Free to play payment model. In ten years hardly any game will have a subscription. Seriously who wants to be saddled with a 15 dollar a month fee when they get to play oterh games for free or get to pay once and play forever?
If developers in this genre want to bring old sub-genres back they will need to do it that way. Look toward other genres like MOBA & FPS for the correct way to do a Micro transaction shop.
Playing: Nothing
Looking forward to: Nothing
Even if we ignore WoW, themepark revenue is way higher than sandbox ones.
Aion/DDO/Lotro/Rift all have 500k-2M subs each. Highest sub for sandbox is EVE with 400-500k.
Despite the millions who play 'sandboxy' non-MMO games, it doesn't translate into sales for sandbox MMO games.
Going by your logic, millions should play PlanetSide cause millions play COD/BF3 which isn't true.
Agree with your last point but being 'shitty' has nothing to do with sandbox/themepark.
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
So your viewpoint rests on 'if I haven't seen it it dosen't exist'?
That's cute. My 8 year old niece looks at things the same way.
I dont suppose you happen to be religious?
Source?
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I've never much like sandboxes, ball pits/pools are more my thing.
I haven't seen Bigfoot and I doubt BigFoot exists. :P
If there was this untapped sandbox market, plenty of companies tried and none has seen the 500k-1Million+ numbers yet.
While themepark ones continue to do well.
Rift, Aion, LoTRO, DDO etc all having 400-2M+ numbers.
Numbers are what they are.
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
Rift is a hoax, its numbers way overstated, Trion is company of making PR.
The other games be free to play and even if they have overall 2 or 3 million players it may be 500k that pay a monthly fee.
~50 million players that play sandboxy games do not translate into ~50 million subscribers.
But WoD and Archeage may show how much is possible and maybe some people need to rethink their thougths.
But at that time it will be way to late to produce another sandbox game bcs the target players have already been taken off the market!
"Torquemada... do not implore him for compassion. Torquemada... do not beg him for forgiveness. Torquemada... do not ask him for mercy. Let's face it, you can't Torquemada anything!"
MWO Music Video - What does the Mech say: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF6HYNqCDLI
Johnny Cash - The Man Comes Around: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0x2iwK0BKM
Agreed, in fact I'm willing to bet that all four of those titles together have less than 1M active players (10+ hours a week) in total.
Can't really use the term subs when 3/4 of those are F2P now.
I won't call the sandbox game crowd massive, but I do think there's enough demand to support 2 or 3 solid titles with an average of 300K - 500K subs each. (which would be more subs than most MMORPG's out there today)
One problem with the MMORPG market right now is there are actually too many of them, and far too often they suffer in quality.
The market would be better served if it went through a retraction period and a lot of the chaffe were to drop away.
"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
By all means, please provide an example of "handful". Where are you getting this guestimate from? The posters and threads on the MMORPG website? Or can you provide an actual number of the people who are pro sandbox and willing to bet their money on that style of game? Honestly I would be very interested in seeing some actual facts and studies rather than heresay and speculation.
Aion had 2M last I checked their numbers (pre-F2P switch).
Think this is fairly accurate: mmodata.blogspot.com
'300k-500k subs each' sounds a lot but with the current game development cycle that is going on, I don't think it'll be worth it.
If you are involved in the game industry, or have experienced the development process, you'll understand.
I doubt a 16bit graphics game will achieve 300k-500k subs, I am not saying people won't buy a game (minecraft/Super Meat boy all sold millions) but they won't put a monthly sub on it.
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
Here's a question, do you have a sub to a sandbox game?
If not, why do you think any game developer should listen to what you want when you are not putting money on what you want?
I've always said, numbers are what they are.
Sandbox MMO crowd has never shown they are a large consumer base that'll buy a sandbox mmo game. As long as that continues, sandbox mmo crowd will always be a niche.
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
Full Metal Jacket nod? LOL
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I would agree that the market for a pure "virtual-world" MMO would be limited, because a game like that is not "casual friendly".
It takes a lot of player involvement and commitment to create and sustain "player-driven content", it's not the kind of scenario where you can drop in 2 or 3 times a week for an hour or so, because it relies on a fairly consistent presence to enable relations to form and be sustained. It's very limiting if you rely on other players to be able to reach your goals, and then those other players don't login for a few days... Anyone who has played EVE for any length of time as a member of an active medium sized corporation will understand what I'm talking about here.
However, I can see a huge market for "sandbox elements" to be incorporated in standard themeparks. Not to replace questing and raiding, but to supplement it. There's many people that would love to take a break from killing mobs 24/7. I know that because I've seen countless posts in game forums over the years asking for simple fluff features like fishing, player housing and decorating, mini-games in taverns, etc.
I suspect the reason why we don't see these "alternate activities" in most themepark MMO's is because the developers don't see them as central to the success of the game. Development time is always limited, best to spend it on "core" content like building more dungeons or combat encounters/systems or the never-ending struggle to balance PVP. And players are always hungry for more "core content", ironically perhaps because there's little else to do in most themepark MMO's...
Eve has 367,000 paying accounts. There are less than 10,000 total in all the other sandbox MMORPG. Add to that the 5,000 or so people who have contributed to Kickstarter sandbox games. Add in another 100,000 for Wurm Online, because hey, it's Wurm Online.
That's pretty much the sandbox market. World of Darkness, if it releases, will probably expand the market somewhat. Vampires are a good draw, and CCP has more than a decade of experience developing and running a large MMORPG. It's certainly more than a 'handful' of people. It's not enough to get funding for a AAA MMORPG though. I don't think this is going to happen unless the game is somehow self-funded by the developer like WoD.
However, while it may be true that the full-on sandbox MMORPG market is small, there is proof that the market for "not theme park" is probably much larger. The DayZ mod is a good example of that. From there, it's not a stretch that sandbox elements will show up in theme park games. The crafting system in The Secret World is very similar to the crafting in Minecraft. You can't modify the world, but if the crafting grid in Minecraft was larger, and you modded the game to add guns, it would look like the crafting from TSW.
** edit **
Er...and what SpottyGecko said.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Well...add in the 350k or so SWG used to have? They're dispersed and elsewhere now, of course.
Being generous, call the whole market a million or so. And don't fall into the false dichotomy trap ("Sandbox players play ONLY sandboxes"--false). You can't even begin to guess how much overlap exists between two loosely defined groups that are themselves subsets.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
What an odd question.
No.
The discussion was actual sandboxes vs. actual themeparks.
For one of them, people will pay ridiculous entrance fees to consume the content (ride rides.)
For the other...well for the other, there aren't really that many adults seeking them and if they do (going to a beach) it's for reasons entirely different from the sand.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
People play Haven and Hearth despite the fact that it looks like a gameboy era handheld game. This is actually the only MMO I've played where I went over 10 hours without combat just because of how developed crafting is.
People play WurmOnline despite it being grindier than Runescape, being first person, being really obnoxious to just stay alive, and what rarely gets mentioned is that if you want silver you'll have to buy it with real cash.
People play Minecraft despite adventure mode being a tutorial-less hell if you have no idea what you're doing. Mincraft is pretty record breaking when you consider the return on investment when compared to AAA MMOs(one guy 2 years, only forming into a team structure after a hefty profit has been turned)
EvE Online continues to be one of the few major MMOs to grow. Despite a horrible release, lack of content on release, crash to blue screen bugs on release, and being so very very unrelatable to the normal MMOer due to only seeing a spaceship as your character.
Practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent.
"At one point technology meant making tech that could get to the moon, now it means making tech that could get you a taxi."
Ever heard of a little game called MINECRAFT?
The game looks like it was made in 1992, yet has millions of online users... the company that figures out how to take its appeal and twist it into a modern MMO setting will probably have... the... next... big.... thing.
* and seriously... everyone know that companies have just been copying the WoW model for about 7 or 8 years now (chasing this imaginary golden goose)... there hasn't been a AAA sandbox effort.... ever.
Minecraft uses too much bandwidth to even be thought about as an MMORPG. It's not possible to compress the data that needs to be transmitted any smaller - so the pipe it's passing through needs to be larger, which would make it astronomically expensive. You can fit 3 people per 1Mbs of bandwidth. No time in the near future will it be feasible to squeeze a massive minecraft server into the world.
Aside from that, not one issue with sandbox mechanics is solved by Minecraft. It works because of the scale. People are playing with a small number of people and they are picking and choosing who they play with. Scale it up and you have all the issues you have with sandbox games in general.
Minecraft is a great example that people like sandbox games, a great example of indie development, and a great example that game play is at least as important as graphics, but it's not a good example of the desire of people to play sandbox MMORPG.
** edit **
I play Minecraft and run a server. I also play on other public servers. I'm not bashing the game at all. It just wouldn't solve any issues with sandbox MMORPG.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I am a sandbox fan. I do not exist.
"Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever." - Noam Chomsky
If you are a massive crowd, then you do indeed not exist.
I want a mmorpg where people have gone through misery, have gone through school stuff and actually have had sex even. -sagil