kangaroomouse, eve online doesnt fit those ultimate sandbox requirements of yours. is eve not a sandbox?
You are right, EvE is not the Ultimate sandbox. Eve is more of a sandbox than AA and it has almost all of the requirements even though they are a little restricted.
or are minecraft and second life the only sandboxes?
Second life is a glorified chat room for social rejects not a sandbox.
even in landmark and trove you can't build anywhere you choose. (in landmark whatever you do outside of your plot erases over a couple hours)
Then they are not Ultimate Sandboxes also, they are more Sandbox than AA though because AA IS NOT A SANDBOX AT ALL.
A sandbox is when you get a box of sand (World) and tools (come in various forms) to shape and manipulate it with a LASTING effect. But of cause it can also be destroyed and erased.
----
AA has NO Sandbox features. I would like to hear just ONE sandbox feature of AA. Just one. But it seems that no one can provide that.
one sandbox feature, by your definition. You have a tool, Farms, to make ingredients for a host of reasons. You can choose what to farm, when to farm, how to use your product, sell your farm if u don't like it, move your farm if u wish, don't have a farm if you don't want one and the list goes on. Sounds like a sandbox feature to me.
Yes, saying AA has NO sandbox features is exaggerating, I think.
It has a small amount. That's why we refer to Archeage as a Sandpark instead of a theme park. It has a few sandbox features. However, it doesn't have so much that it would be a sandbox, similar to how GW2 doesn't have enough action elements to generally be called an Action game.
kangaroomouse, eve online doesnt fit those ultimate sandbox requirements of yours. is eve not a sandbox?
You are right, EvE is not the Ultimate sandbox. Eve is more of a sandbox than AA and it has almost all of the requirements even though they are a little restricted.
or are minecraft and second life the only sandboxes?
Second life is a glorified chat room for social rejects not a sandbox.
even in landmark and trove you can't build anywhere you choose. (in landmark whatever you do outside of your plot erases over a couple hours)
Then they are not Ultimate Sandboxes also, they are more Sandbox than AA though because AA IS NOT A SANDBOX AT ALL.
A sandbox is when you get a box of sand (World) and tools (come in various forms) to shape and manipulate it with a LASTING effect. But of cause it can also be destroyed and erased.
----
AA has NO Sandbox features. I would like to hear just ONE sandbox feature of AA. Just one. But it seems that no one can provide that.
one sandbox feature, by your definition. You have a tool, Farms, to make ingredients for a host of reasons. You can choose what to farm, when to farm, how to use your product, sell your farm if u don't like it, move your farm if u wish, don't have a farm if you don't want one and the list goes on. Sounds like a sandbox feature to me.
No, that is not sandbox. What you have in AA is an item (seedling, animal) that produces another item after x amount of time. The Farm plays no role in it at all other than as a container and restriction of the amount you can produce. There are no tools to influence the outcome and the result is always the same.
That is predefined theme park content. It would be sandbox if:
Basic Seeds and Animals (it has that).
Various tools to prune, rake and take care of the field and animals incl. different fertilizers and food.
Depending on food/tools/fertilizer used you have different results.
ArcheAge is a sandbox. It might not be the sandbox you want, but it is probably the sandbox we deserve.
It's not a sandbox because it has zero sandbox features. If you call the housing and farming in AA sandbox then FFXIV is a sandbox too because it has the exact same features.
Actually FFXIV has more farming features as you can cross breed and get new plants from farming. Farming in AA is just an item that always transforms into the exact same other item. That is not Sandbox.
----
I agree with you however, this seems to be the Sandbox we deserve.
If you made a post on these boards 6-7 years ago and asking what is a sandbox game.
People will list games such as UO,SWG,EVE,WURM ect, those games defined what a sandbox game should be and was.
Now the term is hazy undefined, sub names such as sandpark,parkbox,themebox ect.
Did alot of people suddenly forgot what a sandbox game is and what you can do in one?
The term has gotten as hazy as the term "MMO", which apparently doesn't necessarilly mean hundreds of people in your vicinity, but also hundreds of people divided in instanced 10vs10 arenas.
I blame marketing for that. It's like being a cleaner and calling it "sanitary manager" on your resume.
ArcheAge is a sandbox. It might not be the sandbox you want, but it is probably the sandbox we deserve.
It's not a sandbox because it has zero sandbox features. If you call the housing and farming in AA sandbox then FFXIV is a sandbox too because it has the exact same features.
Actually FFXIV has more farming features as you can cross breed and get new plants from farming. Farming in AA is just an item that always transforms into the exact same other item. That is not Sandbox.
----
I agree with you however, this seems to be the Sandbox we deserve.
I disagree. I think it is a sandbox. but there doesn't seem to be a universally agreed upon definition of sandbox and that is what is causing confusion. I believe that a sandbox mmo is any mmo that is designed to be played in a reasonably undirected manner.
When you put a child in a sandbox to play you don't tell them what to do first and what to do second. You don't tell them that they can only play in this part of the sandbox today and that they will have to wait until tomorrow to play in that part of the sandbox. You just put them in the sandbox and let them go. You might give them other toys to play with in the sandbox or not. The sand might be good for building with like on the beach or it might be too dry to build with but can still be shoveled into a bucket. The box might be the whole beach or it might be just a few feet square and big enough for only one child. It is not the features that make the sandbox though a bigger sandbox with more toys will be more fun. It is that the sandbox allows for undirected play. There is not a start and a finish. There is not a right way to play in it. A sandbox is not a game, it is a toy. and a good mmo is not a story, it is a world.
A sandbox mmo allows the player to play within the environment in a reasonably undirected manner. That doesn't mean unrestricted though less restrictions are better. it means that the player chooses which direction to go and what to do in the world. ArcheAge starts out as a themepark, there is no doubt about that. You start in one place and you are lead though the zone from quest hub to quest hub like a normal themepark game but somewhere in the teens or twenties the game can be played in a lot of different directions. You can continue the themepark ride or you can do trade runs. You can progress your level by just doing crafting and farming. Which is different than most themepark crafting in that most of those force you to continue to level by quests in order to be able to continue leveling crafting. ArcheAge crafting might not seem very different on the surface and I would agree with that. More complex perhaps but not substantively different in how it plays. But what is qualitatively different is that ArcheAge has made crafting and gathering a legitimately different choice in what you can do to level and simply play in the game. Most items you need to continue progressing in crafting are not artificially locked behind higher level zones.
You can also choose to build a boat at any time and take off to the seas. you can choose to do fishing or not, you can choose to do treasure hunting or not. There are all kinds of things that you can choose to do in any order or not at all in playing the game and for the most part you can choose to start doing them at any level.
ArcheAge is a sandbox. It allows people to play it in a host of different ways. It gives people the freedom to discover its elements (toys) in pretty much any order they wish to take them and it doesn't force any particular path on the player, at least not after the low teens. This might not have the sandbox features you want to see in a game. And I would agree that it is not the "Ultimate" sandbox. But it is a sandbox.
ArcheAge is a sandbox. It might not be the sandbox you want, but it is probably the sandbox we deserve.
It's not a sandbox because it has zero sandbox features. If you call the housing and farming in AA sandbox then FFXIV is a sandbox too because it has the exact same features.
Actually FFXIV has more farming features as you can cross breed and get new plants from farming. Farming in AA is just an item that always transforms into the exact same other item. That is not Sandbox.
----
I agree with you however, this seems to be the Sandbox we deserve.
Let's not forget the farming in WoW too.
@ VikingGamer:
If there is no definition of sandbox, then there is no sandbox. You can call it a sandbox under the premise that there is no universally accepted definition, but in order to make sure what ever it is you are describing fits into your own acceptable definition, then that definition becomes meaningless since it has no defining parameters. Might as well call lit a toy box, jewelry box, toolbox or a lockbox for all that matters. Since it's as much of one of those as it is a sandbox with no definition.
EDIT: You are correct, though, there really isn't a definition. But it was known by example. If we go back to when they were more common, you would describe them as "UO" or games that weren't such as EQ and WoW. There were also Hybrids like AO and SWG. They were never defined, but players knew which were which and no one really questioned them.
Building boats, fishing, leveling by crafting or other means besides quests, housing, freedom to do what you want. These are not sandbox elements; heck, Vanguard had all that, and nobody called it a sandbox.
Are there pre-defined classes? With pre-defined skills? Quests that give XP? Pre-defined weapons and gear to get from pre-defined boss encounters? -- Not a sandbox.
Just being able to build your own boat, your own house, and do other things besides quest (like Diplomacy, Trade, crafting, etc) does not equal a sandbox.
Building boats, fishing, leveling by crafting or other means besides quests, housing, freedom to do what you want. These are not sandbox elements; heck, Vanguard had all that, and nobody called it a sandbox.
Are there pre-defined classes? With pre-defined skills? Quests that give XP? Pre-defined weapons and gear to get from pre-defined boss encounters? -- Not a sandbox.
Just being able to build your own boat, your own house, and do other things besides quest (like Diplomacy, Trade, crafting, etc) does not equal a sandbox.
This is why we need to define what we mean by sandbox before we simply declare a game to be sandbox or not. I think your definition of sandbox is flawed. And listing off what you think it not sandbox doesn't really get us any closer to knowing what is sandbox. I don't agree that having certain non-sandbox elements in a game makes it not sandbox.
It's a massively multiplayer online role playing game.
Why do we need all these distinctions to determine whether a game is "fun" or not?
A well-done sandbox isn't necessarily more fun than a well-done themepark or vice-versa. They do, however, appeal to different TASTES.
And that's why we need the distinction. Before someone spends time and/or money playing an MMO (because the beginning of an MMO is never a good indication of how it'll pan out in the long run), it helps to know what they're getting in to.
A sandbox with not enough sand might be a decent way of describing it. The sandbox elements are there to a point but you're limited in how much you can use them to do anything with the world (and, as I've stated earlier, the "themepark" elements kinda drop to 0 later on by virtue of PvE being filler at best)
If you made a post on these boards 6-7 years ago and asking what is a sandbox game.
People will list games such as UO,SWG,EVE,WURM ect, those games defined what a sandbox game should be and was.
Now the term is hazy undefined, sub names such as sandpark,parkbox,themebox ect.
Did alot of people suddenly forgot what a sandbox game is and what you can do in one?
The term has gotten as hazy as the term "MMO", which apparently doesn't necessarilly mean hundreds of people in your vicinity, but also hundreds of people divided in instanced 10vs10 arenas.
I blame marketing for that. It's like being a cleaner and calling it "sanitary manager" on your resume.
I guess you are right, basicly what we have here is this thanks for pointing it out.
Building boats, fishing, leveling by crafting or other means besides quests, housing, freedom to do what you want. These are not sandbox elements; heck, Vanguard had all that, and nobody called it a sandbox.
Are there pre-defined classes? With pre-defined skills? Quests that give XP? Pre-defined weapons and gear to get from pre-defined boss encounters? -- Not a sandbox.
Just being able to build your own boat, your own house, and do other things besides quest (like Diplomacy, Trade, crafting, etc) does not equal a sandbox.
This is why we need to define what we mean by sandbox before we simply declare a game to be sandbox or not. I think your definition of sandbox is flawed. And listing off what you think it not sandbox doesn't really get us any closer to knowing what is sandbox. I don't agree that having certain non-sandbox elements in a game makes it not sandbox.
Sandbox to me means little or nothing is pre-defined. You get sand, and a small number of tools/actions that you can use to make everything else in the game from the sand.
I'll use Ryzom as an example:
- no quests for XP. -- One feature of a sandbox is that it doesn't have any "rides", or pre-built quests or missions to level by. Users are expected to make their own content out of the sand.
- no preset classes -- a sandbox implies the user creates the content, including classes. A game with fixed classes that consists of fixed skills per class is not a sandbox.
- no fixed skills or actions -- same as classes, a real sandbox has few pre-defined skills. In Ryzom, the user has to create his own skills and actions.
- no pre-defined armor or weapons -- sandbox implies the user creates the content, so having pre-defined weapons or pre-defined armor is not sandbox. That's more like "here's a sanbox, but we've already built everything for you". Users should be creating everything.
Having free-form gameplay is not sandbox, that is just a better themepark. "Do I want to ride the crafting train, the boat-building ride, or the house construction zone ride?" As I mentioned above, even Vanguard had free-form playstyle, including boat and house construction, and non-quest things to do like Diplomacy, Crafting, etc. Nobody would ever call Vanguard a sandbox.
I make a distinction between sandbox single-player games and sandbox MMO's.
Single player sandboxes emphasize freedom while MMO sandboxes emphasize power.
A single player game is more sandboxy than a competing game when it places fewer limits on the player's choice of activity at any given time. (eg, Skyrim is more sandboxy than Final Fantasy which is more sandboxy than Dragon's Lair).
For MMO's the sandboxier game is the one that grants the user more power to affect the shared experience. It's not "freedom" any more, because your power can limit my freedom. So stuff like terraforming, seamless world, non-instanced construction and farming, open world PVP and territorial control are very much sandbox features, while cutscenes, static quests, levels, phasing, and instances are not.
So Wurm Online is more sandboxier than Archeage, which is more sandboxier than WoW which is more sandboxier than SWtoR.
I make a distinction between sandbox single-player games and sandbox MMO's.
Single player sandboxes emphasize freedom while MMO sandboxes emphasize power.
A single player game is more sandboxy than a competing game when it places fewer limits on the player's choice of activity at any given time. (eg, Skyrim is more sandboxy than Final Fantasy which is more sandboxy than Dragon's Lair).
For MMO's the sandboxier game is the one that grants the user more power to affect the shared experience. It's not "freedom" any more, because your power can limit my freedom. So stuff like terraforming, seamless world, non-instanced construction and farming, open world PVP and territorial control are very much sandbox features, while cutscenes, static quests, levels, phasing, and instances are not.
So Wurm Online is more sandboxier than Archeage, which is more sandboxier than WoW which is more sandboxier than SWtoR.
There is nothing sandboxy about Skyrim. It is about as Theme Park as it gets. It's just non-linear. Everything in Skyrim is laid out exactly as you need to do it. You only option is the order in which you experience it. But even in that, you still have to do it EXACTLY how the game says you will do it. Want to join the Thieves Guild, but don't want to sell your soul to Nocturnal? Too bad. Want to join the companions but don't want to become a Werewolf? Too bad. Want to experience the Dark Brotherhood from an adversarial role without being a murderer? Too bad. Want to take out NPCs you don't like (Delphine) and never plan on interacting with again but the game has them as essential for quests? Too bad. Crafting and gathering is cut-n-pasted right out of standard Theme Park. Even the housing comes Pre-fab and pre-decorated in pre-established locations. You can't go build wherever you want.........Unless you mod it but that's outside the game. Modding is not sandbox.
No, Skyrim really doesn't have that much freedom.
(And Skyrim is probably my all time favorite video game at over 1500 hrs, so I don't criticize it lightly)
I agree with the poster above who said Sandbox means you build everything.
Definitely disagree with this. I do agree that Skyrim is certainly NOT a sandbox game, but it's anything but linear. It's open world, and you have a ton of freedom and choices. You can basically play the game the way you want to play it, and don't have to do ANY of the linear story content if you don't want. I've known people that start a character and don't do any of the quests. They simply play in survival/exploration mode.
You simply don't see that type of freedom in most RPGs, particularly story-driven ones.
Comments
Call them a sandbox or a non-sandbox. These are the games I think fit the most and are the bst currently:
1. EVE Online, extremely time consuming though.. Has a lot to offer
2. Darkfall Unholy Wars, in my opinion the best PvP game on the market. Great game
3. Perpetuum, land version of EVE. I think it is steadily growing. Decent game as well.
If you made a post on these boards 6-7 years ago and asking what is a sandbox game.
People will list games such as UO,SWG,EVE,WURM ect, those games defined what a sandbox game should be and was.
Now the term is hazy undefined, sub names such as sandpark,parkbox,themebox ect.
Did alot of people suddenly forgot what a sandbox game is and what you can do in one?
If it's not broken, you are not innovating.
Yes, saying AA has NO sandbox features is exaggerating, I think.
It has a small amount. That's why we refer to Archeage as a Sandpark instead of a theme park. It has a few sandbox features. However, it doesn't have so much that it would be a sandbox, similar to how GW2 doesn't have enough action elements to generally be called an Action game.
...and let's add "worst customer service EVER" to the list.
I'm a founder (since Alpha) and I am so disgruntled with Trion - it is shocking.
No, that is not sandbox. What you have in AA is an item (seedling, animal) that produces another item after x amount of time. The Farm plays no role in it at all other than as a container and restriction of the amount you can produce. There are no tools to influence the outcome and the result is always the same.
That is predefined theme park content. It would be sandbox if:
----
AA has no Sandbox features at all.
ArcheAge is a sandbox. It might not be the sandbox you want, but it is probably the sandbox we deserve.
All die, so die well.
It's not a sandbox because it has zero sandbox features. If you call the housing and farming in AA sandbox then FFXIV is a sandbox too because it has the exact same features.
Actually FFXIV has more farming features as you can cross breed and get new plants from farming. Farming in AA is just an item that always transforms into the exact same other item. That is not Sandbox.
----
I agree with you however, this seems to be the Sandbox we deserve.
The term has gotten as hazy as the term "MMO", which apparently doesn't necessarilly mean hundreds of people in your vicinity, but also hundreds of people divided in instanced 10vs10 arenas.
I blame marketing for that. It's like being a cleaner and calling it "sanitary manager" on your resume.
I disagree. I think it is a sandbox. but there doesn't seem to be a universally agreed upon definition of sandbox and that is what is causing confusion. I believe that a sandbox mmo is any mmo that is designed to be played in a reasonably undirected manner.
When you put a child in a sandbox to play you don't tell them what to do first and what to do second. You don't tell them that they can only play in this part of the sandbox today and that they will have to wait until tomorrow to play in that part of the sandbox. You just put them in the sandbox and let them go. You might give them other toys to play with in the sandbox or not. The sand might be good for building with like on the beach or it might be too dry to build with but can still be shoveled into a bucket. The box might be the whole beach or it might be just a few feet square and big enough for only one child. It is not the features that make the sandbox though a bigger sandbox with more toys will be more fun. It is that the sandbox allows for undirected play. There is not a start and a finish. There is not a right way to play in it. A sandbox is not a game, it is a toy. and a good mmo is not a story, it is a world.
A sandbox mmo allows the player to play within the environment in a reasonably undirected manner. That doesn't mean unrestricted though less restrictions are better. it means that the player chooses which direction to go and what to do in the world. ArcheAge starts out as a themepark, there is no doubt about that. You start in one place and you are lead though the zone from quest hub to quest hub like a normal themepark game but somewhere in the teens or twenties the game can be played in a lot of different directions. You can continue the themepark ride or you can do trade runs. You can progress your level by just doing crafting and farming. Which is different than most themepark crafting in that most of those force you to continue to level by quests in order to be able to continue leveling crafting. ArcheAge crafting might not seem very different on the surface and I would agree with that. More complex perhaps but not substantively different in how it plays. But what is qualitatively different is that ArcheAge has made crafting and gathering a legitimately different choice in what you can do to level and simply play in the game. Most items you need to continue progressing in crafting are not artificially locked behind higher level zones.
You can also choose to build a boat at any time and take off to the seas. you can choose to do fishing or not, you can choose to do treasure hunting or not. There are all kinds of things that you can choose to do in any order or not at all in playing the game and for the most part you can choose to start doing them at any level.
ArcheAge is a sandbox. It allows people to play it in a host of different ways. It gives people the freedom to discover its elements (toys) in pretty much any order they wish to take them and it doesn't force any particular path on the player, at least not after the low teens. This might not have the sandbox features you want to see in a game. And I would agree that it is not the "Ultimate" sandbox. But it is a sandbox.
All die, so die well.
Let's not forget the farming in WoW too.
@ VikingGamer:
If there is no definition of sandbox, then there is no sandbox. You can call it a sandbox under the premise that there is no universally accepted definition, but in order to make sure what ever it is you are describing fits into your own acceptable definition, then that definition becomes meaningless since it has no defining parameters. Might as well call lit a toy box, jewelry box, toolbox or a lockbox for all that matters. Since it's as much of one of those as it is a sandbox with no definition.
EDIT: You are correct, though, there really isn't a definition. But it was known by example. If we go back to when they were more common, you would describe them as "UO" or games that weren't such as EQ and WoW. There were also Hybrids like AO and SWG. They were never defined, but players knew which were which and no one really questioned them.
Building boats, fishing, leveling by crafting or other means besides quests, housing, freedom to do what you want. These are not sandbox elements; heck, Vanguard had all that, and nobody called it a sandbox.
Are there pre-defined classes? With pre-defined skills? Quests that give XP? Pre-defined weapons and gear to get from pre-defined boss encounters? -- Not a sandbox.
Just being able to build your own boat, your own house, and do other things besides quest (like Diplomacy, Trade, crafting, etc) does not equal a sandbox.
------------
2024: 47 years on the Net.
This is why we need to define what we mean by sandbox before we simply declare a game to be sandbox or not. I think your definition of sandbox is flawed. And listing off what you think it not sandbox doesn't really get us any closer to knowing what is sandbox. I don't agree that having certain non-sandbox elements in a game makes it not sandbox.
All die, so die well.
It's a massively multiplayer online role playing game.
Why do we need all these distinctions to determine whether a game is "fun" or not?
www.facebook.com/themarksmovierules
Currently playing:
FFXIV on Behemoth, FFXI on Eden, and Gloria Victis on NA.
More like farmpark.
A well-done sandbox isn't necessarily more fun than a well-done themepark or vice-versa. They do, however, appeal to different TASTES.
And that's why we need the distinction. Before someone spends time and/or money playing an MMO (because the beginning of an MMO is never a good indication of how it'll pan out in the long run), it helps to know what they're getting in to.
A sandbox with not enough sand might be a decent way of describing it. The sandbox elements are there to a point but you're limited in how much you can use them to do anything with the world (and, as I've stated earlier, the "themepark" elements kinda drop to 0 later on by virtue of PvE being filler at best)
I guess you are right, basicly what we have here is this
thanks for pointing it out.
If it's not broken, you are not innovating.
Sandbox to me means little or nothing is pre-defined. You get sand, and a small number of tools/actions that you can use to make everything else in the game from the sand.
I'll use Ryzom as an example:
- no quests for XP. -- One feature of a sandbox is that it doesn't have any "rides", or pre-built quests or missions to level by. Users are expected to make their own content out of the sand.
- no preset classes -- a sandbox implies the user creates the content, including classes. A game with fixed classes that consists of fixed skills per class is not a sandbox.
- no fixed skills or actions -- same as classes, a real sandbox has few pre-defined skills. In Ryzom, the user has to create his own skills and actions.
- no pre-defined armor or weapons -- sandbox implies the user creates the content, so having pre-defined weapons or pre-defined armor is not sandbox. That's more like "here's a sanbox, but we've already built everything for you". Users should be creating everything.
Having free-form gameplay is not sandbox, that is just a better themepark. "Do I want to ride the crafting train, the boat-building ride, or the house construction zone ride?" As I mentioned above, even Vanguard had free-form playstyle, including boat and house construction, and non-quest things to do like Diplomacy, Crafting, etc. Nobody would ever call Vanguard a sandbox.
------------
2024: 47 years on the Net.
I make a distinction between sandbox single-player games and sandbox MMO's.
Single player sandboxes emphasize freedom while MMO sandboxes emphasize power.
A single player game is more sandboxy than a competing game when it places fewer limits on the player's choice of activity at any given time. (eg, Skyrim is more sandboxy than Final Fantasy which is more sandboxy than Dragon's Lair).
For MMO's the sandboxier game is the one that grants the user more power to affect the shared experience. It's not "freedom" any more, because your power can limit my freedom. So stuff like terraforming, seamless world, non-instanced construction and farming, open world PVP and territorial control are very much sandbox features, while cutscenes, static quests, levels, phasing, and instances are not.
So Wurm Online is more sandboxier than Archeage, which is more sandboxier than WoW which is more sandboxier than SWtoR.
There is nothing sandboxy about Skyrim. It is about as Theme Park as it gets. It's just non-linear. Everything in Skyrim is laid out exactly as you need to do it. You only option is the order in which you experience it. But even in that, you still have to do it EXACTLY how the game says you will do it. Want to join the Thieves Guild, but don't want to sell your soul to Nocturnal? Too bad. Want to join the companions but don't want to become a Werewolf? Too bad. Want to experience the Dark Brotherhood from an adversarial role without being a murderer? Too bad. Want to take out NPCs you don't like (Delphine) and never plan on interacting with again but the game has them as essential for quests? Too bad. Crafting and gathering is cut-n-pasted right out of standard Theme Park. Even the housing comes Pre-fab and pre-decorated in pre-established locations. You can't go build wherever you want.........Unless you mod it but that's outside the game. Modding is not sandbox.
No, Skyrim really doesn't have that much freedom.
(And Skyrim is probably my all time favorite video game at over 1500 hrs, so I don't criticize it lightly)
I agree with the poster above who said Sandbox means you build everything.
Definitely disagree with this. I do agree that Skyrim is certainly NOT a sandbox game, but it's anything but linear. It's open world, and you have a ton of freedom and choices. You can basically play the game the way you want to play it, and don't have to do ANY of the linear story content if you don't want. I've known people that start a character and don't do any of the quests. They simply play in survival/exploration mode.
You simply don't see that type of freedom in most RPGs, particularly story-driven ones.
Try Life is feudal, that's a proper sandbox. Great game