>>14912947
It is structured sandbox my friend. It is sandbox but having a backstory and some structure to give you a goal. You could go even more sandbox, by having a very good backstory, if you would take WoW as an example, by making the conflict between alliance and horde really good and spectacular that the majority of people would actually choose one or the other. Otherwise the majority of people will end up simply going their own way whenever there is something they do not fully agree with in their clan/guild/whatever. It takes away from the gameplay. Because in a sandbox game, most of your gameplay comes from the conflict between people. And not just the PVP conflict, but also smaller disagreements that do not have to end in a PVP fight. You could also make it so surviving alone is rather difficult, but then you usually end up with the leader of your groups being those that can just spend the most time in game. Which are generally powerhungry fucks ruining everything.
Face of Mankind, to me, had a good balance between structure and being able to do what you wish. At least in earlier versions of the game. The backstory enables each group to be slightly different and gives you something to take inspiration from.
One of the main problems with sandbox games is that most of them have only PVP. And sooner or later you reach the stage where either you are constantly bullying everybody, or constantly getting bullied by everybody. And sooner or later most people leave.
For every person that is thinking about becoming a trader between cities, you have 2 who think they should play as a caravan guard and 250 who think they should become thieves plundering caravans. Because fuck all the extra waiting and standing still involved in running a caravan.
This can be helped by having very good incentives for players to do something else. But MMOs think that all incentives are things like achievements and better armor. Instead they should have a very good backstory and great atmosphere. If you feel like you have a hometown, and your town gets visibly more shitty as you have less and less trade, more people will actually be willing to protect caravans or whatever else.
And most devs are shit. They start out sandbox, see a few issues and instead of letting the community work them out, they slap some mechanical fixes on top of it. People get spawn camped? Lets make them immune for 2 hours, that way either we end up with people dying after 2 hours and 2 seconds for those that do not know the game, or 2 hours of abusing the immunity for those that understand the game very well.
Creating an MMO requires quite a bit of money or a very dedicated team all on the same page. If it requires money and it has MMO in the name, what your investor actually wants is that you add addicting elements so that people keep paying month after month. If you make a small, niche MMO with a small and dedicated team. I believe in you. But you will probably end up breaking up sooner or later. You will earn too little for your entire team and way too little for the number of hours you have to put into it. But fuck it if they aren't the best games.