I miss the days when MMOs were wonderous...

EQ was never called Sandbox
UO was sandbox
EQ was very much a theme park style MMORPG from day one on!

The only thing original EQ didnt have early on was quest lines (well working ones anyways) but its progression was very much

a to b to c to d
this area to that area to that area in a linear fashion

The leveling was Themepark

I really dont get where people now try to claim EQ was a sandbox game
It NEVER was

It was designed to be a alternative to UO which was a pure sandbox game.

Exploration is NOT a sandbox only feature as some like to think

Anyways, I didnt get the whole sandbox vrs Themepark arguement from the OP to be honest

Based on most responses, I dont think many if any did (other then yourself of course)

Think you might have missed the point the OP was driving at.

Oh and as for "EQ Next", thats a return to original EQ designs (which again are not sandbox designs, you still follow a linear path from point to point to point. Get in a area above your level and you will not be exploring much of it.)

Any game worth it's salt is niche, and placed into a genre. RPG, FPS, TPS, RTS, SURVIVAL HORROR.

If you don't like the genre, then you will probably not like the games made in that genre. Call of Duty has proven to be a huge success as a FPS, if it was turned into a RPG ? Not so much...

ARCHEAGE - Is going to be impressive when it hits NA, and will certainly bring back some of that MMO Sandbox Love, seen in Ultima online and SWG.

On a side note, the Korean Servers have their own rules based on Korea, and I believe there is a mandatory max amount of hours you can play a MMO over there. Talk about government infringement .

Fortunately, here in the Land of the Free you can play as much as you want at any time of the day.

I didn't take the chance to read through the thread, I will go through it at some point. My biggest issue with SWTOR is that, in my opinion, it didn't raise the gaming bar in any way. The majority of elements in the game are MMO commonplace, or WoW commonplace. And wherever it did try something new, it hasn't really had any groundbreaking development.

For a game that cost so much to create, and was in works for so many years, I felt like there should have been something more. What that something more is, I don' know, but there is something missing from the game.

This game has a lot of wonderous posibilities to discover.. This is an example just in Nar Shaddaa.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcI9UhO8gms

That video was a show of skill of the creator's editing skills. As to the game itself, it showed the lack of any kind of decent Role Playing or Machinima implementation. The gameplay itself was so limited in that video; I have seen more ability in Halo Machinima.

Loved the video. Thanks so much for making it and for sharing! I agree the game allows a lot of RP and video possibilities. I wish it had "green screen" modeler though, so we could easily isolate characters and objects.

I found that RPing, making stories and participating in making videos is what brought "that wonderous feeling" for me in SWTOR. But voice acting of characters, and the "theme park" elements in-game is what gets me going in the first place...

While we are sharing, here is a video my guildie made, called "Quintessential conversations: One night on Nar Shaddaa." It's a film noir about a murder investigation. I played a small role, the triple agent. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsB9EpB9BPs

Wow folks. A bunch more great responses. Please remember that it is not my intention for this thread to bag on SWTOR nor to promote a "better" game. I am just looking for what you guys think could be done here to add to the wonder many of us have experienced in the past.

To get back to the conversation, I get that a lot of the amazement came from everything being new. It still doesn't keep me from missing that feeling in an MMO.

Something that would awe me is walking into my hangar and boarding (not loading into) my ship, firing it up and taking off into space or into the atmosphere and then into space. I know that Star Citizen is looking to have this sort of mechanic, but to have it in the TOR mmo space would be amazing.

Nothing is missing.

Back when EQ came and later WoW. You have to remember that it was a "niche" audience. The people that played it new nothing else but death penalties, walking hours to get to places.

As the genre got popular the game had to change. You saw easier content, quicker leveling, and much more convenience. A very good example of this change was eve's walking in stations. They were trying to cater to the players that couldn't grasp or enjoy eve as it was. They screwed up their game and ultimately went back to focusing on little red crosses.

These days every developer is in the mode of "we want a piece" of the pie. Making something truly different is a gamble, when you know you can get 1 to 2 million players but taking a title and just re-creating the same game.

I remember getting home from college, calling my friends on the phone. Getting all 40 of us together, go into brd to have our priests mind control the mobs that could then then give our party a fire resist buff. We'd then make our attempt on magtherdon in molten core.

I remember the incredible length of time it took to get a jedi knight in swg.

Back in 2002 to 2004 the mmo market was very small. Now it's very large you are talking about maybe 10 millio players world wide to 100+ million players. WoW happened to be at the right place at the right time. So the game has the resources and power to continue to lead the industry. With swtor's initial investment , they just took the wrong turn and developed something that wasn't comparable to what was already out there.

Open world exploration, unique armor sets for all lvls across the board. Housing done right (not a lifeless ship), guild housing (Guild ships--hopefully this wont be a good idea turned into a debacle if they implement it). More races. Like a lot more.

I read this and started up ideas for what I would do for an MMO. This is what I got. There would be a world that had 9 mountains, each mountain has a citadel a top it, and in those citadels are the tombs. The 8 smaller mountains contain 8 of the greatest lords that graced the land in the past and the 9th and biggest mountain contained the tomb of the king of those 8 lords. The king in the past went into power through blood and carnage with the alliegence of those 8 lords at his back. When they ramsacked the original peaceful kingdoms the King of that time cursed the 9 men to horrible deaths. The land was ruled for years under those lords and king until a decade of darkness swept the land and each lord died mystewriously in his confined citadel. The king was never seen again and the world plunged into a darkness for another 10 years. It was known as the 20 Year Decay. Giant spiders from dusky forrests presented themselves, golbins, orcs, all the creatures of the night terrorized the people of this land until (insert hero here) freed a dusky traveller who was passing through (insert heroes name here) town from a band of Goblins. That traveller thrusts you into a story of conflict and ghosts where the 8 lords and 1 king have big plans for the rest of the realm.

That's kind of the background story to it. The MMO would launch with 9 raids. Each mountain is a raid, and to get to the raid you would have to finish a long heroic questline that leads you into to face each lord. Each lord will drop raid gear like always present in a MMO but I thought it would be cool to have a variable. Everything we play we always see the names of chest pieces, boots, gauntlets, everything(as an example The Gauntlets of Dark Woe) So when you beat a raid boss it has a chance to drop a scroll. That scroll will inbide a name a specific peice of armor. It would take in consideration the place you got the scroll, the thing you killed, and the original name. So say you had a Shadowed Chestplate, you killed Demon Man in the Mountain of Ley and you got the scroll you woul;d get something like "The Demon Man's Shadowed Chest Plate of Ley. So in a sense your armor will have a history to it. The 9th mountain where the king would be would drop a scroll but for a weapon and that would allow you to name your weapon whatever you wanted.

^ That of course would be the end game. I see a lot for the story where you travel the roads of danger with the traveller you met unlocking the deception of the King one step at a time.