It’s kinda funny, but in the early days of Bioware’s Old Republic forum, people — like myself — would comment about wanting TOR to be a very sandbox kind of game. And didn’t the criticism rain down on us, thick and fast? “This is no Star Wars Galaxies!” people would sneer, belligerently. “Go and play that if you want sandbox!” Others would tell us that sandbox was a “stupid” way of designing a game and the “proof” of that was the success of World of Warcraft; a game which holds the player’s hand and guides them from quest to quest to quest in the most basic and linear of ways.
(To those who don’t understand the sandbox concept, it’s essentially a design concept in video games — often RPGs — where a player can freely roam a virtual world. Basically, your character appears in-game and can walk in any direction and find interesting things to do, which don’t have to be done in order. It’s a style of game where you feel immersed in the world because you’re making all the decisions — not having the game hold your hand and guide you from set-piece to set-piece.)
Anyway, what makes it all so funny is that in more recent times — I’d suggest the past six months or so — I’ve been seeing people raise concepts on the Bioware forums which are so deeply sandbox-based, it’s just crazy to see. I’ve also seen people praising new-release games like Red Dead Redemption for their gameplay. Yet, in both cases, it seems abundantly clear to me that the person making the comment doesn’t even realise that they’re praising a sandbox construct. So I’ve come to the conclusion that I think people actually like sandbox gaming without even realising it. Yet all it takes is for someone to cry, “But this isn’t Star Wars Galaxies!” and the bashing starts again.
Of course, having said all of this, it’s too late for The Old Republic. The developers set course for their vision of “the story” long before their forum even opened. Even if we’d praised sandbox games from dusk till dawn as soon as the forum opened and the Star Wars Galaxies haters had shut up for a change, nothing different would have happened anyway. I find that quite depressing, actually, because I think more people want a good sandbox game in this genre than they even realise; particularly after Star Wars Galaxies was messed up in the end and a lot of people out there have yet to even experience a good sandbox MMO, despite possibly playing — and enjoying — sandbox-style game in other forms, such as the aforementioned Red Dead Redemption. Your thoughts?
Of course they do, and of course they don’t realize it. Probably why I’ve kept my eye on Infinity for so many years, if they could pull of 1/10th of what they are promising, it would show the world that there is room for a fully sandbox MMMO. And these people must not have played WoW at it’s start, it didn’t have a quest tracker and click and hold hand button, you had to explore a little. (God I miss Vanguard sometimes)
TOR is IMO fundamentally not a sandbox game. It is, as stated by the devs more than once, a multi-ending science-fiction tale. You do not play as yourself, you follow the story of the inquisitor/bounty hunter etc. and hopefully it’s so interesting that you will want to experience it twice, maybe with a different ending. You are essentially watching a movie unfold. Only tiny details are up to you, and you can either like it or try to see if another’s class story is better.
This is of course at odds with a MMO, so it will be critical how seamlessly the storylines of different players can be made to overlap. It could be great (such as extra content when another class is present) or awkward (we are plotting against the Empire here – why did you bring an Agent with you?).
In many ways, making sandbox games is easier, and sandbox areas can easily be sent up in parts of TOR. But what BW does is much more demaning and much harder to pull of.
I wish them luck, for my own future enjoyments sake.