Don't worry, takes a bit more than than to hurt or annoy, just a little sad that people lack my serene patience and faith
A true sandbox can only exist with total player freedom to make, well, just about anything and that, unless you have simplified and very limited tools creates chaos and an apartheid between the tech savvy and the non tech savvy.
I've got creativity out the ying-yang but I can't make models or understand scripting, so that'd be no good to me.
What we DO have is a living, breathing world where everything that is in place makes actual sense. We don't have 'monsters' hanging out and jus' chillin' we have an ecosphere, albeit limited.
Everything has a history, a place, capabilities that make sense.
WoW by comparison is simplistic and cartoonish, it is, like most MMORPGs "Ultima, only BETTAH!"
I've mentioned it before but this is what we in the TTRPG industry and online community call a 'Fantasy Heartbreaker'. Every year we see half a dozen 'D&D only BETTAH!' games come out and that's all they are.
WoW is unusual in that its actually made headway but not by actually doing anything new. The grass always looks greener I guess but they've had their patch problems their nerfing problems and, more recently an ENORMOUS PvP problem and sh*tstorm.
We can create something, stories. Our quests actually mean something in a wider context, we form part of the storyline, our names get known. If you strike the last blow against a boss kitin it actually means something, it becomes part of our servers chronicle. You get famous, known. You can create your own stories.
Things here have significance.
SoR isn't innovative enough for me in an ideal world (check what I wrote in 'If I could make an MMORPG' in the off topic forum) but its as near as damn in the current climate.
Ryzom actually makes an effort, its not bog standard SF or Fantasy, the world makes internal sense, it has plausibility, the community is fantastic and the skill system is a good halfway house between levels and not levels to placate my deep hatred of level based systems.
Taken as a whole it IS innovative in an industry becoming increasingly timid and unable, financially, to take risks.
Bravo.
"Ps.: Just one little edit since I took the time and read Jyudas post. I shared your opinion some month ago. But what íou say about the sandbox is only true if you have the possibility to make something, to change something, to create something. This is not the case. There is nothing that is not present in Wow (no thats true, name me one thing), so why not play a living world which is certanly not unique, but everything is at its place? Because they tell you that SoR is innovative although it only looks different?
I hope I didn't hurt you J, didn't mean to. This was not flaming only frustration. Peace."
