The World Of The Sandbox MMO Attempts To Bribe Players To Return
It’s a sad day in gaming when the massive potential of the sandbox genre fails to deliver any mainstream titles, but currently available sandbox games are doing everything they can to entice players back to their product. Xsyon, a little known MMO Sandbox game set in a post apocalyptic world, recently launched its return players event that offered free play time to past subscribers. And now another sandbox title, albeit a more popular one, Darkfall, has joined in with the release of their latest event that is also offering free play time.
From June 27th to June 29th, players that have previously purchased the Darkfall game will be able to test the recent patches for free, without the need to resubscribe or provide any credit card details. Additionally during this period, players can enjoy a far quicker skill progression rate than is currently available. Although this news hasn’t really given anything for the community to shout about, many are hoping that the developers are hoping to entice more players to return for the hugely anticipated Darkfall 2.0 update, an update people have been talking about for years, but there’s been no official confirmation of the 2.0 release date. Also, after this event the monthyl subscription price will be dropping and the skill gains will be permanently increased, although not to the same effect as the event changes.
All that’s left now is for Mortal Online to hop on the bandwagon and offer something to get players to return to their sandbox world.
The sandbox genre has yet to really take off in terms of multiplayer games, Minecraft is arguably the best sandbox title available at the moment but it doesn’t deliver in many aspects of game-play such as graphics and combat. Salem, a highly anticipated sandbox MMO title based on Heaven and Hearth, will be releasing soon but there’s nothing that suggests it will do any better than the other sandbox games listed.
What are your thoughts on the sandbox genre? Is it doomed to fail or will something special ignite the interest?
The first MMORPG ever was a sandbox MMORPG. In the past the social aspect of mmorpg were much bigger than today. These days some MMORPG advertise that you can solo the whole game. Something is wrong with the market. I would say that all started with the huge success of WoW. Every other MMORPG wanted a piece of the cake. So the idea of a MMORPG changed and become more casual. There are just a few small studios, which developing sandbox MMORPGs. But I would say the genre of sandbox MMORPGs becoming more and more interests of players today. Nearly every MMORPG feels the same, so players want something different. Hopefully the genre will be revived =)
From i was twelve years i dream with a MMORTS. A massive world of battles with all the things of a typical rts like age of empires or stronghold combining the aspects of building your own civilization and the awesome scales of battles of a total war. I hope the sandbox returns. With the new technologies i think this idea aren’t far away and i believe in a public for this kind of games. Yes the problems begun with games like wow when the companies focused on the wrong aspects of the games even ignoring his own lore, and wow aren’t the only case… But i’m still wondering how much time it take this generation of games? Until today i did not found anything about this. It’s a shame.
PD: And as I always say, sorry if I have some mistakes with my english
Thanks for your input Happy! I agree with practically everything you said.