Oh god, do I dip into this? Or do I keep my paws out of it? Such an interesting discussion, but one full of well... those opinions We all go 'em, nuthin's wrong with any of 'em! With that said, do understand the following is my view point as a designer and a player.

<Novel Incoming!>

Did SW:ToR ever advertise itself as a sandbox? I hope not, because it certainly is not. However, for the style of game it is TRYING to be, it's very good at it. I currently enjoy it more than WoW. This impressed me at least.

Something it confirms for me? Heavy dialog and story lines DO NOT belong in a multiplayer environment. They get in the way, and are a bother for multiplayer. I enjoy SW:ToR, solo. I in fact, do not see why I pay 15 dollars a month for what to me, is basically a single player game with MMO mechanics rather than solid and interesting mechanics. Any groups I get into, kicks me because I want to listen to the dialog I haven't heard yet. [They've all heard it!] Or they whine at me a lot for listening and slowing them all down. I've always believed heavy dialog and story lines as such do NOT belong in MMO's, or they should at the very least be ENTIRELY optional things you can do at your own leisure. You can't avoid it in SW:ToR because it's part of your progression.

My ideal MMO worlds are spaces where I can do as I feel. Where I tell my own story, and have a world to play in for it. I can build my space, create a home, and freely go on adventures with friends with our own goals and purpose. EVE does this very well, and allows the players to create the content and their fun extremely well. It may not be the type of content YOU like, but many people read the user stories of EVE and are absolutely in love with what you can do in it [ It's just too bad it's so convoluted and you do need a degree in spread sheets and rocket science to play I can make fun of it! I have 3 accounts! >..> ] My coworkers and I recently recreated "Battlestar Galactica" within EVE. We took an Orca [Battlestar ship kinda, with no guns =P] and a bunch of small support ships, and wandered aimlessly from one wormhole to the next, until we popped out somewhere.

Is SW:ToR the death of sandbox? Definitely not, it didn't even try. If anything, SW:ToR was an experiment of story telling within an MMO space. They just forgot the "Multiplayer" part of it and didn't design with that in mind.

There are a lot of issues why we likely won't see a good sandbox for a while though.

MMO's are now main stream since WoW has hit the deck. Gaming companies have this nasty habit of trying to jump on the bandwagon after it has left. So they try and reinvent the wheel that is WoW, with their own twist, and hope it takes off. Much like Modern Warfare is to most shooters, and Battlefield is to most team based online shooters. We start seeing less innovations from the big companies and must rely on indy games to do that in these genres.

This leads to another problem. MMO's are very expensive to create currently. It takes a lot of people to work on one to make it happen in WoW grade of polish. So the indy guys can't really do it yet, because...

Those "investors" with the money to make our little designer dreams come true, they don't want to hear your unique and possible block buster hit. It doesn't at all sound like WoW, which they know is a block buster hit. So they're less interested in funding that sort of thing. It's a risk. "What? You want us to fund a crappy world of cubes with 16 by 16 textures on them. Players can gather these various cubes and turn them into stuff? A construction sim? NO ONE would pay for that! EVER!" Notch's paypal account gets shut down often because they think he's running an illegal money operation... when really, a lot of people love his game, and buy it!

Now to give hope!

There are innovators. Someone WILL get the smarts to build a proper "sandbox" MMO and catch that niche of us who want to play it. It's likely been realized already by several designer types out there in fact! They just need to get it done and put it up somewhere easy for the public to access, and prove it's possible. That way those bigger companies may finally wisen up and say "Oh, hey, we should give this a try!" I know people will probably stab me for saying this but... I'm looking forward to Blizzard's "Titan" project. I know people hate Blizzard, but they have the time, and money to risk these things.

Anyhow, hope this was fun for someone to read