Naoki Yoshida recent interview

[Delily]

Imagine if they fired Yoshida and brought back the old devs and turned it back into what FFXIV used to be. That is essentially what happened to SWG.

That analogy is helpful, thank you for the explanation. One thing I notice is the focus on the sandbox elements. I know many people tend to think a sandbox MMO will revitalize the genre, but there have been quite a few attempts at a sandbox MMO, and only Eve is around. I think sandbox work very well for single player games like the ES series, and for smaller network games like Minecraft, but once you scale them up to MMO levels, the things that make then enticing in small environments become detriments, many because you have too many people fighting over sand and knocking over other people's castles.

[Fendred]

That analogy is helpful, thank you for the explanation. One thing I notice is the focus on the sandbox elements. I know many people tend to think a sandbox MMO will revitalize the genre, but there have been quite a few attempts at a sandbox MMO, and only Eve is around. I think sandbox work very well for single player games like the ES series, and for smaller network games like Minecraft, but once you scale them up to MMO levels, the things that make then enticing in small environments become detriments, many because you have too many people fighting over sand and knocking over other people's castles.

I think there is a lot to learn from sandbox MMORPGs because they focus very heavily on the sociological aspect of the gameplay. Sandbox MMOs try to create challenges that can only be tackled by large numbers of players working together. The FFXIV hunts system is a simple example of this kind of thinking. The only thing from World of Warcraft's history that matches this kind of mentality was the opening of the gates to Ahn'qiraj. To get to the next raid, the entire server had to pitch together in order to open the gates permanently. This meant players of all stripes needed to contribute supplies to the effort, culminating in a major server event. It was a one time thing, but very memorable. I remember running around in Silithus as a naked gnome with a cape distracting people as they were trying to fight stuff. I was kind of an asshole back then.