Long story short, I came upon a post by an artist I follow on DA. The person talked about an article in the BBC about Minecraft and the MMO industry, also talking about open world ideas with Sandbox style MMOs. Well, if I interpreted the person's post the way it should have been since I have the ability to misconstrue things to such a degree that tinfoil hat wearers donate their headgear to me in an effort to make me sane.

As I started to think about the post, it got me on the notion of what people prefer in the MMO community and the Gaming community in general. Are Sandbox style MMOs the way to go with world building, player created economies, and such, or is it better for linear style games with a mixture of "possible" sandbox style gameplay?

Also, what's the best example of a Sandbox style MMO in your opinion? (The same going for linear progression style MMOs with little to no Sandbox elements in them.)

Player-run economies are always fun. Makes the game a lot more interesting.

I haven't played much MMOs, but I've been thinking about getting into that genre with FFXI, FFXIV: ARR and ESO.