Just becuase it doesnt have radiant AI does not mean the NPCs can't do more then just stand around in the same place all day.

Also you got what they said about blocking complelty wrong. They said blocking a SPECIAL ATTACK might not stop all the damage, but it would get rid of some of it, and maybe some seconday abilites.

Blocking is just a new gimmick. What is the fundamental difference that separates this game from mainstream MMORPGs?

Equipment loss upon death? This not only drives PvP, but creates a constant demand for player-made equipment.

Player-owned, conquerable structures? Ebon mines, sawmills, housing, etc. Defending moons in Eve is one of my fondest MMORPG memories.

Player-created content? Forts, ships, weapons, wars. I don't want to be stuck on a map and told that nothing I can do will ever change it. The game, is it were announced, can never have something like http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2008/09/09/the-great-war/. They've already told us that player interaction is faction-based, so an arbitrary choice at the beginning of the game already picks our enemies for us, rather than friendship and enmity forming through player interaction. The faction idea just needs to die already. Telling us that this nameless, faceless guy you can't talk to is our enemy simply because he picked a different race when he created his character is stupid.

There are no bad guys in faction-based pvp. Only people who picked the other team. I want to be able to decide to be good or bad. To come up on a guy under attack and have the option to help him or help kill him and take his stuff. To be a highwayman or a lawman. To join a guild to help them in a war, or to feed information to their enemies and swipe things from their bank. Picking your enemies, deciding to be good or bad, making a name for yourself through various professions: this is what makes a sandbox.

Without things like these, I won't play it, for the same reason I won't play Warcraft, or Rift, or EQ2, or LOTRO, or Aeon, or Warhammer, Age of Conan or any of the endless slough of theme park MMOs. A sandbox MMO is the only thing fitting of the Elder Scrolls name.

the mmo, as described, is no less sandpark then the SP games.

So, it's fine when you and your ilk make nothing but negative, doomsaying posts, but when he tries to voice HIS OPINION, you get to belittle and report him?

Riiiiiigghht.

The single player games have the construction sets. It doesn't get more sandbox than that.

the construction Kit is an optinal side-program and IS NOT the game itself.

the games themselves are not sandbox games.

or rather they are, just not that guys arbitrary definition of sandbox.

Then what do you think a sandbox mmo is?

from wikipedia:
"An open world is a type of video game level design where a player can roam freely through a virtual world and is given considerable freedom in choosing how or when to approach objectives.[1] Video games that include such level design often are referred to as "free roam" games.

The term is sometimes used interchangeably with "sandbox" and "free-roaming";[2][3] however, the terms open world and free-roaming describe the game environment itself and allude more to the absence of artificial barriers,[4] in contrast to the invisible walls and loading screens that are common in linear level designs. The term sandbox refers more to the mechanics of a game and how, as in a physical sandbox, the user is entertained by his ability to play creatively and with there being "no right way"[5] of playing the game.

Despite their name, many open world games still enforce restrictions at some points in the game environment, either due to absolute game design limitations or temporary in-game limitations (such as locked areas) imposed by a game's linearity."

the elder scrolls games are sandboxes in the sense that they are open world, and there is "no right way", as opposed to say dragon age 2.

as for mmos, something open world with a lot of different options for character progression besides gear.
we dont know enough about ESO to make any calls on it. non instanced dungeons and hubless questing implies they are trying to lean more in the sandboxy direction though.

becuase all those quests that only have one way of beating them, which is to say 99% of them, is "no right way" game design?

well stuff like this is why the definition is murky. is the quest system what makes or breaks it or is it the option to forego questing altogether and still be able to progress?

Exactly..... that is why I ate the word sandbox, much like I do the term RPG, they are so ill defined they are meaingless.

Yeah, but RPG is the silliest term because it means so many different things to so many differernt people. Get two 'RPG' players in the same room and they could be talking foreign language for all I could tell. Like a zelda player or fallout player, both are RPG games right? But... doesn't that mean all games are RPG's since you play a role in all games?

Zelda isnt a RPG, its a action-adventure game.

And sanbox is just as silly becuase theres so many people who has diffrent views on "whatp oint a game stops being a sandbox"

So you'd prefer a game that punishes/rewards people based on the time of day they are available to be online? But as you said, only stupid people are only able to play at night, so I guess we shouldn't worry.

I think "typical MMORPG with emphasis on GVG" aptly covers when we have seen of TESO so far. But that's a mouth-full so let's just shorten it to DAOC2.

The term sandbox as it applies to MMORPGs is vague because so few developers are pushing on the boundaries of the whole idea of the standardized MMO. In the end, the focus of every single one of those games I listed is to kill bosses and acquire gear. Go to the same dungeons every week and kill the boss until you get the item you want.

In the Eve sandbox (I'll use Eve as an example because it is really the only sandbox MMO), nothing is dictated to you. You don't spawn in a newbie zone and aren't told that you have to kill boars to level up. If I want to be a cog in a giant power block holding sovereignty in hundreds of systems, I can do it. If I want to be a pirate, preying on other players, I can do it. If I want to be a spy, joining an alliance to sell information to another, I can do it. If I want to be a miner and harvest asteroids, I can do it. I can be an illegal salvager, I can manufacture ships, equipment, even narcotics. I can be a smuggler, a blockade runner, a pirate hunter, an explorer, a politician, an escrow agent, a http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Chribba_%28Character%29, an http://eveinfo.net/wiki/ind~3707.htm. And not just the "guy who did the most damage in the battleground" emperor as it appears we'll have in TESO, but an emperor who commands thousands of players. In the sandbox, none of these professions are created by the developers. These are all created by the players.

In the theme park MMO ("WoW clone"), you pick a class, and a set of skills is dictated to you. This choice dictates what you do for the rest of the game. You can choose to craft some equipment, but the majority of your time is spent killing NPCs.

you are quite an expert! youtube is like the Harvard of the internet!
IT IS FOLLOWING THE LORE! the period in which they set it is described in the pocket guide, GO READ!

the gameplay divergence from the main series is a VERY REASONABLE COMPROMISE for the series to have an addaptation for an mmo game!
its not going to be an immersive first person sandbox because it cant be for the broader audiance! sandbox is just as loose a term as rpg. and this one seems to be built around the same emergent gameplay that guild wars 2 is just now getting recognition for, which is more sand-boxy than many single player rpg's. if they can get the quests and creature AI/behavior to be as dynamic as that than this will be better than anyone could expect.
experience bar, dungeons, upgradeable equipment as a form of progression? ARE YOU PLAYING AN RPG!?!?!

well by that definition the elder scrolls games themselves arent sandboxes.

so the question arises... why should the mmo version be a sandbox?

Elderscrolls isn't just lore. It is exploration of entire worlds, reactive/living universes, had crafted worlds, immersive gameplay and quests that are all unique and all mean something to the world, a world where you can be the character.
To sacrifice these qualities immedietly disqualifies you from ever being considered a TES game. If the CORE ELEMENTS OF THE SERIES have to sacrified for making a MMO then the game SHOULD NOT be made into a MMO. Period. No one likes the Elderscrolls because mehrunes dagon is cool. It's the fact that you can immerse yourself into a life like world and be the character you want to be, fight how you want to fight in which every move you make is your own. Every descision you make changes the dynamic of the world.

the only people who can determine what the core leemnts of the seires are is the series owner, which is Zenimax.

Furthermore
1. You can do lots of exploration in the MMO
2. If ractive universes was a key then neither Morrowind, Oblivion , or skyrim would be ES games becuase they lack that, but the MMO does react to things you do, at least on the same bare-bones level the SP games do.
3. The world is hand crafted, it cant not be unless its randomly generated
4. ................ 90% of the quests in the ES series have never meant anything, really, they are trivil "go here and kill X number of htings and get X number of items" quests.

first off thats quite a judgement, your not the one who decides what is or is not a tes game, your decisions have not mattered one bit since daggerfall, where there were like 9 different endings which got retconned into one for continuity.
this is not mass effect, this is the elder scrolls, its you who seems confused about what game you have been playing.

secondly, you are just one dude, and your experiences do not equate to mine, the reason I LOVE THE SERIES is the lore and the world, the gameplay is just a bonus, and i would trade the current gameplay for something equally complex if not moreso.
if you have trouble ROLEPLAYING then thats your issue. i have no trouble "being the character" alongside other adventurers.

Its a huge game with tons of roleplay potential set in the elder scrolls universe, THE WHOLE OF TAMRIEL!

It doesn't necessarily have to be a sandbox, but if it wants to survive more than a few seasons, Zenimax has to strive to stay away from the WoW-clone stigma. Players are tired of these games - grind experience, hit the level cap, run the same dungeon every week for shiny equipment. Every game that has went up against WoW has crashed and burned. You have to look at why this is happening. Why are so many vanilla fantasy MMORPGs failing? What games have stood the test of time?

The only games that still exist and retain a healthy number of subscriptions are WoW and Eve. Most of the rest have gone dark, servers have closed, gone free-to-play. Most of the rest are just corpses strewn about the feet of WoW, because they've all been nearly identical to it. Eve is still around because it bears almost no resemblance to WoW.

So to answer your question: It doesn't have to be a sandbox - it just has to break free of the standardized MMO that it appears to be shaping up to be.

Please, let's be completely real now. The Elderscrolls series wins dozens of Game of the year awards, dozens of RPG of the year awards, among hundreds of other awards because (as what nearly every Reviewer has stated when reviewing the series) the Elderscrolls series gave the player complete freedom, it touts a organic and reactive universe that changes depending on how the player plays the game, touted unique qestlines that actually means something to the player and the character giving the quest, advanced graphics (Morrowind being the most graphically advanced game of it's time, Oblivion being one of the most graphically advanced game of all time until crysis came out later that year, and now skyrim which boasts some of the best scenaries and beutiful lanscapes that the series has seen yet, and ofcourse immersive combat and viewpoints.

What makes TES:O at all part of the TES series if i boasts none of the gameplay mechanics of the original series, or graphics, or art styles, or basic theme? TES:O is nothing like the series it claims origins to, so there is no reason to consider it a TES game. You can buy the title, you can't buy the fans or the epicness of the original series because of it.

you quote me but ignore the content of my discussion? what? lol

what does any of what you just said relate to your original comment and my response? for the record i was being "completely real"

you play the series for its gameplay. but no, you play SKYRIM FOR ITS GAMEPLAY. if you were to play morrowind you would realise right away that the gamplay falls apart and all there is is the lore and the world.
you dont care about either of those things then you are not a fan of the series, you are a fan of skyrim.