Sandbox MMORPG Definition: What is a Sandbox MMO Game?

A sandbox MMORPG can best be defined as a world in which the players are free to roam anywhere and do anything. Crafting equipment, housing, transport or anything else necessary to exist within the game world itself, and that game world having no level or experience restrictions in it, thus allowing players to go anywhere and attempt anything.

A lot of Sandbox MMORPG's also include completely open player versus player combat in the world as well, with players fully able to attack another player at any point in time or place, with some even including the ability to take equipment and/or money from defeated opponents. The most popular of this type of MMORPG, Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies, also eschewed the standard archetype system for characters allowing players to pick and choose a range of skills as they wished, further enhancing the 'freedom to choose' aspect of the games, although there are sandbox games that follow the normal class systems for player characters as well.A framework to build a virtual life rather than a guided tour through a developers idea of a virtual life is perhaps the best way to give a sandbox MMORPG definition.