I was just wondering about this. Isnt this what most MMOs do when many of their players reach the cap that the game was originally designed for, thus adding new content and most importantly, new areas? Since the quests from level 1 to 50 are all speech, can you imagine the work involved in adding to this if the quests are going to be kept in the same vein? The costs would not bear thinking about. It could be done, but it would be back to the old exclamation marks above heads syndrome. I think that players are going to be stuck at level 50 for the rest of the natural life of this game! What do you guys think?

I was the original OP. Really is an interesting subject but I can see what you guys are correctly pointing out what a real sandbox is. I guess you have pure sandbox, Darkfall, and the not so pure World of Warcraft is the perfect example. The problem with this game I find are the barriers the game puts up against you. Even in open world areas, there are places that the game wont let me to go. Most of the time I have to follow the paths marked out on the map, and not take a short cut through it. World of Warcraft at least had large open areas with seamless connection between them, a pure element of sandbox, rather than zones I drop in and out of. The other games, mentioned in my original post. AoC and LOTRO, do have sandbox elements, although now I understand, not pure. It still is a matter of opinion. If you have been round a while and are used to the older MMOs of days gone by, these players are swaying towards the pure side of sandbox. Whereas if you are new to the genre then you will be more on the side of theme park MMOs or going to be bored easily.

I have seen many posts regarding this subject and the pros and cons of each but I would like to get a feel for what the players really want. MMO developers seem to think that sandbox is now a niche area and theme park is the way to go. Many sandbox MMOs are still going strong even though they have changed their subscription model in an effort to retain their existing players and entice new players to give their game a go. Lord of the Rings Online, Age of Conan, World of Warcraft, and, in my opinion, the daddy of them all, Eve Online is still going strong. I have returned to Eve twice over the years and recall the newbie chat channel and the opening channel after that is full of constant chatter which is what gives it its name Massive that it deserves. And of course, take a look at the fourth coming Guild Wars 2. The devs have decided to change course from the famously heavily instanced original Guild Wars, although extremely popular, to a more open sandbox world, going completely against the grain of what the gaming masses are supposed to enjoy the most. It is a matter of opinion but for me, when GW2 is released, that is where I will be going because I believe that heavy instancing takes the massively out of the game thus demeaning its goal. Having said that, I still dont know what the majority of the MMO fraternity think and want. So maybe we can find out from this post whether or not the devs took the right direction and so will keep their players for many years to come or will they leave en masse to return to the sandbox idea that the MMO genre originally embraced?

Im using an i7-2600K overclocked to 4.3 GHZ, 16GB ram and a GTX580 graphics card, Windows 7 64 bit OP. I took delivery of the PC round about the same time as the release of SWTOR so the drivers are bang up to date. I keep getting freezing of the game and have to reset. When it freezes the fans are whizzing along at full pelt but this system should run it easily. Ive tried turning down the settings a bit but its still freezing on me. I can only think that it is the coding of the game rather than my PC so thanks for this post. Lets hope the devs know about this.

Any recommendations please guys?

After much thought in actually buying this game Ive finally taken the plunge. Im in the UK and would really like some suggestions on what server I should play on as there are so many. I will be choosing a PVP server and also one with a high population. I understand there is a lot of instancing in this game so server population might not make a lot of difference, one of the big things that stopped me getting the game until now. Anyway, while I go out and get a cuppa, I hope you guys can help. Many thanks.