I’ve had a presentation for a promising new sandbox MMO called Pax Dei.
It looks like an Arthurian fairytale. I saw characters in flowing dresses in a sun-dappled wood working together to build picturesque hamlets or settlements. They placed down floors and walls in a blueprint-style way, as in other building games, before equipping plate armour and weaponry and venturing to darker, more barren and dangerous areas of the world. The smoky spirit-like enemies they encountered there were genuinely scary.
One of the most eye-catching things about Pax Dei is its looks. This is Unreal Engine 5 and Pax Dei is a handsome beast, and you can see some of that in the screenshots here, although I think they’re pulled from the announcement trailer. But in play, it looks similar, and the settlements you create are gorgeous.
The second notable thing about the pitch is sandbox player freedom. In Pax Dei, there are no NPCs, besides monsters, which means you can forget about the usual towns you find in other MMOs. There are none. Every settlement is made by players, which also means that all the vendors or quest-givers you find in other MMOs are not here either. Again, that all comes from you.
The driving force of it all, then, will be a player-led economy and adjoining crafting system. The idea is that, over time, players will specialise in areas and work together to create things. If you need specific materials, you’ll go to someone who specialises in getting them and ask them to help. In other words, you’ll give them a quest.