Aero wrote on Nov 4, 2012, 12:37:
Yeah, I kind of want it to be spelled out just exactly what Star Citizen is going to be. Obviously there is confusion about this so it needs to be sorted out. If Roberts doesn't really know yet, that's fine, but it would be nice to have harder distinctions.

To be honest, I'm reading it like this: For single-player and dedicated servers, it's going to be a mission-based space combat game like Wing Commander. The online, MMO portion will be a sandbox space sim like Privateer. The thing is, the phrase "space sim" used to be applied to all of these things because "simulator" really just used to mean a game with 3D graphics (as opposed to a 2D scroller). Typically in common usage, "space sim" these days refers to a sandbox, Privateer-style game. That's hardly universal though, and "space simulation" generically is certainly an adequate description of a mission-based game.

I hope I'm wrong though. I really don't want an MMO, let alone a micro-transaction-based MMO. If, as some people are saying, the whole MMO infrastructure will be released as a dedicated server so we can run our own private universes alone or with particular friends and no micro-transactions, that would be awesome, but that seems like a questionable business move. It could work, but it seems awkward.