Albion Online vs Salem
Albion Online
Albion Online is an absolutely magnificent sandbox style MMORPG that recently went into its summer alpha stages and despite not being fully completed and released yet, it’s an incredible game that puts complete control in the players’ hands and delivers a full-fledged experience that games are rarely able to provide.For instance, the game doesn’t restrict you by imposing a class on you right from the get-go. Instead, you get to develop your character and mold him as you wish. This freedom in character customization makes the game’s PvP quite interesting because you’ll never know which skill sets your opponent will have. Its combat system is also pretty impressive and feels to be a lot more skill-based rather than the common hack-and-slash.
Being a sandbox game, you can build anything you want – most likely a shelter though – using the resource you’ve painstakingly harvested from the game environment. You can even craft items and furniture to be placed within your home, and of course, add some defenses so nobody would be crazy enough to try breaking in your place.
Albion Online is, without a doubt, an amazing MMORPG that fans of games like Minecraft would enjoy. It may not be voxel-based, but many of the game aspects does bring the latter game to mind... a lot.
Salem
Salem is an old-school and somewhat obscure (but fun) sandbox MMORPG that unlike Wurm Online has a stronger emphasis on its in-depth crafting system and survival aspect rather than building.Similar to Wurm Online though, Salem is not a voxel-based game, but you are still able to mold the game environment through resource gathering, mining and digging in a way that reminds me of the currently-shelved MMORPG, EverQuest Next: Landmark. Of course, although not exactly the focus of the game, you can still build your homestead and the process is quite similar to Wurm Online except that it occurs at a much higher speed.
Not to mention, the game world in Salem is simply humongous to the point where it feels like an actual world. Salem also borrowed some features from ArcheAge where open-world PvP is the norm, so you'll need to be vigilant at all times, but players who kill and steal for no reason will be labelled as criminals and can be punished.
However, as good as it is despite being an indie MMO and all, Salem does have its fair share of flaws due to its low development budget. So, we'd recommend you to take a look at Salem without carrying along any high expectations. It's a pretty good MMORPG like Minecraft, but if you're expecting a Minecraft clone, you may end up disappointing yourself.