Crowfall vs Salem
Crowfall
Crowfall boasts as being the world's first throne war simulator where it mixes the best elements from the popular "Game of Thrones" TV show with MMOs like EVE Online. The game features an open world PvP, a player-driven economy, action-based combat and destructible environments which you can then use to your advantage when fortifying your own castle or attacking your enemy's castle. Crowfall's campaigns are pretty unique due to its varying campaign rulesets as well. Each different ruleset will give you an entirely different experience of the game. The game difficulty will even gradually increase over time, making teamwork paramount to survival.Crowfall also has a sandbox element to it in the form of its Eternal Kingdom. In this game, you'll be given a piece of land in an instanced zone to build your empire. Much like a Tetris or a jigsaw puzzle game, you can then buy extra parcels of land that comes in different shapes and sizes and add them to your Eternal kingdom to expand it. You could even grant your land to appointed vassals to rule as they please as long as they pay their dues to you, the King or Queen, and interact with your "subjects" turning your Eternal Kingdom into some sort of a social hub for you and your friends or guildmates to hang out.
Let's not forget about Crowfall's ridiculous (in a good way) amount of character class customization and advancement, allowing you to build your character literally whichever way you like.
Sounds like just the game you've been looking for? Well, if you would like to experience a Game of Thrones-like political intrigue coupled with some epic warfare that plays out on a massive scale, Crowfall's the game you'd want to keep a close eye on.
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.