[Traceur]

I think when people say a sandbox game, they actually mean different things.

The first difference comes up when people start asking for things that take away from the freedom: Rather then "you can do everything you want", they ask for "you can do it but [insert consequences]", they reject context-free freedom.
Sure, some people really do want a sandbox, they want to be freemen beyond context and limitations, but many are willing to forgo freedom for the sake of an immersive world.

But not all is peaceful in immersion-nation, because there's another huge disagreement on how to achieve immersion, a disagreement that starts with the sentence "your character wouldn't do that". In retaliation to hearing that sentence, the rest of the immersionists say that a game should react to your actions correctly, that you should be put in your character's circumstances. These immersionist start to scheme together subtle mechanics that would manipulate and derive certain behaviors out of the players in organic ways, things like PD, food-consumption or a player justice system, things taken out of rogue-like survival games and pushed into social contexts: these people are the Organic Immersionists, who believe they can ingeniously use game mechanics to manipulate you into thinking like your character.

However, those who uttered the sentence "your characters wouldn't do that" stand by it, and remain certain that even while you think your character would do it, the lore & choices you've made says otherwise.
But paradise can't last forever, cause they can't decide how they want to tell your character what to do. The Lore cops are alright with you not doing things they think your character should do, and prefer to tell you want you can't do: the Lore cops want Lore-restrictions on gameplay, and they want them hard-coded.

However, others want to go a step further: they grow to appreciate the more subtle things in life, the smallest of nuances. They want your character to run away when it's scared and sneeze when it has a cold, they want you to take care of the players morale and emotional needs. They want your character to have it's own AI. Unfortunately, with no Bionic implant into your brain, what the Sims want means your controlling your own Sim' in a fictional setting.

On the other hand, others believe the lore-restrictions should be more lenient, and every case should be examined to it's own case. They call for human judgment, and they want it consistently. These wishes often aspire to a hierarchy of moderators, often embedded into factions in the game world, mixed with MGing and masked as leaders. They have no guilty feelings for ratting on someone when they think he's not doing good role playing: how else will people learn?

so in this non-perfect world where even the sandbox minority of MMO-players has conflicts and splits into 5 smaller minorities, where would you put yourself?