There are many alt for MO2. I will advice games I played that similar on MO2:
Life is Feudal, Conan Exiles, Atlas, Rust, Scum, Reign of Kings. And March 2 was release of Myth of Empires in which I will start play next week.
AoC
@Serverus did look interesting.
Re this post... nah, man. I can't speak on every game on that list, but I've actually looked into and tried some of them. I realize my hot takes PoV on MO balance are often shit upon because I want something different. I'm looking at things from different angles. Building shit, killing mobs, pvp... that's not all I want. It ADDS to the effect, but let me again talk about Sophistication cooking! Mo1 had secrets. Let's compare soph cooking to Necromancy. There were 'secrets' about resurrection recipes, too, so props to that, but they gated it behind quests and stuff. With cooking, I was basically a noob, I bought the cooking tools and I could grab mats, mess w/ them. It was like that w/ alchemy, too, in the beginning except for the core mats were harder to get (maybe cooking mats would be, too, if people knew.)
I'm down to put in effort. I don't dislike TC, but it almost always ends up being a shit show. I don't dislike quests or pve, either, but again when it becomes a gate it's no longer a sandbox, to me. Being able to not have to raw grind anything, simply use my 'skills'... lores, butchery, taming to obtain mats and then find a way to put those mats together and make something that people wanted, that's the kind of unique challenge I enjoy and was my most favorite part of MO. Any game whose crafting system is just gather this... or like even worse in MO1 where they made wep dura the only change past 70, + made almost all hilts the same weight. You had to be a MO1 kid to really understand the depth of the crafting. Sure, there was a lot of TRASH you could make, people with maces on lance handles, lol, etc... but there was always the chance that you could find something new and interesting, and like I said, there weren't all these books you had to get for either thousands of gold or farming world boss level mobs. It was just YOU and the mats that anyone could gather.
That's an integral part of 'sandbox,' too, being able to progress by putting in mental work. There is no crafting stuff like that in any of those games (afaik? LiF is like grab 2 twigs and a leaf and make a slingshot.) There are no 'professions' in the game that go beyond just gathering mats. It's basic.
The reason Ashes of Creation appeals to me is they said that mobs will be dynamic, might even like take over cities and stuff, dunno, that seems like that might be one of those 'sell a dream' games that never really works. Just like in Lif the idea of terraforming and using logs to do stuff is cool, but in the end you get people who just come in and massively deforest your shit haha.
First, I want a world. My world is different from other people's world, even in a game, but we inhabit the same space so there is overlap. Then I want the ability to focus on something and succeed by a means other than raw grind (even if it's efficient grind/grind systems.) Written recipes to shit, etc, all that ruins a game for me.
For all the 'lol MO u could make 200000 weps and only 4 were viable,' there were times when people came up with new metas that changed the game. Weak spot lances? lool. I dunno, man, there was just so much stuff to do in MO1. I didn't pvp much because I didn't have time to. haha. I was so immersed in everything else. I only started pvping when I was like welp I got mats and I'm pretty much ok with what I've done in these areas. In MO2, it's like yea I'll do what I can like grab some stuff to make food to throw on broker, buy mats off broker and put up some nub weps... so I never need to worry about money, but beyond that what else can I do other than just ride around and see if someone is aggressive. Farm clade levels? lol
As such, like I said, I'm gonna set Mo down for now. I hope my friends are still around and still down if the game ever gets decent, but yea... people don't realize how bad this game really is. Was just geeked off MO2!! All that shit they were gonna unlock on release. SECRET STUFF. Ohyeaaa... I wish people would clamor more for pvp changes. This highlights the pvp problems more than anything cuz that's mainly what you can do, but people aren't even doing that.