Well, I certainly have no such recollections. Trade channels were full of idiots, pretty much like today.
No it's not. Sandbox + player drive has one tremendous inconvenience. The said players tend to regroup into packs according to whatever arbitrary criteria and exclude everyone else. This leads to huge "clan wars" (see EvE online) where a new player is completely lost. Consequently, you will retain some hardcore players (~500k if you're lucky) and exclude everyone else. In essence, you got a niche game, which is a valid business model for a small company, but not for EA or Blizz.