The Sims Online
Encyclopedia
The Sims Online was a massively multiplayer online
variation on Maxis
's highly popular computer game
The Sims
. It was published by Electronic Arts
and released on December 17, 2002 for Microsoft Windows
. In March 2007, EA announced that the product would be re-branded as EA-Land and major enhancements would be made. About a year later, EA announced that the game would shut down all activity on August 1, 2008. The next online games in the series are MySims
(PC version only) followed by The Sims Social
for Facebook
.
Mount Fuji, Calvin's Creek, Interhogan, East Jerome, Fancy Fields, Test Center, Blazing Falls, Alphaville, Dan's Grove, Jolly Pines, Dragon's Cove, Betaville, EA Land, and Test Center 3.
Population sizes fluctuated, but for the most part Alphaville and Blazing Falls were the most populated towns with a big city feel. In contrast, cities such as Dan's Grove and Calvin's Creek had a more close-knit small-town feel. Mount Fuji was targeted at the Asian market, but it also had a small contingent of English-speaking citizens as well.
Four cities had special rules: Dragon's Cove was known as the "hardcore city", as there were a number of harder game objectives to consider when playing here. For example, a Sim would lose energy when traveling long distances, and the virtual costs for items were doubled. Betaville was a city created for the purpose of testing new features. A few examples of these features were the ability to create a family of up to four adult Sims, with adjustable free will levels; bills and a repo man
; and fires and firemen. Another was Test Center, where the player could never move out of the city. Test Center Sims also started with three times the start-up money of other cities.
Along with the announcement to rename The Sims Online to EA-Land came a city merge. At this point, all of the existing cities were merged into two identical megacities known as EA Land (although its name appeared as "The Sims Online" for a short time) and Test Center 3, the former still requiring a paid subscription or trial account, the latter accessible to all. Test Center 3 became the city in which new items were tested before going live into EA Land. When the game's closure was announced, Test Center 3 was removed along with the game's city selection window, defaulting the player into the last remaining city, EA Land.
The game had six core skills: Mechanical, Cooking, Charisma, Body, Creativity, and Logic. Skill level ranged in number from 0 to 20.99.
The in-game jobs did not offer a large salary, causing many players to seek out other sources. Popular methods included opening item shops, offering services to users such as food and lodging, or using objects such to create pizza (pizza object), essays (typewriter), or paintings (easel).
There were many categories for player's properties: Welcome, Money, Skills, Services, Entertainment, Romance, Shopping, Games, Offbeat, and Residence. Each of these categories had special items that could only be used in that specific category. For example, players who joined a lot under the Service category could use a workbench to craft items, which would then often be sold to a player who owns a lot in the Shopping category who would sell the items at a higher retail price.
In early 2005, The Sims Online faced a bug, which was discovered and quickly spread in use throughout the game. A clothing rack, that normally players would use to sell clothes to other players, duplicated the owner's profits several times with each use beyond what the other player actually paid. This exploit could be repeated as often as wanted until the bug was fixed. After a few days of this exploit in game, it was patched; however, the game's economy was completely destroyed, with massive amounts of inflation. Plenty of land and items lost value. This economic problem was not resolved for three years until late 2007 when EA-Land was formed and the game was wiped.
Once EA-Land was in place, the economy was fresh and, as before, completely player run. Players could additionally create custom content and sell these items to other players, and skills were a higher priority due to the requirement of in-game jobs and money objects.
employee Luc Barthelet
, who served as General Manager of Maxis
during the development of The Sims
, stopped by the official forums after years of ignoring the game. Luc had left the The Sims Online production team after the game went live and hadn't contributed to the game environment until March 2007. After returning to development of The Sims Online, he assembled a team of seventeen people to push significant updates to the game under a project titled "TSO-E".
A major update to the game was user custom content. The TSO-E developers were interested in any user-submitted ideas on how they could maintain a stable economy to negate the gains players made illegitimately through exploits. Custom objects were enabled within TSO in late 2007, allowing players to upload .bmp and .jpg images as well as .iff files. Furniture could be created and uploaded in the form of single-tiled chairs, sculptures, and decorations and multi-tiled tables.
Seeing as this was not enough, the TSO-E developers combined the game's cities together into two similar cities, re-branded the game as EA-Land, and wiped all player data. The Test Center 3 city was created freely accessible in hopes of expanding the game's userbase, and in-game ATM
s were added, which could accept real money for Simoleans, in hopes of generating revenue. The system in which players could purchase properties and submit custom content was compared to Second Life
.
EA expressed disappointment in sales over the lifetime of the game. One of the main criticisms of the game was the inability to create customized content, such as was achieved by its competitor Second Life. The Sims Online was widely seen as a failed attempt to port the single-player game to an online, multiplayer environment.
The decision to shut down so quickly after re-branding has led to speculation that the closure was planned prior to the re-branded release for the purpose of mitigating the damage to the public image of the name and brand of "The Sims Online".
Since the game has shut down, Luc has started his own company, and began developing a new MMO, codenamed TirNua.
stated
Massively multiplayer online game
A massively multiplayer online game is a multiplayer video game which is capable of supporting hundreds or thousands of players simultaneously. By necessity, they are played on the Internet, and usually feature at least one persistent world. They are, however, not necessarily games played on...
variation on Maxis
Maxis
Maxis is an American company founded as an independent video game developer in 1987. It is currently a subsidiary of Electronic Arts . Maxis is the creator of one of the best-selling computer games of all time, The Sims and its first sequel, The Sims 2...
's highly popular computer game
Personal computer game
A PC game, also known as a computer game, is a video game played on a personal computer, rather than on a video game console or arcade machine...
The Sims
The Sims
The Sims is a strategic life-simulation computer game developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts. Its development was led by game designer Will Wright, also known for developing SimCity...
. It was published by Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts, Inc. is a major American developer, marketer, publisher and distributor of video games. Founded and incorporated on May 28, 1982 by Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer games industry and was notable for promoting the designers and programmers...
and released on December 17, 2002 for Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
. In March 2007, EA announced that the product would be re-branded as EA-Land and major enhancements would be made. About a year later, EA announced that the game would shut down all activity on August 1, 2008. The next online games in the series are MySims
MySims
MySims, formerly The Sims Wii and Nintendo Sims, is a video game developed by EA Redwood Shores and published by Electronic Arts as a spinoff to Maxis' The Sims franchise for the Nintendo DS and Wii in 2007, then re-released for Microsoft Windows and Mobile phone in 2008.It is the first game in the...
(PC version only) followed by The Sims Social
The Sims Social
The Sims Social is a Facebook addition to the Sims series of videogames. It was announced during EA's 2011 E3 press conference. As with the original Sims games, this addition lets users create their own customizable characters. In this version, though, players use their characters to interact...
for Facebook
Facebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
.
Cities
Before the production cities closed, there were fourteen cities in which players resided. These cities included:Mount Fuji, Calvin's Creek, Interhogan, East Jerome, Fancy Fields, Test Center, Blazing Falls, Alphaville, Dan's Grove, Jolly Pines, Dragon's Cove, Betaville, EA Land, and Test Center 3.
Population sizes fluctuated, but for the most part Alphaville and Blazing Falls were the most populated towns with a big city feel. In contrast, cities such as Dan's Grove and Calvin's Creek had a more close-knit small-town feel. Mount Fuji was targeted at the Asian market, but it also had a small contingent of English-speaking citizens as well.
Four cities had special rules: Dragon's Cove was known as the "hardcore city", as there were a number of harder game objectives to consider when playing here. For example, a Sim would lose energy when traveling long distances, and the virtual costs for items were doubled. Betaville was a city created for the purpose of testing new features. A few examples of these features were the ability to create a family of up to four adult Sims, with adjustable free will levels; bills and a repo man
Repossession
Repossession is generally used to refer to a financial institution taking back an object that was either used as collateral or rented or leased in a transaction. Repossession is a "self-help" type of action in which the party having right of ownership of the property in question takes the property...
; and fires and firemen. Another was Test Center, where the player could never move out of the city. Test Center Sims also started with three times the start-up money of other cities.
Along with the announcement to rename The Sims Online to EA-Land came a city merge. At this point, all of the existing cities were merged into two identical megacities known as EA Land (although its name appeared as "The Sims Online" for a short time) and Test Center 3, the former still requiring a paid subscription or trial account, the latter accessible to all. Test Center 3 became the city in which new items were tested before going live into EA Land. When the game's closure was announced, Test Center 3 was removed along with the game's city selection window, defaulting the player into the last remaining city, EA Land.
Skills
Obtaining skill points was an important aspect of gameplay. They were necessary for receiving more money from paying objects and earning promotions in the offered career tracks. They were occasionally needed for special interactions with other players, such as serenading. A skill could be increased at a faster rate when multiple Sims in the lot worked on the same skill simultaneously.The game had six core skills: Mechanical, Cooking, Charisma, Body, Creativity, and Logic. Skill level ranged in number from 0 to 20.99.
In-game employment
There were four official jobs available in The Sims Online: Restaurant, Robot Factory, DJ, and Dancing.The in-game jobs did not offer a large salary, causing many players to seek out other sources. Popular methods included opening item shops, offering services to users such as food and lodging, or using objects such to create pizza (pizza object), essays (typewriter), or paintings (easel).
Economy
The Sims Online simulated a working economy. It was completely run by players. The largest and most active market in the game was real estate: players would buy, sell, and rent property to other players. However, due to not having a proper deed trade system in place until the start of EA-Land, many players faced security issues such as scamming.There were many categories for player's properties: Welcome, Money, Skills, Services, Entertainment, Romance, Shopping, Games, Offbeat, and Residence. Each of these categories had special items that could only be used in that specific category. For example, players who joined a lot under the Service category could use a workbench to craft items, which would then often be sold to a player who owns a lot in the Shopping category who would sell the items at a higher retail price.
In early 2005, The Sims Online faced a bug, which was discovered and quickly spread in use throughout the game. A clothing rack, that normally players would use to sell clothes to other players, duplicated the owner's profits several times with each use beyond what the other player actually paid. This exploit could be repeated as often as wanted until the bug was fixed. After a few days of this exploit in game, it was patched; however, the game's economy was completely destroyed, with massive amounts of inflation. Plenty of land and items lost value. This economic problem was not resolved for three years until late 2007 when EA-Land was formed and the game was wiped.
Once EA-Land was in place, the economy was fresh and, as before, completely player run. Players could additionally create custom content and sell these items to other players, and skills were a higher priority due to the requirement of in-game jobs and money objects.
EA-Land
In March 2007, an Electronic ArtsElectronic Arts
Electronic Arts, Inc. is a major American developer, marketer, publisher and distributor of video games. Founded and incorporated on May 28, 1982 by Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer games industry and was notable for promoting the designers and programmers...
employee Luc Barthelet
Luc Barthelet
Luc Barthelet is Executive Director at . Prior to this he was CEO of TirNua, Inc, a games company, which developed an eponymous MMO virtual world. TirNua was acquired by RockYou! in December 2010...
, who served as General Manager of Maxis
Maxis
Maxis is an American company founded as an independent video game developer in 1987. It is currently a subsidiary of Electronic Arts . Maxis is the creator of one of the best-selling computer games of all time, The Sims and its first sequel, The Sims 2...
during the development of The Sims
The Sims
The Sims is a strategic life-simulation computer game developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts. Its development was led by game designer Will Wright, also known for developing SimCity...
, stopped by the official forums after years of ignoring the game. Luc had left the The Sims Online production team after the game went live and hadn't contributed to the game environment until March 2007. After returning to development of The Sims Online, he assembled a team of seventeen people to push significant updates to the game under a project titled "TSO-E".
A major update to the game was user custom content. The TSO-E developers were interested in any user-submitted ideas on how they could maintain a stable economy to negate the gains players made illegitimately through exploits. Custom objects were enabled within TSO in late 2007, allowing players to upload .bmp and .jpg images as well as .iff files. Furniture could be created and uploaded in the form of single-tiled chairs, sculptures, and decorations and multi-tiled tables.
Seeing as this was not enough, the TSO-E developers combined the game's cities together into two similar cities, re-branded the game as EA-Land, and wiped all player data. The Test Center 3 city was created freely accessible in hopes of expanding the game's userbase, and in-game ATM
Automated teller machine
An automated teller machine or automatic teller machine, also known as a Cashpoint , cash machine or sometimes a hole in the wall in British English, is a computerised telecommunications device that provides the clients of a financial institution with access to financial transactions in a public...
s were added, which could accept real money for Simoleans, in hopes of generating revenue. The system in which players could purchase properties and submit custom content was compared to Second Life
Second Life
Second Life is an online virtual world developed by Linden Lab. It was launched on June 23, 2003. A number of free client programs, or Viewers, enable Second Life users, called Residents, to interact with each other through avatars...
.
Closure
In April 2007, four weeks after EA-Land was launched, it was announced that the development team had to disassemble, and that the game would shut down on August 1st the same year. This day of announcement was referred to as the "EA-Land Sunset". Maxis stated that the development team would be moving on to other projects.EA expressed disappointment in sales over the lifetime of the game. One of the main criticisms of the game was the inability to create customized content, such as was achieved by its competitor Second Life. The Sims Online was widely seen as a failed attempt to port the single-player game to an online, multiplayer environment.
The decision to shut down so quickly after re-branding has led to speculation that the closure was planned prior to the re-branded release for the purpose of mitigating the damage to the public image of the name and brand of "The Sims Online".
Since the game has shut down, Luc has started his own company, and began developing a new MMO, codenamed TirNua.
Reception
The Sims Online received generally negative reviews from magazines and websites. Andrew Park from GameSpotGameSpot
GameSpot is a video gaming website that provides news, reviews, previews, downloads, and other information. The site was launched in May 1, 1996 by Pete Deemer, Vince Broady and Jon Epstein. It was purchased by ZDNet, a brand which was later purchased by CNET Networks. CBS Interactive, which...
stated
Awards
- E3 2002 Game Critics AwardsGame Critics AwardsThe Game Critics Awards are a set of annual awards held after the E3 video game conference since 1998. The awards are given to products displayed at E3 with the title Best of E3 of their category. The nominees and winners of the awards are chosen by individual judges representing 35 major North...
: Best Simulation Game - IAAAcademy of Interactive Arts & SciencesThe Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences , founded in 1996, is a non-profit organization that promotes computer and video game entertainment with the annual D.I.C.E. Summit event, where its Interactive Achievement Awards ceremony has been held annually since 1998...
2002: Best Massively Multiplayer
External links
- The Sims Online Wiki, a third-party resource which documents the entire game
- Trucos The Sims Social