Is Sims Online
The Sims Online, or TSO, was a massively multiplayer online game. It was based on The Sims, and offered online play with other gamers via PC. It was published by Electronic Arts and released on December 17, 2002 for Windows. After the popularity of the game waned, the name was changed to EA Land; the change failed, and EA Land was permanently shut down by EA on August 1, 2008.[1] This shutdown is commonly referred to as the 'EA Land Sunset'.
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- I discovered the free Sims Online passion project, FreeSO. Instantly remembered why I only played The Sims Online for, like, a day in 2002. Here's where you.
- INTERNET CONNECTION AND ACCEPTANCE OF END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT REQUIRED TO PLAY THE SIMS 3 DIGITAL DOWNLOAD PRODUCT. ACCESS TO ONLINE SERVICES REQUIRES AN INTERNET CONNECTION, EA ACCOUNT AND GAME REGISTRATION WITH THE PROVIDED ONE-TIME USE SERIAL CODE. REGISTRATION IS LIMITED TO ONE EA ACCOUNT PER SERIAL CODE AND IS NON.
- If Sims 5 is online,then we'll have to put up with online daters,scammers,spammers,hackers,trolls, ️ ️ ️ ️-bullies,griefers,exploiters,people begging for Simoleons, lag,crashing,and other problems of online game play. I hope Sims 5 is kept as an offline game.
In 2011, a new online based game known as The Sims Social was announced as a Facebook application and it is considered by some to be a new version of The Sims Online. In 2013, The Sims Social was shut down by EA due to lack of popularity.
Overview[editedit source]
There were twelve cities for a Sim to choose. Players needed to train skills (mechanical, cooking, charisma, body, creativity, and logic) to unlock new interactions and careers. A player increased skills usually by visiting Skill category properties, as skill could be increased at a faster rate when multiple Sims worked on the same skill concurrently. These Skill properties, or 'Skill Houses' as they were commonly referred to in the game, usually specialized in only one or two skills, as was often mentioned in the property's name.
Controversy[editedit source]
There was some controversy in The Sims Online concerning some players who were setting up virtual brothels in the game, exchanging virtual WooHoo for Simoleons.
EA Land[editedit source]
After The Sims Online had been somewhat of a failure, EA changed the name from The Sims Online to EA Land. They also implemented some other changes:
- All cities were merged into one megacity known as EA Land, with the exception of Test Center 3, which remained as a testing ground for new features.
- Existing users could buy land in EA Land.
- Users could create and upload custom content, and purchase custom content from other users, subject to approval from EA.
Many previous users from TSO didn't welcome the recent changes, because of the limits placed on free accounts and the requirement of paying $9.95 monthly to keep your account for over a year.[citation needed]
Further disappointment and lack of any new content to keep the users staying caused many users to quit. Eventually an official message was posted, ending EA Land permanently on August 1, 2008.
Revival[editedit source]
In October 2010, a small team of professional programmers revealed the TSO Restoration Project(dead link). They stated that they will be bringing back TSO free of charge through a private server.[2] However the project was officially cancelled on September 21, 2011 due to a cease and desist letter from EA.[3] The team has since forked into FreeSO, and Niotso, which are ongoing attempts to revive the game with new and completely separate engines from the original.
FreeSO has since incorporated most of the original game's features (like skills and jobs) while also introducing new content. Most notably, FreeSO introduced a true 3D mode that uses the game's existing objects to automatically generate textures and meshes. As of May 2019, the FreeSO project remains active and under ongoing development.
External links[editedit source]
- ↑http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/29/ea-land-the-sims-online-joins-the-deadpool
- ↑http://www.tsorestoration.com
- ↑The Sims Online Restoration Threatened to the Ground iSims
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es:Los Sims Onlinefr:Les Sims Onlinept:The Sims Onlineru:The Sims Online
| The Sims Online | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Maxis[1][2] |
| Publisher(s) | EA Games |
| Producer(s) | Margaret Ng Virginia Ellen McArthur |
| Designer(s) | Will Wright Chris Trottier |
| Programmer(s) | Jeff Lind Greg Kearney |
| Artist(s) | Bob King |
| Composer(s) | Jerry Martin |
| Series | The Sims |
| Platform(s) | Microsoft Windows |
| Release |
|
| Genre(s) | Massively multiplayer online game |
| Mode(s) | Multiplayer |
The Sims Online, also known as EA-Land was a massively multiplayer online variation on Maxis' computer gameThe Sims. It was published by Electronic Arts and released in December 2002 for Microsoft Windows. The game was sold in retail stores in North America and Japan and could also be downloaded worldwide through the EA.com online store, though the game was English-only and had no official translations. The game charged a subscription fee of US $9.99 per month. 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.[5]
Gameplay[edit]
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.
Skills[edit]
Obtaining factual skills 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 rapidly, 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[edit]
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 to create items such as pizza (pizza object), essays (typewriter), or paintings (easel).
Economy[edit]
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. Pull tube 1 0 1 – video downloader youtube downloader. Drivers for liyu plotter. 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[edit]
In March 2007, an Electronic Arts employee Luc Barthelet, who served as General Manager of Maxis during the development of The Sims,[6] stopped by the official forums after years of ignoring the game. Luc had left The Sims Online production team after the game went live and hadn't contributed to the game environment until March 2007. After no 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.[7] 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 ATMs were added, which could accept real money for Simoleons, in hopes of generating revenue. The system in which players could purchase properties and submit custom content was compared to Second Life.
Closure[edit]
In April 2008, 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 1 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.[5][8][9]
Since 2002, EA Land / TSO has attracted a very special group of players and we certainly appreciate your participation in the community. The lifetime of the game has drawn to an end, and now we will be focusing on new ideas and other innovative concepts in the games arena. We would like to thank everyone who has taken part in this online community as a unique experience in the virtual world.
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.[5]
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.[5]
Reception[edit]
The Sims Online received generally mixed reviews from magazines and websites. Andrew Park from GameSpot stated[10]
French roulette wheel. Instead of walking into a house and seeing a bunch of people throwing a party and doing fun stuff, it's not uncommon to see them just sitting there frantically playing chess or writing on a chalkboard in large groups just trying to improve their skills and make lots of money. Unfortunately .. there really isn't that much to do with money except building your own house with your own skill objects and your own job objects.
Later variations[edit]
The Sims Bustin' Out featured a very similar and free online play exclusive to the PlayStation 2 version that allowed players to play online and chat with a USB keyboard. This game shut down the same day as The Sims Online on August 1, 2008. In 2008, the lead developers of The Sims Online that had left Maxis (after the game rebranded to EA-Land) founded and launched a new game called TirNua, which is completely free to play and browser based. The game still runs to this day. MySims featured an online play mode aimed at younger children for PC. However, the server was shut down on November 26, 2011.
What Is Sims Online
A very similar revival of the game, called The Sims Social, released August 9, 2011 exclusively on Facebook. It allowed players to play with friends, chat and send items to each other. Electronic Arts and Maxis shut down The Sims Social, SimCity Social, and Pet Society on June 14, 2013 due to apparent player disinterest.[11] Ableton live 10 suite.
On January 6, 2017, a fan-made relaunch of The Sims Online was created by Rhys Simpson, FreeSO and was released in an 'open beta' phase. As of May 1, 2017, the majority of the original The Sims Online functions were re-implemented to include 3D functions with continual updates promised. Some of the existing changes have included category functions.
Awards[edit]
- E3 2002 Game Critics Awards: Best Simulation Game
- IAA 2002: Best Massively Multiplayer
References[edit]
- ^IGN: The Sims OnlineArchived 2008-08-22 at the Wayback Machine
- ^The Sims Online for PC - The Sims Online PC Game - The Sims Online Computer GameArchived 2008-07-25 at the Wayback Machine
- ^シムシリーズの歴史 [History of The Sims Series]. ザ・シムズシリーズ (in Japanese). Electronic Arts. 2004-03-20. Archived from the original on 2004-04-29. Retrieved 2014-06-22.
『シムピープル』がオンライン対応に！ 2002.12.26 [The Sims goes online! 2002.12.26]
- ^シムズオンライン: ソフトウェア [The Sims Online: Software]. Amazon.co.jp (in Japanese). 2004-03-20. ASINB00007BHX0. Archived from the original on 2014-04-23. Retrieved 2014-06-22.
- ^ abcdTerdiman, Daniel. ''EA Land' closing just weeks after debut'. Crave. Archived from the original on 2011-06-17. Retrieved 2008-08-22.
- ^'The Sims/Did You Know?'. StrategyWiki. Archived from the original on August 15, 2011. Retrieved October 30, 2011.
- ^'Archived copy'. Archived from the original on 2007-10-19. Retrieved 2007-05-16.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) Luc Barthelet message board post
- ^Duncan Riley. 'EA Turns The Sims Online Into Free EA Land, Second Life Competitor'. TechCrunch. Archived from the original on 2015-06-29. Retrieved 2008-08-22.
- ^ ab'EA FAQ: What are the details of EA Land's Sunset? Electronic Arts'. Archived from the original on 2012-12-16. Retrieved 2008-08-22.
- ^Park, Andrew (January 6, 2003). 'The Sims Online Video Review (PC)'. GameSpot. Time: 3:14. Archived from the original on May 7, 2010. Retrieved November 1, 2011.
- ^Welch, Chris (April 15, 2013). 'EA shutting down 'Sims Social' and other Facebook games, insists 'activity has fallen off''. The Verge. Vox Media. Archived from the original on 7 September 2014. Retrieved 7 September 2014.
Sims 4 Online Without Downloading
External links[edit]
- The Sims Online at MobyGames
- The Sims Online at Curlie