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The Sims Online : At A Glance: A Visit With The Sims
Posted Jan 24, 2007 by Jon Wood
In our most recent At A Glance article, Community Manager Laura Genender takes a look at the free trial for The Sims Online.
When I first found myself in the world of The Sims Online, I wasn't really sure what to do. There were so many options, and so little guidance. My little experience in The Sims (offline) over two years ago gave me a small idea of what I needed to accomplish - as did the falling Needs meters.
The first thing to do was to find a home. Most of the servers had the same ghost townish population, with 20 to 100 people online (depending on the time of the day and the server) at any given time. Once picking a city (server) to live in, I bought a small plot of land in an inexpensive but not overly hilly area. New players start with 10,000 Simoleons, and with this I built an extremely modest home.
;)
Read the whole article here.
This could had just been posted in the general forum as a standard thread.
What I find the most amazing must be that Sims Online has survived for as many years as it has. Its an incredible feat with its history and lack of largescale community. Its a bit like a slap in the face of the followers of Earth and Beyond that actually had a real game, one that did not exist in a free singleplayer mode, and still died several years before SIms Online. (If my memory serves me right they were released in the same year)
Fun to see someone visit that old horse in modern times.
The "At a Glance" series of articles intend to give you a new player's perspective on the game. There was no great epiphony- this was just the first week or so of gameplay for me :)
The servers were pretty empty, like I said, but what population was there usually banded together in the same 2 or 3 properties. You make more money when doing jobs together; you skill up faster when working on the same skill as other people in the zone; you have more fun in general when others are around. While the majority of the server was a barren wasteland, the people I did meet were very surprised and pleased to see an actual new player and offered me all sorts of help.
In terms of numbers it didn't live up to EA's expectations and we all know what EA does to games that don't meet expectations ... *cough* Earth and Beyond *cough* *sneeze* *fart*
The Sims Online == YAAAWN!
Seriously. I've never been a fan of any of the sims games, and while I am aware that they are one of the best selling games ever, I just can't get into it. The reason I play MMOs is mainly for fun, but also to escape from reality and get away from small problems in RL. I can't imagine doing something that realistic in an MMO, let alone worrying about keeping any bars (asides from health and mana) up.
I have been playing this game since beta, and still playing it. Sad to say 'yes' this game has died down but it is still going. From the article sounds like this person chose a less busy server to play on. The busier servers are not much different from the slower ones. Meaning the people in the game are afraid to try something else. There are more than one type of job offered for sims. I have tried two of them. Depending on your skill lvl and friendship links, you can get promoted and earn more money as you go.
This game has a lot of potential that EA/Maxis have failed to take advantage of as well as broken promises. But then again they do have a history of broken promises.
My question is to the person who wrote this article, did you try the Freewill version of the game? It is a lot like the offline version, which I thought was how the game was suppose to be to in the first place.
I have tried other mmorpg's and I still haven't left TSO. One of them I quit and went back to playing. To me the other mmorpg's are pretty much the same and boring. There is only so much killing to lvl that one can do before it gets old. At least with TSO you don't have to kill to lvl. The part I like best about TSO is building and designing homes. Can't do that in the other kill to lvl games. Some of them you can craft items, but you can do that in TSO too.
I played TSO for two years, don't really play anymore, mainly due to a busier lifestyle, but do have my account, and I agree with Beagood393, in that I enjoy building houses. (Can't tell you how many times I rebuilt mine) To start with, I bought the game for my daughter, but she was always wanting me to skill her sim and make money for it, so guess who got sucked into the game.
I, myself, started in Jolly Pines, but with the sim move, that server quickly died down. The busiest servers IMO, are Blazing Falls and Alphaville, which my 'friends' from JP finally drug me to BF, lol. Skilling feels less like a chore when you make friends and socialize in the skill houses, which I would encourage you to do rather than trying to skill at your own home, and by all means, go to those money houses and make you some money, that's what they are there for. (Although, I do like the robot factory) As with pretty much anything you do in the game, the higher your skills, the better you will be at the jobs, and job objects, the more money you make. As for 'greening', all of us TSOers love when a holiday comes around to get 'green free' time, and you could skill to your hearts content because you didn't have to green as much. I, personally, like the fact that I could skill my sim while I was somewhat AFK, doing my own chores around the house instead of having to sit there the whole time watching the little green bars turn red. *guess that could have made it tiresome*
My first open house was a welcome house, I built a hedge maze that was very popular, I did very well there for a while, but then I learned how to do roof art, which I had always been interested in, seeing the houses with actual pictures, instead of roofs. I also learned how to do 3D houses, which were pretty cool too. Of course, to do these things for other people, you do have to have lots of time on your hands, as roof art was very popular. As a matter of fact, a friend from the game contacted me on yahoo asking me to come back JUST to do a roof for them, which I gladly did.
IMAGINATION and CREATIVITY... that's what's kept me in the game.
I played TSO in Beta and really enjoyed myself. I left after a while due to boredom more than anything.
I didn't realize TSO was still going though, I think that's kind of cool TSO has so much potential; I wish EA would listen to many of the player's ideas that could make the game better. It sounds like the game needs an infusion of fun and people.
You can't really compare TSO to regular MMORPG's, it has it's own niche. There is a large segment of our society that enjoy the things that TSO has to offer. I'm glad to see that there are more and more choices available to MMO players. Variety is, after all, the spice of Life.
Thanks for doing the "At A Glance" on TSO, it was great reading about it again.
Earth & Beyond was not a flagship product for them, where as The Sims is a very popular name. It's huge with the casual gamer crowd who probably would not understand that there's a significant difference between the The Sims Online and whatever the heck ever is the most recent Sims expansion / game.
"I heard they're cancelling the sims" would be about the gist for most of them, and I'm sure that's the last thing that Maxis / EA wants.
E&B was kind of boring as it was, but it could have been developed into a great game. I bought it and was subscribed to it. Unfortunately, saving face can sometimes be more important to a company than making what would seem be the more grounded decision of improving a new (and better) cash source.
They spent all of that money and time developing The Sims and gaining "mind share" with that title. Businesses are notorious for refusing to take "risks" (even small ones).. it's rather like they're almost too scared to think rational at times. Thus we have The Sims Online, which I'm sure is more dead today than E&B ever was, and it continues to lumber on in an almost zombie-like state.
~Mysk
I agree. After playing the Sims 2 I haven't been able to bring myself to go back to the first version. It just seems to lack so much now. Even when I was going through Sims withdrawal when I moved and not everything made it with me. I had the Sims 1, but 2 is still in storage in the state I left...
I love mmorpgs and played TSO during beta. It really didn't have a very fulfilling feeling. If they revamped it to TSO2, I think I'd be a little more drawn to it.
If I could take myself out of the other games I'm playing right now...
I, too, thought TSO was dead. I never see/hear any advertising for it anymore. I played a free-trial of it not too long after it came out and found it pretty empty and rather boring. Playing The Sims offline was hard enough (staying green is hard! especially with more than one character!), this just seemed harder. I do agree, working in the diner is probably one of the more fun things I did.
Too bad they took EnB away and kept this game going...EnB was such a cool, fun, and unique game. But I'm playing EVE Online now, so I'm kinda playing EnB...sorta...
I played TSO when it first came online. There were so many things I didn't enjoy about it that I left within my 30-day free trial. I'm sure a lot has changed from then to now, so I won't rehash my complaints about the game, but I've never been tempted to go back to it because the basic premise remains the same. It is too group oriented. If things are as they were, the solo player is greatly penalized in that everything costs more and skilling takes more time to do alone. I do play TS2 and it can be enjoyable if you're working toward particular goals.
Will it have something in it that I can shoot at or blow up?
This game was extremely shallow, vapid, and what little creativity it offered did not make for long lasting playability.
I remember this craptastic game even garnered a Time Magazine cover and EA expected 2 million subscribers. LOL!!!!!!
AT least the majority of players realized what a pathetic joke this game was and unsubscribed. I predicted it would flop and it turned out I was right! LOL
And eventually EA will shut it down like they did with their other online games, they just want to milk a few more monthly payments from the remaining players.
I played TSO when it came out in 2003, was hooked to it until 2005 when they stopped updating the game and quit playing it. I moved on to other games during 2005 and early this year I decieded, ah what the heck, give it a try and see what's happening. It was a little barren at first, with the main populated cities being Alphaville and Blazing Falls, but you know what started to happen? More people started joining the game. Old players but mostly new players. The first couple of weeks I played TSO I met 5 newbies in a row. They fell in love with the game and were playing it for what it was.
That felt good to me that new people were joining, the population seemed to be growing again, but inside I felt this voice saying, "Move on to something else, it will never be what you remembered" I went to cancel my subscription and as I was in the process of it, I visited the sims stratics boards just to meander through them. Guess what I found? An article that EA had bought a company called Mythic and that 2 people were now put in charge of running the whole clan that were working on The Sims Online. And let me quote something she said on that forum, "I'm not going to ask you guys to be patient, you've been patient for over a year now, but I will tell you good things are comming and once we have confirmation of updates and new changes that will be put in place, we will let you all know about them".
This to me means Hope. Before they were barely keeping the game alive on a heart monitor and IV's, now they have brought in a team of surgeons to do a complete heart transplant and basically breath new life into the game. This is a huge movement towards TSO in a positive way. To me this confirms that EA still cares about TSO and the people who are playing it and they will be doing more with the game to make it better and more fun.
With that said, I'm sticking around for awhile to see what new updates will happen and what new things will be implimented. Everyone from the TSO community was ecstatic over the news. I encourage anyone who likes a more "Casual" type of game play to try The Sims Online. And I encourage all the old players from years gone by to come back and give it another chance. EA is giving it another chance, shouldn't you?
Satrycon, please don't post false info about the game. There has been no updates on the game in nearly a year. My little sister finally unsubscribed from this garbage when she realized there would be no four year gift.
Lying about the game will not bring more players. And its only a matter of time before EA will shut this money loser down.
melca
What I said was not a lie. You can go to the Stratics Boards and read exactly what I wrote about The Sims Online and new people working on making it a great game again with new patches.
Please Visit--- http://boards.stratics.com/php-bin/sims/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=640282&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1
This post confirms what I said to be true. As for the 4th Year Gifts, I have no idea what their doing about those.
Its hard to believe there still milking this game (when we all know they abandon everything else quickly)
/cough BF2