The Sims Online goes Free at EA-Land Remember the MMORPG game The Sims Online? Well, as an attempt to lure players of The Sims, EA attempted a paid model of TSO only to receive a cold to lukewarm response to the title. The MMORPG title was sent back to the drawing board and now in charge of Luc Barthelet, the famous general manager of Maxis. We're enclosing his first greetings to all former and current The Sims Online Members. A big note to former subscribers. I do suggest you read his letter to everyone -------------------------------------------------- What is EA-Land? I would like to introduce you to EA-Land, a world that is free-to-play, and based on a re-engineered The Sims Online architecture. Yes, free. If you played The Sims Online before, we have played together and I would like you to rejoin us in the game: My avatar is MaxisLuc (yes, I work for Maxis/EA). At the beginning of last year I assembled a team to improve The Sims Online. After months of ongoing hard work, we can say proudly that we have been successful and we have made this game fun again! Former Members Of The Sims Online: You can come back for FREE right now by just downloading the game and REACTIVATING your account. If you do so before March 2008, you will get your earned 'account based' privileges back (gifts, skill locks etc...) when we run our 'amnesty' program. So make sure you are in game before that event! New to EA-Land and The Sims Online:Sign up for free! EA-Land will host all of The Sims Online cities. The Sims Online (TSO) was made of 12 different cities (AlphaVille, Blazing Falls, etc..) and we are moving all of those cities inside EA-Land (this is called 'the merge' by the users!). We have a huge new map: it is 100 times bigger than the previous size of any city. We had to add a whole new zoom level to let users see it. The internet is faster now than when TSO was launched, so we have been able to let each house have more simultaneous visitors. A lot of new users are constantly joining us and we expect more. If you played TSO before, I think that you ought to own your lot in this new land, and I want you to have the ability to grab the best location before we open the gates. As an EA-Land subscriber, you will be able to have several Sims in the same "city" unlike in TSO where you were limited to one Sim per city. EA-Land has been re-designed with Smart Users in mind. We have a blog where we explain all the things we are working on and the events we are running in the game. We also have a very active wiki web site, named "Game Blueprints", managed by the community where you can work with others to design the game. We have already implemented many features designed by the users! The stratics forum community continues to be very active. We have made some big changes already to the game, and many more are coming over the next few months. It is difficult to say which ones of the recent changes are the most important as users have different reasons to play the game, but let me tell you about the changes that I particularly like: Custom Content Users have now the ability to upload custom content. Like in the original Sims game, the goal is to let you customize the game completely, but in EA-Land you can see and buy the customizations of the other players! Players have already uploaded several thousands pieces of custom content. I suspect that by some time this year, all of the content of the game will have been replaced many times over by custom content. We started with the ability to upload bitmaps (easiest for the new creative users), then moved on to chairs and sculptures. You can now make your own portraits in the game and "skin" objects like in Sims2 but using your own images. Because we are approving all of the content, this user content is safe to be viewed by everyone! We are working with the main user web sites that have been providing custom content to the Sims users for years (e.g. http://www.TheSimsResource.com) to make sure that their content will be made available in the game. New Economy We heard from the community that the economy was broken in TSO. That was true, too many users were billionaires, and the goal of the game was mostly about extracting money from Maxis. I can now say with satisfaction that we have fixed the economy on EA-Land. This took many features, from establishing a real estate market, where users can easily buy or sell lots to one another, and a dynamic object pricing market where the prices of objects purchased from maxis is based on supply and demand, enabling stores and entrepreneurs to earn a living. We also enabled users to buy simoleans directly from Maxis. While there is no need for users to do so in the game (we give subscribers simoleans every week), it can help new users build their dream house faster with a simple paypal transaction secured by us. Web Services and Social Networks The internet has changed so much since the launch of The Sims Online in December 2002, we had to change the way we think about online games. We have opened the access to most of the in game information to the internet through web services. For example this enables you to add Google or Yahoo widgets to your computer (or iPhone! ) and see if your favorite lots or friends are online. We are providing you with privacy settings so you can decide if or which of your avatar will broadcast what information to the internet. Sims User web sites are already using this feature to create some amazing community sites. We also built avatarbook, to show how that information can be seen and connected to social web sites like Facebook (login to face book and add the "avatarbook" application. You can search MaxisLuc for example: http://apps.facebook.com/avatarbook And there's more to come! We are looking forward to seeing you in the game and having fun with us! Sincerely Luc Barthelet, "MaxisLuc" P.S: This game is continously in development. if you find that you have problems login or installing the game, please check the pages on this site: login issues. -------------------------------------------------- Oh and a side note to raye1, president of the Luc Barthelet Fan Club, looks like you may very well have your chance to meet your idol, even though he's virtual
Hmmmm, it looks like they are doing what Wizet/Nexon have done with Maplestory - offer the game for free but the 'paying' gamers receive 'benefits'. Seems acceptable to me. I'm going to download it later and see if my Founder account is still there. I played the beta game in Autumn 2002, but stopped playing in 2003. It's gonna be weird playing it now after 5 years, but I'm off work this week with school holidays so no excuse not to try it.
Ooh! Is that an "official" endorsement for the EULA-busting likes of TSR. I am constantly bemused by the singular absence of an official EA stance on paysites while at the same time it continues to condone and endorse what many see as a flagrant flouting, both in terms of strict legal interpretation, as well as in the spirit of what should otherwise be a community. Capitalism and communities are mutually exclusive. I utterly abhor piracy as I condemn all criminal acts. But I shall never condone the cynical profiteering of those who who hide their wicked money gains behind the sham-modesty of personal privacy and conceal their motivations and modus operendi in the small print of little the understood legal concept of copyright and of the poorly interpreted and untested-in-court largess, or otherwise, of EA's End User License Agreement. I have ranted.
Hmmm? I thought The Sims Online files were different from those of The Sims. I wonder if it is possible to convert my old work into TSO objects.. I'll have to check into this. But it does look like I am going to install the game. If object creation is possible for TSO, I might just pull out all of my stuff from the closet and jump back into the game creating things.
I thought Luc was a woman? Besides unless they'd updated the graphics a bit I'd think this would be kinda blah to play but then I also don't play online games.
What I really love about TS1 is the simple graphics, if they could keep the same style but clean it up and use sharper, uncompressed images and whatnot, it would look pretty nice.
I don't see that is any excuse whatsoever. TSR is a commercial company with employees. If EA Land prospers (and I have no problem with that) then there is neither guarantee nor obligation upon TSR to see that new creations for EA Land are likewise free. Besides. From what I see EA-Land is not TSO thrown open ... it looks like a new venture. The download is 1.5GB so a fair bit larger than TSO original 2 CD content. Besides, those chairs in the article are from TS2 ... is that misdirection or a mistake. And anyway my feelings concerning EA getting into bed with EULA pirates are not in any way mollified by claims that hypocrisy is OK because the Pirates are being nice and letting the plebs have at the free stuff, while they continue to charge $50 a year (or more) without any street address for a customer to write to ... unless you count that shows up at the last possible moment before they snatch one's cash. 100 grand's worth of Swedish Kroner is about $15,000, BTW OK it's not a fortune, but a lot more than pocket money ... even in Sweden. For what it is worth, I subscribed to TSR myself, back in the day. I have no ongoing problems with them. My own entirely personal conviction is that any charging (or the soliciting of monetary donations by the inducement of exclusive "gifts") is wrong. It is wrong on moral grounds. It is wrong in breaking the spirit, if not the letter of the EULA. And it is absolutely the wrong to charge for "bandwidth".
I'll admit it! I downloaded it, I dabbled in it, and now I'm absolutely addicted to it...after two nights of playing. I'm really enjoying it! I never played TSO when it first came out; I was a poor college student with a crappy computer that barely played Sims1.
I'm about the same, around $1500 and 5 skill points and no place to live either! I did manage to get married to another female sim yesterday, she's also my only friend in the game so far (working on that!). Apparently you can have as many wives/husbands as you want. I'm playing a female sim with currently 1 wife. She said she has 7 wives and 3 husbands so far. LOL, I find it all very funny. If anyone wants to seek me out in the game I'm playing as Aydia (no stealing that name for your children...I'm claiming it for my 1st daughter! ) I normally play starting around 10pm CST or +6 GMT.
LOL, Excuse: it's not me, it's my dear "affectionate" sim. And she got married for the friendship benefits only.
