Kotaku
While The Sims series has been nothing short of a mega-blockbuster hit for Maxis and publisher EA—well over 70 million(!) copies and expansions have gone out the door—The Sims Online didn't exactly win over the hordes of people who like living fake lives offline. The game stagnated just 11 months after its release, received no new updates and largely faded into obscurity.
But EA is bringing it back. Free.
EA Land will now host the original The Sims Online content, bringing a slew of new features to the massively multiplayer online game. The team at Maxis is now allowing user created custom content, ushering in a new economy, and adding new web services and social networking tools. New Facebook apps and widgets are now available for anyone who wants to have their real life more depressingly connected to their Sim life.
You can read about all the new changes (in Comic Sans!) at the official site or read further for official word from the dev team.
What is EA-Land? [EA Land]
Dear Former Member of The Sims Online,I would like to introduce you to EA-Land, an online world that is free-to-play, and based on a re-engineered The Sims Online architecture. Yes, FREE.
We have played The Sims Online together, my avatar is MaxisLuc (yes, I work for Maxis/EA.) I wanted you to know that at the beginning of last year, I assembled a team to improve The Sims Online. After months of ongoing hard work, we can proudly say that we have been successful and we have made this game fun again! I am writing to you because I would like to invite you to rejoin us in the game. You can come back for free right now by REACTIVATING your old account at this page http://ea-land.ea.com/register/free.php and then by downloading the game from the same link. Most likely, your Sim is no more, but if you come back to the game this month, you will get your earned privileges back (gifts, skill locks etc. in EA-Land) when we run our amnesty program at the end of the month. Today you can play for free in our test city called 'Test-Center 3', in a few days you will be able to also play for Free in the 'EA-Land' city.
EA-Land will host all of The Sims Online cities.
The Sims Online 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, 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. As you have 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.
RE-designed with Smart Users
We have a blog (http://www.tso-e.com ) 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 (http://www.game-blueprints.com ) 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 to the game, and many more are coming over the next few months. It is difficult to say which 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 now have 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 by 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 avatars 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 the "avatar book" application at http://apps.facebook.com/avatarbook where you can search for MaxisLuc's profile page)
And there's more to come! We are looking forward to seeing you back in the game and having fun with us again!
Sincerely
Luc Barthelet,
"MaxisLuc"
Comments
Someone doesnt proofread!!
@funkpanda: Yes, you forgot the " ' " in "doesn't". :P
On topic: I hope I don't get a mail from EA inviting me into the new Sims Online, like they did way back when they killed Motorcity Online. That felt out of place, I can tell you.
i really liked the sims online it was like aim that i payed 10 bucks a month for
Don't listen! It's a trap!
I'm not seeing the purpose, here. The Sims Online was a terrible attempt to bolt a chatroom onto a series of annoying little minigames you had to participate in -- annoying games for making money, and an overall annoying game for maintaining your sim's "meters", which makes no sense in an online context.
If you're into it for the CUSTOM CONTENT then just go to Second Life. It's 3-D and a hell of a lot easier to design for, and there's no content approvals or restrictions. (Bit of a double edged sword there, but at least you don't have to sit on your ass waiting for someone to approve your work.)
I guess "It's free!" is enough to get people to try it... but I don't think they'll stick around when they realize they're forced to go virtually pee when they really want to just chat with people and make stuff.
Comic sans is a sin against humanity.
Thanks for the font warning. Somewhere fansubbers are crying.
EA-Land sounds like a land of product placement and evilness.
@Ghede: Whaaaaat?
Comic Sans look great on my PowerPoint presentation, especially when I have it come on the screen one letter at a time with the stock Broken Glass sound effect!
Comic Sans? COMIC SANS?! [achewood.com]
Second Life's ears are ringing.
Will the Mafia still be walking the streets and controlling the servers?
Trust nothing that is written in Comic Sans! I wonder if they gain any more success with this even as it's free. People that play Sims want things easily, they cheat, these are not your MMO grinders.
I'm awfully tempted to play this now that it's free. The Comic Sans font is an incentive.
I remember when I beta tested TSO. God, it was fun.
But then I paid for it...and I promptly quit. Oh well, might as well try this out again if I get bored... and gee, I'm bored. Time to install EA Land. Rofl.
[www.bancomicsans.com]
But, Comic Sans is not EVUL. People use it on "Sin City", so has to be kool.
The Sin City Online - Comics Sans. Joke. Ha. Ha. Made you laught. NO.
Sorry.
Sounded interesting, especially for free, and then...that font. Gads. I disabled the CSS, but the damage was already done. No interest.
Using the correct font is important. Didn't anyone see the Helvetica documentary?
That Comic sans comment made milk come out my nose.
Second Life runs like ass on my Macbook. This sounds like more fun.
Besides the 1998-esque website that looks like a completely unrelated branch of EA ("fine, we'll fund your crappy endeavour, but you lose your job if you fail and you have to do it by yourself!").. they don't support mac? PSHA.
I wonder if the virtual prostitution will still be there?
i was a beta tester for tso, and it was friggin awful. basically it was sleep, eat, work, and go to the bathroom. i get enough of that in real life. it was basically the sims with all the fun sucked out of it. i might give this a try and see what they've done with it since it's free (n the way that second life is "free" i suppose).
and second life sucks. a lot.
Hey, right on EA. Cool that it's new and that your bringing it back.
How about doing the same thing for Earth and Beyond. I gladly paid money for that and would even more gladly play it for free.
Free... did you read the article?
Did you note the part where you can make micro-payments with PayPal to pimp out your house faster. This is pure evil. When they say they've got the economy under control, they're saying that there won't be rampant sim billionaires... unless those sim billionaires have paid EA mucho real money.
Doenlaoding all the updates and its running like ass even thouhg connection is like at 3Mb/sec atm.
Hey, it's Second Life, EA-fied!
If it's free... well... it's at least worth trying. It'll just make the playtime with my other games that much sweeter.
@AndrewDB: "EA-Land" is actually what they're going to call the United States when they buy it.
Admittedly, I played this game...
5 years ago. Wow, has it been that long already?
And hey, 4 years ago when everyone said "Games going downhill, maybe we can merge some servers into one big world, give us some customization options, etc", well that's all coming true now.
Basically, someone went back, looked at what features people wanted, said "screw it, nobody remembers it anyways" developed them(or rather, pressed some buttons, since the ability has been there all along) and said "let's make it free, too".
So on the fan side of things, you get a free game with what you've been asking for since the game was released. On the other hand, I lost my limited edition gnome somehow, and after that I was PISSED. And then my character was deleted from inactivity. *sigh* I actually had some cools friends on there. Oh, and, the game has no fans, it was just sims fans playing online...
Errm... Is that a woman or man with a french maid outfit in the pic, "it" seems to have sprouted a goatee or that's just bad pixels?
Oh, a nice update since I bothered to install this. You can't join certain lots.
I was into this game years ago I downloaded it to see if they still had my data waste of 5-6hr download I mean cmmon you start with no simoleans and not able to join MOST lots Not worth it :P
As long as they don't include fursuits as part of the official content. Otherwise I just might sic the Sad Clown upon them.
I am writing this letter in response to the disappointing news that EA-Land,
the online version from the Sims of Electronic Arts will be closing its virtual doors on August 1, 2008.
Even though I am an adult , I truly enjoy playing the game with my 2 boys (14 and 16 years).
EA-Land is also a genuinely safe place for kids to interact with each other.
It's nice to know that in these times of cyber bullying and cyber crime that there is such a place for kids to play.
Most importantly, I think most of us who play EA-Land would miss the friendships that have developed.
Even though most of us have never met and may never meet, EALand pals are true pals.
With EA-Land gone where do we turn?
Sure we can turn Second Life, WOW and even Pirates Online,
but the truth is, we all want to be a little selfish, we all want that great feeling that only TSO (Ea-Land) can provide us with.
The magic that we are Sims!! The magic there is a game without fights, sex, war and monsters!
Please help us and make Electronic Arts reconsider their decision to close EA-Land.
like we do on [www.playercampaigns.com]
Thank you for taking the time to read this letter.
Sincerely,
Bienchen
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