I just recieved this in my e-mail, seems interesting.
—-
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.
(To see an HTML version of the information in this letter please go to
http://www.ea-land.ea.com)
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.
The Sims Online was made of 12 different cities (AlphaVille, Blazing Falls,
etc..), which now all exist 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. Also, if you refer others to become subscribers we will give
you extra money in-game each week per person referred. Read more about
this at
http://www.ea-land.ea.com/blog/?p=826RE-designed with Smart Users
On our blog (
http://www.ea-land.ea.com/blog ) 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 the in-game currency directly using secure
PayPal transactions. While there is no need for users to do so in the
game (we give subscribers money in-game every week), it can help new
users build their dream house faster.
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".
Kotaku
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