The Sims Online
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| The Sims Online {{#if:{{{image|}}}|<tr><td colspan="2" style="text-align: center;">{{{image|}}} | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Maxis {{#if:{{{publisher|}}}|<tr><th style="background-color: #ccccff;">Publisher(s)<td>{{{publisher|}}} |
| Release date(s) | December 17, 2002 (NA) |
| Genre(s) | MMOG |
| Mode(s) | Multiplayer {{#if:{{{ratings|}}}|<tr><th style="background-color: #ccccff;">Rating(s)<td>{{{ratings|}}} |
| Platform(s) | PC (Windows) {{#if:{{{media|}}}|<tr><th style="background-color: #ccccff;">Media<td>{{{media|}}} |
The Sims Online (TSO) is a massively multiplayer online real-life game variation of Maxis's highly popular computer game The Sims. It was published by Electronic Arts and released on December 17 2002 for Microsoft Windows.
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Overview
The Sims Online is a massively multiplayer online real-life game, allowing thousands of players to play together simultaneously. Players are in complete control of a Sim. This variation allows a player to create up to seven Sims, each on different servers, but control only one at a time, with the exception being Betaville, where players can play up to four Sims at one time. Because the other characters are played by real people, TSO is less a game and more a social environment than the original Sims. While often called a role-playing game (or MMORPG), it has as much in common with socially-oriented virtual worlds, and is clearly an MMORLG. After purchasing the game, players pay a monthly fee to play online.
As with The Sims and its numerous expansion packs being the best selling computer game of all time, many experts predicted that TSO would become the most popular massively multiplayer game. As of early 2005 this is not the case; TSO has seen only a fraction of the subscription numbers aimed for by the game's publisher, Electronic Arts. The reason for this poor performance may be attributed to the players' failure to cooperate as well as the beta testers of the game did; another reason may be that one of the major attractions, for some players, of The Sims was creating and using custom objects, which is not possible in The Sims Online. As a result, many reviewers described the online game as dull and was more like the world's largest chat room instead of a vibrant MMORLG.
Technically notable is that the Maxis servers behind The Sims Online are rumored to run the open source software JBoss.
Employment
There are three jobs available: a restaurant job (need charisma skill), a robot factory job (need mechanical or logic skill), and a nightclub job with two different positions (DJ, which needs creativity and dancer, which needs body). As in the offline Sims games, promotion depends upon skill levels and number of friends. Many players use group job objects such as a pizza machine or core business unit to make money at their convenience. Still others will use non-interactive solo objects which rely on a single skill to determine payout.
Game economy
The Simoleon (Sims Online currency) has been through much instability. As of Jan 2006, one million Simoleans sell for around $6.50-15 dollars (One million Simoleans in Betaville sells for about 20 dollars). The Simolean reached an all time low from Winter 2003 to Spring 2004, when Simoleans were selling as low as 3 dollars for one million Simoleans. This inflation was made possible by third party programs that exploited the money making objects in the game (Most notably the Tomb Hunters of the Lost Llama, also known as the MAZE object). These programs could complete rounds of money objects hundreds of times faster than if done by a human. Maxis eventually introduced a mandatory patch for the problem. The patch punished the Sim by lowering the payout if the maze was completed too fast. Although the patch deterred some people from using third party programs, many are still in use.