The Sims Online is being shut down and then relaunched and horribly rebranded EA-Land. The previous Sims Online cities are going to be merged into a new map that is reportedly one hundred times larger than the original game, and the entire thing will be free to play. It’s also going to be focusing on social networking, user-generated content, and all that other buzzwordery, as dev Luc Barthelet explains:
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.
And the thing is, I bet it works.
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So, basically like Second Life then
Crossed with Disneyland presumably.
I hate this whole ‘fad’ of allowing people to buy other peoples content. Does the original creator see any of the money? Of course not!
Hum didn’t even know it was still going.
I was trying to get this working yesterday, and for whatever reason it kept coming up with the same error about a corrupt install no matter how many times I tried to install it.
So I gave up.
Oddly, they seem to have made the game free, but are only allowing people with accounts to trade real/game money and own properties.
They seem to be planning to allow you to turn game money into real money too, so it might be interesting to see what happens there.
Wanted to give it a quick shot, downloaded, installed and it started moaning about lack of 16bit color depth. As I’m using wine I’ll have to give this one a miss after all.
“EA Land”: The world where everything is owned by EA! Wow, it’s one fantasy world I would have never have thought of myself. It’s just such a radically alien concept that I – … wait.
*Peers out the window*
… Actually, it might not be too different to Earth after all. Carry on.
My girlfriend is trying to run it, but there are just timeouts when it tries to connect.
/spit
Sounds like Ultima Online to me.
“EA Land”?! The concept is probably sound but that name makes me want to vomit…
Considering EA’s tendency to fuck anything up that involves online play, I think I’ll pass.
I wasn’t even aware that Sims Online still existed. I thought it had failed miserably upon release…
While I don’t know that I’m really any more interested by this than I was by the initial launch of Sims Online, at least making it free is a step in the right direction. There was never even the remotest chance of me paying money for what’s basically a graphical chatroom.
I doubt it’s going to work commercially. The only reason that SecondLife is pulling down big numbers is sex. Oh, it would have an audience without it, it’d just be 1/10th the size and wouldn’t be causing everybody to copy it.
I somehow doubt they want people to log into a game called EA Land and roleplay as transexual Furry Goreans.
The 16bit thing it’s umbelievable: it means they’re not even trying to success with an improved client and stuff; it’s just a rebrand (even the icon of the game it’s still the one of Sims Online!!!). My opinion it’s they’re trying some stuff with this one to take notes for future The Sims games. Makes sense that they are gonna put more online functionalities in the next sims games (using the technology created for Spore?). Considering the success of the franchise, the error in the first place was to separate sims online from sims offline.
I dunno, man. The last time I heard about the Sims Online was due to the thriving virtual prostitution industry that’d set up shop in it. Hermaphrodite furry vores not a big step past that, really.
EA really messed up when they killed “Earth and Beyond” and used it’s servers for TSO. It never got as many users as EnB even at it’s lowest. Disappearing tech support/games discontinued in a matter of months…
I wonder how EA is going to shoot themselves in the foot next?