The Sims Online

The Sims Online
The Sims Online box art
Developer(s)	Maxis
Publisher(s)	Electronic Arts
Platform(s)	PC (Windows)
Release	December 17, 2002 (NA)
Genre(s)	MMOG
Mode(s)	Multiplayer

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.

Game Overview

The Sims Online is a massively multiplayer online game (MMOG), allowing thousands of players to participate in the game simultaneously. Players are in complete control of a simulated person, referred to in the game as a Sim. This variation allows a player to create up to three sims, each existing on different game servers, also known as Cities. In all cities, players may control only one sim at a time, with the exception being the Betaville server, where players can play up to four Sims at one time. Since on all servers except for Betaville sims are played by real people, TSO is less a game and more a social environment than the original Sims. It is often called a role-playing game (or MMORPG), and it has as much in common with socially-oriented virtual worlds. After purchasing the game, players pay a monthly fee to play online.

Because of The Sims and its numerous expansion packs being the best selling computer games of all time, many gaming experts predicted that TSO would become the most popular massively multiplayer game of all time. However, as of mid 2006, 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 more like the world's largest chat room instead of a vibrant MMOG.

Technically notable is that the Maxis servers behind The Sims Online are rumored to run the open source software JBoss.

The Sims Online is currently in a zone of "Code Blue". This means that game now has far less players than it did in its earlier days, partly due to the recent use of certain third-party software programs that provide some Sims Online players with an unfair advantage over others. This has caused many players to abandon the game. (See below under 'economy' for more on this issue.)

Cities

When a player creates a sim, that player must also select a city in which that sim will reside during gameplay. There are twelve different cities in total. They are Mount Fuji, Calvin's Creek, Interhogan, East Jerome, Fancey Fields, Test Center, Blazing Falls, Alphaville, Dan's Grove, Jolly Pines, Dragon's Cove, and Betaville. Dragon's Cove is known as the one "hardcore city" out of the eleven, as there are a number of harder game objectives to consider when playing here, such as the fact that Sims will lose energy when traveling long distances, and that the value of all objects in this city is double the simoleans that the objects would normally cost when playing in another city. Betaville is a new city that was created for the purpose of testing new features. Two of these features are the ability to create a family of adult sims and the ability to adjust their level of free will.

Property Categories and Characteristics

After a sim moves into a city, he or she has the opportunity to either start a brand new house from scratch or live with other sims as a roommate on another property. When first starting out, most players opt for the former, as the starting cash allowance of only $10,000 (excluding the city Test Center, where the starting allowance is $30,000) is often not enough to build and design what most players would consider a reasonably comfortable living space.

But when players do have the funds necessary to build their own home and decide to do so, they must also decide on a Property Category. Property Categories are what other players know a house by, as they explain generally what the house's purpose is. There are ten categories in total for an owner to choose from. They are Money Houses, Romance Houses, Skill Houses, Store Houses, Welcome Houses, Offbeat Houses, Residence Houses, Game Houses, Entertainment Houses, and Service Houses.

• Money Houses: These houses have remained one of the most popular in The Sims Online. They are houses primarily at which visitors can come to use group or solo money objects in order to achieve a payout.

• Romance Houses: At Romance Houses, the primary objective is for the owner to attract visitors who are interested in making love connections, going on honeymoons, finding a host and caterer for a wedding, having dating experiences, or other doing other romance-related things. Special objects that can be used only at a Romance House are the Heart-Shaped Hot Tub and the Vibrating Bed.

• Skill Houses: Skill houses are centers at which sims come to increase their skill levels. Most skill houses are designed to help visitors focus on only one or two skills, while some skill houses are all-skill friendly.

• Store Houses: At stores, any object that is available in the Buy Mode of The Sims Online can be sold by the house owner at a reduced rate to customers visiting the house. In addition to being able to sell this regularly available objects, stores can also offer more expensive rare items to customers which can only be obtained through crafting.

• Welcome Houses: Welcome Houses exist to provide warm welcome to both new and old players, and also help other sims in the game. While definitely not the most popular of houses, a few of these can still be seen in each of the Sims Online cities.

• Offbeat Houses: Offbeat Houses specialize in the unusual. They can be either wacky (for example, "Jim's Clown School"), or puns on popular culture (for example, "The Harry Potter Library"). Like Welcome Houses, houses in the Offbeat Category have also seen a large drop in popularity.

• Residence Houses: Residence Houses are unusual in that they are built not for profit or to suit the public interest, but rather to merely provide shelter to a sim. This is arguably the least popular Property Category, as most players want to start a business or own a specialized house rather than live in a plain home as they probably already do in real life.

• Game Houses: Game Houses are built primarily as casinos in The Sims Online, as both the Slot Machine and the Roulette Table object can only be used in a Game Category Property. But even though casinos are the most popular incarnation of the Game House, other Game Properties provide other services such as relay races for cash, entertaining game shows, special dice games, and other forms of leisure.

• Entertainment Houses: Entertainment Houses often cater and host parties in the Sims Online. Dance floors and DJ Booths are special objects which can only be interacted with at Entertainment Houses.

• Service Houses: Service Houses exist mainly as a place where Sims can come to use the special Workbench object to create rare crafted items to sell at high prices. These houses sometimes also are used as restaurants.

Skills

Skills are one of the most essential aspects of gameplay in The Sims Online. They are necessary for getting reasonably high payouts from group and solo money objects, doing well in the offered career tracks, and sometimes for receiving the ability to perform certain interactions with other players, such as special dances, or the ability to serenade others. A player increases skills usually by visiting Skill category properties, as skill can be increased at a faster rate when multiple sims work on the same skill concurrently. These Skill properties, or "Skill Houses" as they are commonly referred to in the game, usually specialize in only one or two skills, as is often mentioned in the property's name - for example, "Cooking Central", or "Awesome Bodies".

The six core skills in The Sims Online are mechanical, cooking, charisma, body, creativity, and logic skills. Cooking and mechanical skills are increased by reading books off of shelves. Body skill can be worked on by dancing in a cage, using an exercise bench, or stretching on a special exercise ball. Logic skill is increased by playing chess, gazing through a telescope, or doing research on a computer. Charisma is worked on by practicing one's speech in the mirror. Creativity skill can be increased by playing music on a piano or guitar.

A skill level for any of these skills is determined by how many skill "points" a sim has. These points range in number from 0 to 20.99.

Game Employment

There are three official jobs available in The Sims Online: a restaurant job which requires the player to have high charisma and cooking skills to do well, a robot factory job where mechanical and logical skills are important, and a nightclub job with two different positions - a DJ, for which the player must have high creativity skills, and a dancer, for which the player must have high body skills. As in the offline Sims games, job promotions depend upon skill levels and the player's number of friends.

In recent days, these jobs have lost a tremendous amount of popularity as players have found that choosing to use group money objects has greater potential and provides a much higher payout than choosing to live off of the salaries provided by the restaurant, robot factory, and nightclub jobs. These group money objects include a "Pizza" machine, in which four players share ingredients and cooperate to bake pizzas and sell them for cash, a "Code" Machine, in which three players work to decipher a code in order to win a certain amount of money, and a "Band" object, in which four players must follow musical note patterns correctly in order to receive a payout. Of the group money objects mentioned, the Pizza Machine is the object that has garnered the highest amount of use, with one or more in use at almost every single house in the Money category. This is mostly due to the fact that it offers the highest payout in the shortest amount of time.

While most sims rely on group money objects for a living, there are still others will use non-interactive solo money objects, on which a single skill is needed to determine payout, such as at a canning station, for which players must have high cooking skill for good payouts, a gnome-building workbench that players must have mechanical skill to get a high payout from, or a painter's easel, on which creativity skill is important. At many money houses in The Sims Online, owners of houses in the Money Category will offer an additional bonus paid by the owner or a roommate of the house for any player who completes a certain amount of these solo money objects. This bonus is offered as a way of deriving even more profit from the objects for players, as well as attracting good business for Money category houses.

Game Economy

The Simolean (Sims Online currency) has been through much instability. As of January 2006, one million Simoleans sell for around $6.50-15.00USDs (One million Simoleans in the city of 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. 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" money object, also known as the MAZE object). These third-party programs could complete rounds of money objects hundreds of times faster than if the rounds were completed by human players. Maxis eventually introduced a mandatory patch for this exploitation problem. In an effort to deter cheaters, the patch implicated a lowering in payout if the maze objects were completed too quickly. Although the patch was successful at stopping some third-party programs from winning an unfair advantage over human players, many of the programs were not able to be blocked. Consequently, many Sims Online players decided to leave the game for good. Recently, Maxis introduced a revised version of the maze object which has completely blocked the third-party software from being used in the game, and payout sums have been kept the same as the way they were before the third-party software cheating scandals errupted.

Game Awards

• E3 2002 Game Critics Awards: Best Simulation Game
• E3 2001 Game Critics Awards: Best Simulation Game

External links

Official Sites

• The Sims Online.com
• Free trial of The Sims Online
• Sims Online Bug Boards

Fan Websites

• TSO Mania
• The Sims Info (Site appears to be down)
• The Sims Online Secrets

Game Archive and Review Websites

• The Sims: Online at MobyGames