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PostPosted: Sat May 20, 2006 12:04 pm 
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Journeyman
Journeyman

Joined: Wed Dec 03, 2003 12:14 am
Posts: 93
Several Years Ago

Ok, its been over two years since I last played this game. I participated in the late beta and I ran with two accounts for the first month of retail before letting them slip. What made me let them slip? It wasn't lack of things ingame to keep me entertained. It wasn't bugs.

90% of this game is populated by women players. I started with a Paul Hopper, and was flirted with non stop. The wifey didn't mind until one in particular started following me around no matter where I went. So I rerolled my character named "Father Paul" hoping the priestly title and my rp'ing ingame would keep the women at bay. ehh nope. As one was bold enough to say "Priests, Santa Claus, and the Male Gardener are three secret dream men of women everywhere!"

In any case this lass chased me about, things got to personal, and I left the game completely because I love my wife.

Two Days Ago

I was wandering around the internet, looking at this and that. Decided to visit direct2drive.com, a sight I'm quite fond of as of late since I don't have to go buy the games. I can download them walla and the wife likes the lack of game boxes floating around the house.

Well right at the front top of the page "The Sims Online - New and Improved!" 12 dollars with 30 days free. 9 dollars a month after that. Well what the heck, I'll give it a whirl and log in as father paul or something. That lass is bound to be gone by now.

The Download/Install

1.2gig's. An hour and a half later I'm installing it. Straight forward, easy stuff, blah blah. Same as every other game on this planet we live in. Patching reminds me of UO. You don't have to log in to patch up, just dont type in your password and walla it still patches anyways. Thats a nice featuret.

The Game Observations

Ok, quite abit's changed content wise. If you've ever played this game way back in early retail then you will find much has changed. I won't go rambling about the way it was, thats not whats of interest. Whats of interest is whats in the game now. And whats ingame is literally ts1.

On the normal servers you can own property, upgrade its size, build on it, turn it into public domain and make money for how many visitors you have, etc, etc. You can keep it private residence and have people over to visit. You can have pets finally, cats dogs birds etc, etc, etc. They act like they do in ts1 meaning when out of their pen(if you keep them in one) they are a member of the house and listed down in the bottom right corner with all your visitors. You can put them away in a pen if you like to not have to hassle with them. House building is just like any sims game, click drag wall paper, floor window, and toss stuff however you like.

Unlike early retail you can upgrade the property size without having roommates. The game simply tacks on an additional fee if you don't have the ammount of roomies required for the size you want. Also of note, every 14 or so days that you are ingame you get a bonus of 1 or 2 additional object limit increase on your property.

Making Money. Ok the early retail system is still in place with some tweaks. You have your 10 skills(cooking, charisma, creativity, etc). You raise those skills by using cooresponding objects. Mirrors for charisma, piano for creativity, etc, etc. In tso skills degrade overtime. Previously you could hit a max of 10 in any/all skills so long as you maintained them. You had two locks and if you used one on a skill it stopped degrading. So you had to choose your skills wisely. Now, you still have 10 skills. The skill cap is 20.99 in any skill now. You start with 20 locks. You lock each skill pt you earn as you earn it. You gain additional locks as your account remains active(just like gaining object limit increases to your property). You can go onto other players property and skill build in groups. The more players working on a skill the quicker the skill rises. You learn new emotes and actions you can perform with other sims as you raise various skills. Also in place now is the ability to be directly taught a skill by another sim. This rapidly drains energy, fun, and hunger, and comfort.

Ok so there you know how to raise your skills, but what about the money making? Well in group activities or solo the money you make for using a money making object is directly tied into two factors. 1, how many others are using the same type of object. 2, your skill level in the skill related directly to that object. Like in the sims and the sims 2. the higher your creativity the more money you make when you sell a painting. Every skill seems to have two objects ingame that you can work with/on and make money doing so. Traditional to early player houses dedicated to both skill gain, and houses for making money working as groups to increase the profits.

But, lets say you don't want to do all that. Well the traditional job system is in place finally. Open the newspaper or use a computer and the find job button is there. I haven't begun working on my house yet so don't know the exact details but as I understand it there are many jobs to choose from and they load your sim into a unique work enviroment where you perform your job for pay.

You can now play a more traditional sims style if you like. At the sim select screen you hit a lil button in the top right corner called "Free will" You can make a family and control them all at once ingame. if you turn the feature on, they will go about satisfying their own wants/needs/desires. Its quite a nice feature But as always with EA, free will button a year and a half back was the beta feature to be implemented in all cities. Its never been patched post initial release.

It looks like the dev's never got around to implementing the rent feature on property so no worries about paying bills.

You can now own/run shops where other players buy things from you. You can craft just about anything in the game now.

Every freakin object in the game now has a "hide" option for you to hide under, yea. hide and seek heh.

The game is considerably quieter than it once was. Alphaville is probably the only "busy" city left. The rest are very quiet during peak and almost completely empty the rest of the time.

There is a free trial somewhere around.

EA has pulled the name-use-once-then-never-available-again feature on the game.

EA wipes inactive accounts of their sims after 90 days.

You can now change your name at the sim select screen by clicking on your name.

You can now freely move between cities though you will loose your friends web.

EA has pulled damned near all dev support on this game. Talking to long time friends ingame have observed that the game has not had a feature/content/bug patch since sometime in 2003. A shame too. Like EnB this game could become so much more if EA would simply pay attention to it.

But in any case, in its current form its a nice game to socialize, skill build, make money, and own a house. The Sims fan's have just about every feature from the single player, online.

I like it

I'll continue with this review as I explore more of the game. So much to catch up on, over 3 years since I last played heh. If anyone feels the urge to give this game a whirl I'm in alpha ville, named Paul Hopper.

Ask questions, I'll answer heehee.


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PostPosted: Sat May 20, 2006 12:15 pm 
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Grand Master
Grand Master

Joined: Thu Jul 17, 2003 8:54 am
Posts: 971
But is it still 90% women? ;>

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PostPosted: Sat May 20, 2006 1:11 pm 
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Posting Whore
Posting Whore

Joined: Fri Aug 29, 2003 6:21 pm
Posts: 1434
Location: Colorado Springs, Co.
Its 90% women of which whom are made up of 80% men pretending to be women like every game.

Dev

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"So...if crazy people don't know their crazy...does that mean your only sane if your know your crazy?"


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PostPosted: Sun May 21, 2006 8:39 am 
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Journeyman
Journeyman

Joined: Wed Dec 03, 2003 12:14 am
Posts: 93
90% women and I would guess 20% of which are men. I've gone teamspeak etc with several entire households during skillbuilding/money making and they are all female.

Remember Vip, there is nothing to smack, hack, blow up, or crash in tso heehee so 90% of the male population sees a game like this as a blow to their "coolness" heh!


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