Sim-Dud?

Lumpish Scholar writes ""The Sims Online" was one of the most anticipated releases of 2002; but (according to this Los Angeles Times story in the Baltimore Sun, "'The Sims Online' sold 105,000 copies, or only about a quarter of the initial shipment in December," and (as quoted in this article in the New York Times), "the company's president, John S. Riccitiello, said the number of subscribers was half what Electronic Arts expected." (Check out Google News for more articles, and a registration-free partner link to the New York Times story.) Meanwhile, the game's customer reviews at Amazon.com have an average rating of only two (out of five) stars."

Comments

Sim the sim

[anicklin]

Maybe they should have simulated the release of the game in The Sims to see what the outcome would have been. :-)

Its a better one player game

[FortKnox]

When you play "The Sims" you get multiple people you control, and a whole environment you have a decent amount of control over. You garner people, make two seperate people and make them fall in love, introduce a third to start a fight.

When you add the 'multiplayer' experience, you add in two things that are negative to this style of game.
Loss of Control
and Competition

Now this simple game has become Everquest when that isn't the whole point of the game.

Take it from me...

[Geekenstein]

This game is fun for about 10 minutes. With the orignal (offline) Sims, the novelty aspect of the game was great. It was new, it was unseen before.

With The Sims Online, you basically end up with a graphical chat room. The tasks you perform are repetitive and dull. Each involves clicking on something and staring at the screen until that task finishes or your happiness levels go down far enough to finish it for you. Fix that up, rinse and repeat. All in all, the game ends up being a glorified IRC chat room that you pay for.

The only partly redeemed quality is that you can build your own houses and have people come over, but that is severely hampered by a silly limit on the number of objects you can put in your house, so in the end you end up with lots of money you can't spend after doing all those boring tasks.

Finally, the biggest pet peeve I have with Maxis over this one is the fact that instead of fixing the bugs and finding ways to increase the limits and make things more interesting, they take a sack full o' money from McDonald's to advertise their products and waste development time throwing it in.

That being said, all MMORPG's have problems at startup, and hopefully they can get their act together and make it a decent product. As it is now, I'll stick to IRC.

Gengis Khan Said It Best...

[Kibo]

The greatest joy a man could have is victory; to conquer one's enemies armies, to pursue them, to deprive them of their possessions, to reduce their famillies to tears, to ride their horses, and to make love their wives and daughters.

How do you kill people and steal all their stuff in the Sims online again?

Re:As a friend once remarked

[efatapo]

When I told him about "The Sims":
"Great, a simulated life for people with no real life."

Kind of like an animated form of the slashdot community...

Initial expense too high...

[Rayonic]

Why pay $30, $40, or even $50 for a game which you then have to start paying for monthly? I don't have anything against subscription-based games, but I would think that the continuous payments might somehow offset the initial purchase price of the product.

I know most of these MMORPG games give you X months free, but that price sticker on the box in the store contributes a lot to their purchasing decision. It'd be a great deal if they charged $200 for the game and gave you 40 months free, but do you think that such a package would sell?

The cost of entry for an MMORPG should be low-to-free. What about development costs, you say? Raise the monthly rate a dollar or two. Yeesh.

Notes from a Sims Online Beta Tester

[Dolemite_the_Wiz]

I Beta Tested the Sims Online and didn't think it was anything special.

Here are my comments:

- I spent over 60% of my time downloading updates. There were always updates I had to download. At one time Players had to download a 70MB update. This update came from one source (EA). When updates come out

- The Sims world seems to be too homoginized, too politically correct. If you want to add some fun, let players choose if they want to be crime lords. Let players be whomever they want to be.

- The UI isn't too intuitive. People who don't play the Sims have a huge learning curve.

- Finding a place to start isn't easy. There should be some sort of 'want ads' or gathering place for new people.

- Their monthly prices are not worth the minimal gameplay you get in return.

- The game can consume too much of your time. This can become very adicitve for some people.

- What am I working towards? Nirvana? CEO? President? Playing this game is like a cross between watching fish in an aquarium and watching grass grow.

- If this game is to be a Simulation of real life why can't there be variables to have sucess and failures? I'm not able to gather a bunch of investors for a business venture and see if I can used the pooled money to become a mega conglomerate. I want to sell stock! I want to sell junk bonds!

Dolemite