Overview of The Sims Online

Over on Terra Nova they had an article about EA Closing EA-Land and here’s my reply on the subject of The Sims Online.

Lethann says:

I remember when TSO was first announced. As a big “The Sims” I was excited to hear it was going MMO. Back then, no real details about the game were released, but I could simply imagine how well it could do. I even bought the “charter” edition when it was finally released. Sadly, like everyone else I was highly disappointed to find out it was little more than a glorified chat room. As Nick said, it was apparent to me after playing for only 15 minutes that it looked like they had started to make it and then simply abandoned all the really amazing features that would have made it truly great.

Here are some of the things that I had been anticipating, but of course never made it in:

1) Properly done homes - The comparison between Second Life and The Sims Online has already been brought up. What I had anticipated was something of a mediation. In The Sims you have a limited pallet of objects to use in the game, though expansion packs were released with more objects as time went on. This would eliminate the SL problem of ‘huge flashing sighs’ and so forth. It also would have been a perfect opportunity to have TSO just like TS where expansion packs could be released for more objects, clothing, etc, and be more of a money maker for them. Also, the scripts and everything in SL can be eliminated by simply not allowing custom content. That might have been the HUGE draw of the original Sims, but I think it’s an acceptable price for a smooth running MMO. The only thing is that you HAVE to make up for that by constantly including new items. They started at first, but it slowed down till I think they stopped. Not too sure as I quit long before it went belly up.
2) Cities - One of the wonderful things they could have done is pre-populate the cities, complete with businesses, parks, landmarks, NPCs etc. This would have created a sense of community while giving people things to do. They had the cities, but pretty much it was just player housing (if I remember correctly). Nick is right in that you need to have landmarks. If they had made the “downtown” area then had player housing more like the suburbs it would have been much better.
3) Businesses - It would give people actual uses for skills other than simply hammering out gnomes in someone’s home/sweatshop. It could have been done in a way like puzzle pirates: place an order, then people who work in the shop can work to ‘create’ the order. People could also then work the shop to create access so people could buy off the shelf rather than just place orders and wait for someone to fill them. TSO started off in the right direction with the work benches and whatnot, but they left it at that. More variety was needed, but never implemented.
4) NPCs and/or Solo Play - Another thing that would have been good is putting in NPCs for people to interact with. Yes, the whole idea that the only people in the game are other players, but it can create a vacuum. One of my big problems with SL is that very same fact. My experience with MMOs (EvE, WoW, LOTRO, SL, TSO , COH and more) is the importance of not only multiplayer activities, but solo play. You need that balance or you get this situation: You login and make friends. Later you log in and your friends are offline. Bored, you log off. One of your friends log in, and they don’t see anyone on, so they log off. The cycle repeats until people just get bored and don’t log in.

Ok.. That’s all I can think of for now.

Posted May 2, 2008 1:04:17 PM | link

All in all, I really wish TSO had been actually finished rather than given up on before it was out the door.

Ponderings at the Pump

Earlier I was with one of my mom’s coworkers as she was returning a rental van. Two things that needed to be done before we could turn it in was run it through a car wash and fill the tank to 3/4th full. I don’t need to tell anyone about how high the prices are. It took $50 to fill 1/4th of a tank. That, however, is not what has driven me to post this.

While I was inside the station waiting to pay I did what we all do, let my eyes wander over all the goodies arrayed on the counter. Kit Kats, donuts, gum, lifesavers, so on and so forth. My stomach was wanting munchies, but I knew I couldn’t get any impulse buys.

That’s when it struck me. Impulse buys. An entire industry that hinges on frivolous spending. An industry that faces the harsh reality of the current economic situation.

Ask yourself this: When was the last time you bought a candy bar? Did you buy it out of a vending machine, at the grocery store, or at a gas station? How many times in the past six months to a year have you looked at an impulse buy and decided against it because of gas prices?

Doesn’t seem all that important or shocking does it? Yet, think on this. Due to shipping, all those impulse buy items will start to rise in price, making people even less likely to buy them. In time, lack of demand will make the producers cut back on production and not ship as far. Loss in production will result in lay offs as less people will be needed to make the items.

Makes you stop and think doesn’t it? Granted, this isn’t going to happen over night, and if something finally happens to reign in the gas terro.. er.. companies, then this might not happen at all. I’d suspect the first symptom will be sales of said impulse buys, then slowly seeing a smaller selection.

You know the saddest part? Those hit hardest will probably be gas stations themselves. Most stations find their profit from the stuff inside the station, not the gas itself.

Blog It

Interesting. I just saw on the LJ News that Six Apart released a Facebook application called Blog It that is a cross journal posting tool.

This is my first time using it, crossposting this to both my LJ and my new WordPress blog.

Very basic. Still have to play around with it more. So far got it setup with WordPress, LJ, Blogger, Facebook status, and twitter.

First Post

I dunno why, but decided to make a wordpress blog. No clue what I’m going to do here. Cross posting from LiveJournal would be nice, but I don’t see an easy way to do it.