The Sims Go Offline!

The Sims Online was not the first 3D social virtual world game. Worlds.com, activeworlds.com, and a dozen imitators came out in the 90′s.

The Sims Online (aka TSO) is however the first mainstream popular game of the genre, thanks mostly to “The Sims” name. It brought in thousands of new people into the genre, many of which promptly left never to return, but a few of us enjoyed the genre enough to stick with it for many games of the genre that followed.

Most of these players joined TSO in the beta days in fall of 2002. The game launched to paying players in January 2003, which was about the time I joined. It is the opinion of many, that the games heyday was in beta.

The Sims name got lots of people in, but the game had a major flaw: There was only a limited amount of things that you can do, and there was no user created content… ever!, despite promises that someday it would be available.

The result was people got bored fairly quickly. Most people that lasted more than 3 months were the ones that developed friendships to keep them in the game. There was constant turnover.

Worse was the fact that in early 2003, There.com and Second Life were both soliciting closed beta players. By August of 2003, when I quit TSO never to return, virtually all the people I knew in TSO had moved to There Beta, and/or Second Life beta, including myself.

The Sims Online carried on with much smaller numbers, for five years. They added a few new features after I left, including pets, and a second version where you could play a whole family of characters at once. A friend of mine tried to get back into the game two years ago and initially liked it, but only lasted about 3 weeks.

Earlier this year, the game was relaunched as “EA Land”, but only lasted 2 months before they announced its close on August first. Ironically, TSO closes five years after I left.

So yes it was a crappy online game, but it brought a lot of people, including myself, into the world of 3D Social Online Gaming, where we still hang out.