Remixful
Active Member
Now, I just found this out recently, and if any of you have never got to play The Sims Online, or know the story, here it is.
(This was gathered from a variety of sources, I'm not sure if some of this is valid or not, but here it is anyways. I have added my own comments, they are printed in bold in between parentheses.)
On 7:35AM US Eastern Time on August 1st 2008, The Sims Online was closed by EA.
The Sims Online was released in 2002, an online version of The Sims. The cost to play was $10 per month, although there was a 30-day free trial. (I never knew you had to pay a subscription!) You might remember seeing it in various electronic outlets.
In May 2007, after noticing the subscriber population had diminished drastically, what was left of the programming team started to rewrite the game engine to have better features and less bugs, dubbing this as the TSO-E project. The team was headed by Luc Barthelet, who re-joined the team, after having left it since the game's launch.
On February 2008, this code became rebranded as EA-Land, which hosted a server which anybody could connect to for free, without a monthly subscription, called Test Center 3 (the other server, The Sims Online, still required a paid subscription). They continued to push out some updates to the game, such as the ability to display custom image files on an easel for your visitors. (I've actually never heard about EA-Land, but it sounds like it was fun!)
And on late April, they announced that EA had given them up, as they failed to generate a crowd which they could make enough money off of to satisfy EA for their efforts. They announced that the game would be shut down on August 1st, the same year. (
It sucks that they gave up. I'm sure if they brought it back today, they would make so much money. I'd rather have another Sims Online than a Sims 4! )
RIP TSO as we knew it
The last version:
2.1667.5.0
Luc and his team left EA to form Tirnua Inc, an online game company which he subsequently left again. http://www.tirnua.com/
( I actually took a look at this game, it just looks horrible and looks like a mess. I'm not even sure if it has players, it probably does, but I haven't heard about this project much, so I know it's not really popular. )
Seriously.. I played the first 5 minutes and already got an error doing one of the starter quests!
The next game in the online The Sims series is The Sims Social for Facebook. http://apps.facebook.com/thesimssocial (This game isn't up anymore, I'm guessing that it was replaced with The Sims Freeplay, which I'll probably never play because I dislike those type of games.)
Engine reimplementation projects:
http://www.niotso.org/
http://www.afr0games.com/ ( That's us! )
These are the last few minutes of EA-Land at the See You Soon Party in EA Town Hall, hosted by EA's Parizad. Tears are shed, final goodbyes are made, and lasting memories are created before the plug is pulled and the world is brought to an end. The party was held in the Community Pub (Test Center 3) and EA Town Hall (EA-Land), beginning Thursday, July 31st, 11 p.m and with a scheduled ending of 4 a.m. PDT. The game world was officially shut down as of 4:35am PST, August 1st, 2008.
This footage was captured as part of the Preserving Virtual Worlds project by the How They Got Game group at Stanford University.
Other Info:
- It was said that a lot of users were complaining that there was no offline mode, and had to always use the internet! What a shame! It's called "The Sims Online" for a reason!
Final Note:
Please never stop working on bringing back TSO! Everyone is counting on you, and you don't know how much you mean to everyone that is waiting for this! Don't give up, don't let us down. No matter how rough it gets, just have patience, we have no choice but to wait because we'd rather have a Sims Online than no Sims Online at all!
(This was gathered from a variety of sources, I'm not sure if some of this is valid or not, but here it is anyways. I have added my own comments, they are printed in bold in between parentheses.)
On 7:35AM US Eastern Time on August 1st 2008, The Sims Online was closed by EA.
The Sims Online was released in 2002, an online version of The Sims. The cost to play was $10 per month, although there was a 30-day free trial. (I never knew you had to pay a subscription!) You might remember seeing it in various electronic outlets.
In May 2007, after noticing the subscriber population had diminished drastically, what was left of the programming team started to rewrite the game engine to have better features and less bugs, dubbing this as the TSO-E project. The team was headed by Luc Barthelet, who re-joined the team, after having left it since the game's launch.
On February 2008, this code became rebranded as EA-Land, which hosted a server which anybody could connect to for free, without a monthly subscription, called Test Center 3 (the other server, The Sims Online, still required a paid subscription). They continued to push out some updates to the game, such as the ability to display custom image files on an easel for your visitors. (I've actually never heard about EA-Land, but it sounds like it was fun!)
And on late April, they announced that EA had given them up, as they failed to generate a crowd which they could make enough money off of to satisfy EA for their efforts. They announced that the game would be shut down on August 1st, the same year. (
It sucks that they gave up. I'm sure if they brought it back today, they would make so much money. I'd rather have another Sims Online than a Sims 4! )RIP TSO as we knew it
The last version:
2.1667.5.0
Luc and his team left EA to form Tirnua Inc, an online game company which he subsequently left again. http://www.tirnua.com/
( I actually took a look at this game, it just looks horrible and looks like a mess. I'm not even sure if it has players, it probably does, but I haven't heard about this project much, so I know it's not really popular. )
Seriously.. I played the first 5 minutes and already got an error doing one of the starter quests!
The next game in the online The Sims series is The Sims Social for Facebook. http://apps.facebook.com/thesimssocial (This game isn't up anymore, I'm guessing that it was replaced with The Sims Freeplay, which I'll probably never play because I dislike those type of games.)
Engine reimplementation projects:
http://www.niotso.org/
http://www.afr0games.com/ (
That's us! )These are the last few minutes of EA-Land at the See You Soon Party in EA Town Hall, hosted by EA's Parizad. Tears are shed, final goodbyes are made, and lasting memories are created before the plug is pulled and the world is brought to an end. The party was held in the Community Pub (Test Center 3) and EA Town Hall (EA-Land), beginning Thursday, July 31st, 11 p.m and with a scheduled ending of 4 a.m. PDT. The game world was officially shut down as of 4:35am PST, August 1st, 2008.
This footage was captured as part of the Preserving Virtual Worlds project by the How They Got Game group at Stanford University.
Other Info:
- It was said that a lot of users were complaining that there was no offline mode, and had to always use the internet! What a shame! It's called "The Sims Online" for a reason!
Final Note:
Please never stop working on bringing back TSO! Everyone is counting on you, and you don't know how much you mean to everyone that is waiting for this! Don't give up, don't let us down. No matter how rough it gets, just have patience, we have no choice but to wait because we'd rather have a Sims Online than no Sims Online at all!
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