Mastering the Sims Online
‘The Sims Online’ is the massively multiplayer version of the ever popular ‘The Sims’ series of PC games. Game makers aren’t stupid, and are quickly realizing the massive potential in massively multiplayer online games. Not only are they dominating the market these days, but they provide for a constant stream of long term profit. Traditional singler player games, like The Sims series, are purchased once then take home and that’s the end of it. Massively multiplayer online games have to first be bought and then continuously subscribed to with a monthly fee. From a business perspective, MMO games are better!
The reason why I bring all that up is that I think its important to keep that fact in mind when reviewing MMO style games like The Sims Online; you’ve got to keep dishing out money to play. While in the more traditional MMO games like ‘Everquest’ players have some clear cut goals and objectives dangled just out of their reach at all times to keep them playing, The Sims Online seems to lack any such overall direction.
The single player Sims games in themselves felt at times a little pointless; you could manage and mess around with different aspects of the world from a god like perspective and see how it affects the little digital people, but you were never really sure why you were doing anything you were doing. In The Sims Online you can’t even do that; you have control only over one character.
The single player Sims gave characters different chores and tasks that had to be completed, such as jobs or errands, but The Sims Online has a much looser set of objectives. You still can have jobs and you still get hungry, but you don’t really have to do anything by a certain time. The theory I suppose is that it frees up time for you to do what the game is designed for; interact with other players online.
While it’s kind of fun to dawn a digital mask and interact with people in a way you probably never would in real life, it quickly begins to feel like some kind of graphical chat room. The few in game goals that there are, like making money or setting up a house, have severe restrictions and aren’t really all that rewarding due to an overall lack of depth to the in game economy, so really the only ‘point’ I found to keep playing was to meet people. Seeing how there are free chat rooms all over the place, I guess I just don’t feel like The Sims Online is worth a monthly fee, and maybe not even the original purchase price.
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