Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Wouldn't pay a penny for the game!
I am a Sims fan. My daughters and I have most of the expansion packs with the exception of Unleashed which just recently came out. That will be under the tree. What will never be a part of our collection is The Sims Online. It is a slap in the face to all loyal Sims players who waited patiently for Simville (cancelled)and bought all the other expansion packs. We have all dreamed of being able to play online with our Sims but not at the price Maxis is asking. It should have been an expansion pack with two options: the multiverse (the current version) and a free, limited multiplayer for up to 8 players like other PC games offer.
Rating: - Could have been SO much better!
18 years ago Lucasfilm Games made one of the first commercial attempts at a big "virtual world" online community, the seminal Habitat.
It ran on a Commodore 64 with a 300bps modem and was much, much more fun than this disaster that the Sims Online have turned out to be!
Shouldn't EA be able to do better than this disgrace after 18 years of "progress"?
Rating: - It's too early
The game has certain strengths. As a chat room, it does well. For once, I don't get PMed by people who are gays or looking to cyber. It's great to form neutral friendships with people from all cultures, gender, and faces. As someone new to online games of this nature, it was a good experience. Just be careful as all the pitfalls of online friendships/relations apply here as well.If you are looking for objective/goal-oriented style of games then this is not the one for you. While it has been argued that goals are limited by one's imagination and creativity, I beg to differ. Everything about the game is social. There is absolutely nothing for the person who wants to achieve anything else. Building businesses and such are merely excuses to create more social lots for people to hang out. The "best" businesses are the ones that are the most popular (calculated by the most number of visitor hours the lot has) rather than most profitable (many are actually bleeding cash). Player-Player economy is as good as non existent. All cash comes from the big hole in the sky. There's also no point in accumulating so much as you would find nothing to spend on after crossing a certain threshold. Finding people to "roleplay" within the game is also like looking for a needle in a haystack. The most common kind of roleplay is that of "hubby/wife" roles. Again very social, and subjective, so I'd keep kids/spouse out of this game. If you are lucky and do some earnest searching you may find that cliche of movie fans there, but as I said - they are the rare ones. I'm giving a one star rating because the game has been released too early. It lacks content and features that would keep people online for more than a month. It promises so much and yet delivers so little. It's saving grace is that it's pretty stable at this point with minimal game crashes and lags. Oh and yes, that great chat room. Buy this if and only if you enjoy chatting (and are willing to shell out [$$$] a month + whatever the going rate for the s/w is). Otherwise, stick to the Offline The Sims. It's more bang for the buck.
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