The Sims Online’s MMORPG roots, and the future of the series

Believe it or not, The Sims was once an MMO. Well, sort of. As you may know The Sims has had many odd spin-offs (remember The Urbz?) and all manner of iterations. But it’s one particular entry, The Sims Online, that’s especially interesting nowadays. So, let’s dig into The Sims Online’S MMORPG roots and how it relates to the future of the franchise, particularly Project Rene.

Massively multiplayer

Now, the rise and fall of The Sims Online has been charted already in all levels of detail. But for those of you who aren’t already familiar with it, here’s a brief overview.

Released in the wake of the original Sims’ success, The Sims Online was billed as an amazing new step in taking the franchise to multiplayer. But hot off the heels of hits like Ultima Online which revolutionised and practically invented the MMORPG genre, The Sims Online faced many issues when it launched in 2002.

Essentially, what launched was a pared-down version of The Sims 1. You would create and customise your Sim, attend to their needs and build on your own lot (more on that in a second). Meanwhile, you could also travel to different areas and interact with other players in both text chat and emotes.

The main gameplay was focused on the social aspect, and was where criticism mainly lay. Your only real challenge was to make Simoleons and spend them, with the main challenge being to save up enough to actually buy your own house. To make money you had to grind skills using different objects, with entire player-built properties devoted to developing said skills.

Next lot

For a quickfire discussion of why The Sims Online fell apart and was eventually discontinued in 2008, here’re some key reasons. Lacking features or a core selling point beyond playing an online version of the original Sims, lacking any real appeal outside the basic digital dollhouse approach, competing with heavyweights such as Second Life which released the year after, and of course the arrival of World of Warcraft that drastically changed the MMO landscape.

What came in for particular criticism was the skill system and focus on making money, as well as the lack of new features to keep up with competitors. It’s also never a good sign when your game becomes known for digital brothels (something Will Wright himself explicitly, if naively, predicted happening even before launch).

Ultimately, The Sims Online could be said to have been doomed from the start, not helped by reported sky-high expectations from EA themselves, an attempted rebrand to ‘EA Land’ mere months before the end, and the intervening release of The Sims 2 and other spin-offs offering dedicated fans of the series more options and features.

But again, The Sims Online has been covered in-depth, even if the waters have been muddied more than twenty years after launch. So why talk about it again? Well, it all has to do with Project Rene, the upcoming multiplatform mobile spin-off released into soft launch as City Life Game With Friends (snappy).

Mind over Maxis

By now, the more perceptive amongst you will note that there are two issues with The Sims Online that are also present in Project Rene. That being a lack of core features already available in the mainline Sims, and the repetitive grinding to make money with minigames.

So, yes, twenty years on have we forgotten the lessons of the past? Well, at this point it might as well be a Ragnarok cycle, as EA seemingly crave the even greater success that taking the Sims properly online would offer them. Remember SimCity 2013 and how that flopped compared to its predecessors?

Now, there are other issues that have since been rectified. Moderation is, for example, now standardised and much better applied on the whole, and the issues with lag are practically nonexistent in today’s era of high-speed internet. But these are small potatoes compared to the issues of a boring, grindy core gameplay loop.

Ultimately, The Sims Online can be viewed just as a curiosity. But increasingly it seems that the issues it faced are evergreen, with history set to repeat itself unless someone at EA opens up a- well, not a book but the internet at least.