posted by Buddha Paul (Admin) on May 11

Here are the rest of the Wedding Pictures.

posted by Buddha Paul (Admin) on May 5

Oh Madge!!!! Seeing people’s memories and last screen captures of their online homes just brings me to tears! Thank you for sharing this! I’m going to miss you guys so much!!!!

posted by Buddha Paul (Admin) on May 1

This video totally brought me to tears!

posted by Buddha Paul (Admin) on Apr 5

There you are, just enjoying the game you’ve always loved no matter what they call you.. Sims… Avatars.. whatever.. it’s always going to be The Sims Online in your heart.  Then a system message from Parizad flashes across your screen, warning you that the Repo Man is coming to take away any conterfiet custom content objects you have in your possetion. 

At first, you don’t give it much thought.  Then you start second guessing some of the things you did buy.. hmm.. is it really okay that someone duplicated that statuette they purchased at Walmart?  But you figure okay, if a trinket or two disappears fine.

The next day you enter your lot and your heart stops!  All those beautiful cabinets you’ve worked so hard to purchase.. all gone!  Planters, chairs..  everything converted into cardboard boxes and cheesy folding chairs!

You rush back to the stores demanding a refund.. but they’re all closed.  Most of them left without inventory!  Finger pointing everywhere!  The stratic dev lovers all tring to protect their precious devs.  No officical word from anyone!

Now at first glance one might say anyone in posession of counterfit merchendise deserves to have it reposessed.  Normally I’d wholeheartedly agree with you, but the problem is that EA has a policy of reviewing and approving each item submitted.  Sure, you’d expect one or two obscure items to slip through but this is not the case.  Blatent copyright violation such as Disney and Warner Brothers characters have slipped through. 

Since all this transpired going into the weekend perhaps we should give EA some time to formulate a respnose, but I would urge anyone effected to not simply gripe in the forums about it.  Be prepared to take legal consumer action.  Remember, simoleons (or whatever they choose to call it) now have a real cash value.  If you purched your simoleons through the ATM via PayPall you may lose important rights by waiting too long. 

We’ll add more news as we get it.  Your comments are encouraged!

posted by Paulina (Admin) on Mar 3

Mount Fuji is having a party !!!! About time been way to long since the last one, and all of us have sobered up from that by now.

As the title says, it will be a Pizza Party. So bring your Pizza making skills, you pizza loving friends and your game. The party will be at Life unscripted in the old Mount Fuji, yours truly and Buddha will be hosting. Dj Daw from Dragnwingsradio will be taking your requests and Dodge will have a few surprises up his sleeve also. Malika will make sure all guests will have a freshly washed attire for the evening , in case you get Pizza sauce on you.

The party starts at 7 pm eastern time, we hope will see you all there and have a great time.

posted by Paulina (Admin) on Feb 28

Yes finally some of our Simmies have made it through the merge. The last Sims standing in MF have merged and it is wonderful to see them all.

It also has been a hoot so far, trying to figure out who is who in Ealand …some make it easy and some make it hard to figure out. And then there are the ones that are just very confused *cough*Paul*cough*, and wonder who they are talking too…LOL. Our bookmark list is going to be full in no time if it hasn’t filled up already.

Is everyone having fun? I know some have a hard time adjusting to the new surroundings and truly set in their ways…but they are coming around..heck I even caught Dodge out of his wheelchair at a Pizza place last night, please people we all know how hard that is. So mark the calendars red and declare the day a holiday..lol. And the funny thing is, no Malika to wheel him around..so I am thinking he just likes the wheelies far to much she is doing with him..lol. Just wonder if he wore shoes, otherwise poor Malika will be back to mending those darn white socks of his.

I saw Genesis last night , so we can remove the Missing in action signs of the trees. She enjoyed Florida way to much and I betcha she is sporting a tan.

Oh and there is a guy running around with tweezers…he claims to be looking for Cows..well a certain one. So everyone beware of him, and if he does try to rope you in..just mention pink tutu…that should get him to stop…LOL. BTW..he belongs to Gen…so if you can hang him up on a chandelier..she will gladly light him up…LOL.

Have not seen a trail of cheetos yet..yes Rock is somewhere out there but is making sure we can’t get to him to steal his cheetos. I will find him, all I need is a crumb…

Wen is there with her multiple personalities..LOL…I am waiting for her to start answering herself when she speaks….someone get a padded cell ready….preferably with a Pizza oven.

Okay everyone have fun, so far I am. And maybe sometime soon we can throw a party in the ole Mount Fuji to show everyone how we do it there.

posted by Buddha Paul (Admin) on Feb 1

From: MaxisLuc <MaxisLuc@maxis.com>
Date: Jan 31, 2008 10:30 PM
Subject: EA-Land
To: Former Members of The Sims Online

Dear Former Member of The Sims OnlineI would like to introduce you to EA-Land, an online world that is free-to-play, and based on a re-engineered The Sims Online architecture.  Yes, FREE.
(to see an HTML version of this letter please go to http://ea-land.ea.com)

We have played The Sims Online together, my avatar is MaxisLuc (yes, I work for Maxis/EA.) I wanted you to know that at the beginning of last year, I assembled a team to improve The Sims Online. After months of ongoing hard work, we can proudly say that we have been successful and we have made this game fun again! I am writing to you because I would like to invite you to rejoin us in the game. You can come back for free right now by just downloading the game (here: http://ea-land.ea.com/register/freeTrial.php). If you do so before March 2008, you can get your earned privileges back (gifts, skill locks etc.), but most importantly, you can re-join the game before the rush of new users.

EA-Land will host all of The Sims Online cities.

The Sims Online was made of 12 different cities (AlphaVille, Blazing Falls, etc..) and we are moving all of those cities inside EA-Land (this is called ‘the merge’ by the users!). We have a huge new map: it is 100 times bigger than the previous size of any city. We had to add a whole new zoom level to let users see it. The internet is faster now, so we have been able to let each house have more simultaneous visitors.  A lot of new users are constantly joining us and we expect more. As you have played TSO before, I think that you ought to own your lot in this new land, and I want you to have the ability to grab the best location before we open the gates. As an EA-Land subscriber, you will be able to have several Sims in the same ‘city’ unlike in TSO where you were limited to one Sim per city.

RE-designed with Smart Users

We have a blog (http://www.tso-e.com ) where we explain all the things we are working on and the events we are running in the game. We also have a very active wiki web site (http://www.game-blueprints.com ) managed by the community where you can work with others to design the game. We have already implemented many features designed by the users! The stratics forum community continues to be very active. We have made some big changes to the game, and many more are coming over the next few months. It is difficult to say which of the recent changes are the most important as users have different reasons to play the game, but let me tell you about the changes that I particularly like:

Custom Content

Users now have the ability to upload custom content. Like in the original Sims game, the goal is to let you customize the game completely, but in EA-Land you can see and buy the customizations of the other players! Players have already uploaded several thousands pieces of custom content. I suspect that by some time this year, all of the content of the game will have been replaced many times over by custom content. We started with the ability to upload bitmaps (easiest for the new creative users), then moved on to chairs and sculptures. You can now make your own portraits in the game and “skin” objects like in Sims2 by using your own images. Because we are approving all of the content, this user content is safe to be viewed by everyone! We are working with the main user web sites that have been providing custom content to the Sims users for years (e.g. http://www.TheSimsResource.com) to make sure that their content will be made available in the game.

New Economy

We heard from the community that the economy was broken in TSO. That was true, too many users were billionaires, and the goal of the game was mostly about extracting money from Maxis. I can now say with satisfaction that we have fixed the economy on EA-Land. This took many features, from establishing a real estate market, where users can easily buy or sell lots to one another, and a dynamic object pricing market where the prices of objects purchased from Maxis is based on supply and demand, enabling stores and entrepreneurs to earn a living. We also enabled users to buy simoleans directly from Maxis. While there is no need for users to do so in the game (we give subscribers simoleans every week), it can help new users build their dream house faster with a simple paypal transaction secured by us.

Web Services and Social Networks

The internet has changed so much since the launch of The Sims Online in December 2002, we had to change the way we think about online games. We have opened the access to most of the in game information to the internet through web services. For example this enables you to add Google or Yahoo widgets to your computer (or iPhone! ) and see if your favorite lots or friends are online. We are providing you with privacy settings so you can decide if or which of your avatars will broadcast what information to the internet. Sims User web sites are already using this feature to create some amazing community sites. We also built avatarbook, to show how that information can be seen and connected to social web sites like Facebook © (login to the “avatar book” application at http://apps.facebook.com/avatarbook where you can search for MaxisLuc’s profile page)

And there’s more to come! We are looking forward to seeing you back in the game and having fun with us again!

Sincerely

Luc Barthelet,
“MaxisLuc”

posted by Buddha Paul (Admin) on Jan 28

I just had to re-install The Sims Online onto a new machine and discovered the procedure changed slightly from the last time. 

Simply visit https://ea-land.ea.com/register/freetrial.php and at the bottom you’ll see the DOWNLOAD option.. you don’t even have to log in at that point.  Also, if you have a slow connection… it’s a HUGE download.. for $5 (U.S. via Paypal) they’ll send it to you on DVD.  Sweet!

Now we all hold our breaths for the merge to happen and to see what will eventually happen with their graphics upgrade.  Out of three machines, only one of mine has been able to launch “Test Center 3 - Test” without error, and even then performance was poor. 

posted by Buddha Paul (Admin) on Dec 13

I know this is old news for some, but as you can tell by the lack of posting here we’re really tapped out for news stories!!!

I just wanted to share an old resource that I have just discovered, a page on the Wiki with some solutions to a few of the newer EALand related issues some of you are experiencing.

Game-Blueprints Errors FAQ