The Sims Online is in the news again: on the player website, players of TSO can read that at 28 October Maxis will release a new retail version of The Sims Online (which will have 3 instead of 2 cd's). All current players have downloaded the improvements over the time they've played, but buying the new package will be better for new players as they won't have to download all the updates to be able to play the game. A lot of new features have been added to the game since the release, and before the end of the month Maxis will have added service NPCs, jobs and pets to the game (so they promise). Other features, like clothing racks, death and secure trading, are already available. Of course current players will be asked to update even before the release so they can enjoy the new content very soon (some of it is already available in Test Center). If TSO is indeed released by the end of this month in Europe, then most likely it'll be the new 3-cd package. However, nothing has been confirmed about that yet (even the EU release date is officially not yet announced).