After the news that TSO hasn't been doing too great in the States, EA Europe has decided to delay the release of the game in Europe even more. On the game's page at ToTheGame, the UK/EU release has been set to 'TBA' (To Be Announced), while it was set to March before. The German site SimsZone.de has reported something similar, but with slightly more details. They contacted EA in Germany, and heard that The Sims Online was delayed until somewhere towards the end of this year(!). The plan is to get more people playing the game by making it possible to create new objects. That way, new objects (and more features) will be available when the game is released in Europe, hopefully bringing better results to EA. Currently, approximately 80,000 people registered for their 30 free days play time that come with the game, and about half of them has run out of free time, and are now paying a monthly fee. EA has now set their goal to 400,000 subscribers by December 2003. An article about all this as appeared at SunSpot, where some of the mentioned facts came from. More about that when you read on.
Players are complaining a lot that there isn't enough to do. Others also say the game is "shallow", "pointless", "tedious" and "repetitive". The article even starts with " Deana Morss' one-word take on 'The Sims Online': boring". Players have had their account flagged for saying that while playing the game.
"EA executives say they are doing all they can to fix things. Because the game occurs online, EA can tinker with content to make it more fun, something the company can't do with offline titles.The whole article is quite interesting, as it explains well why the game isn't being the hit that EA expected it to be. To read it, all you have to do is follow this link and check out the words that appear on your screen.
"Developers at EA's Maxis studio in Walnut Creek, Calif., have been shoveling in new features daily. To goose sales, EA dropped the retail price $10 this week to $39.95."
Written at 21:36 on Saturday, 15 February 2003 by ChEeTaH.
