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Shopper's delight

There is a fair amount of stuff to explore. The Sims Online does preserve the consumer's thrill of building a house and buying stuff to put in it, but the thrill is dampened by the fact that you might as well just go to someone else's house to enjoy their stuff. In addition to the standard items used for eating and sleeping, there's plenty of stuff to goof around with. The dance floor lets you choreograph your own routine by queuing up moves from a few dozen choices. The costume chests and hat racks allow from some pretty outrageous combos. You can swim, play pool, water plants, and feed fish. As pointless as it all may be, there's plenty to do. And Maxis will probably continue to add new goodies as the game goes on.

Graphically, this looks like a faithful port of the offline versions of The Sims. Which means it's nothing to write home about. The Sims is an aging franchise that caters to the lowest common denominator of graphics cards and processing hardware. It's functional and colorful, but it looks sadly dated next to the latest generation of online games. But Sims veterans will feel right at home with all the bright floors, the loud wallpaper, the gaudy costumes, and the clutter of furniture and goodies. You might find some interesting themed locations, but a lot of players seem to be decorating their homes as if they were trying to make your eyes bleed. To Maxis' credit, there's a wide variety of avatar choices, so most people look distinctive enough to avoid confusion. It would be nice, however, if there were more than one body type instead of everyone being built like a contestant on Temptation Island.


Lag is often noticeable, but rarely a problem. This ain't Counter-Strike. You use the mouse to queue up orders for your sim and he or she carries them out while you chat away with the keyboard. There are long stretches of the game, particularly if you're building up skills or earning money, when no input is needed. These are the times you can either chat with people, drum your fingers, or do something in a different window if you've figured out how to put the "-w" tag at the end of the shortcut to the game's executable. These are also the times when the pointlessness of the whole thing might bring your interest level crashing down around you. The secret to enjoying The Sims Online is weathering these doldrums without giving in to the urge to run away to EverQuest or give Dark Age of Camelot a try or maybe try one of the other classes in Anarchy Online. The most important skill for a player of The Sims Online is single-minded persistence.