EA-Land Closes

Posted on April 29, 2008 by Scott Jennings| 31 Comments

Well, that was quick.

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  • Zappa

    It is a shame that they are closing it. I may have to rethink about purchasing Warcraft Online if this is how EA is going to treat it’s servers in the future.

  • Zappa

    I mean Warhammer Online

  • Ibn

    Skimming the comments thread… I bet I could take a forum thread from any MMO closure/cancellation notice, change the name of the game referenced, and no one would be able to tell the difference.

  • http://www.lumethemad.com Lume

    Well, TSO only had something like 8,000 subscribers before it switched over to EA-Land. That’s a minuscule amount of players for an MMO. So it’s no surprise they closed it.

  • Merkwurdigliebe

    I had to Wikipedia “EA Land” to figure out what it was. I thought Sims Online closed years ago.

  • http://gawain.diaryland.com gawain the blind

    The only good thing to come out of TSO was the thread on SA when the goons invaded.

  • Sutro

    Frankly I’m surprised it wasn’t closed within a year of its opening, a’la Auto Assault. I imagine EA kept it on life support to avoid another backdraft like Earth & Beyond, which was closed too soon IMO. I don’t see them losing much rep after this; E&B’s closing cost them a TON.

  • http://mythicalblog.com Jeff Freeman

    So, EA-Land was TSO, or was/is TSO (still running or shut-down) a separate sort of thing?

    ‘Cause, EA-Land closing is no big deal, but TSO closing – unsurprising or otherwise – would be an embarrassment to the Sims brand. Kind of a pretty gal farting in public, sort of thing… Shocking! Alarming! Meaningless, but still… did that chica just blame it on the dog?

  • Sutro

    Yeah Jeff, EA-Land = TSO. The name change wasn’t that long ago… kind of makes you wonder if it was sort of a phased thing to take off the edge of a Sims brand game failing.

    It is interesting in a sad way, though… I’ve seen enough games fail now that Ibn’s spot on about there being absolute similarities. Back in ’97 we were clamoring for AOL’s NWN source code (a truly strange shutdown because it was shut down at the height of its popularity) so we could run our own servers. No dice then, no dice ever.

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  • http://www.corpnews.com Rasputin

    What, I thought we supported euthanasia?

  • Reg

    So the only successful MMO EA has ever had is UO. And that was more by accident than by anything clever they did.

    If they stay true to form they should be cancelling Warhammer shortly before it goes live. :)

  • http://hgamer.blogspot.com heartless_

    The companies that wound up with both UO and EQ back in the day, received the success of each by accident in my book and haven’t done shit with it since :) However, UO at least, has fumbled into the hands of a somewhat reliable company, albeit only through assimilation into the borg.

  • Andy O

    EA-Land was kind of a revamping of TSO, they were trying to make it into a social thing like Facebook or those “Pay to Play” type games. Was pretty much the same game, but they had started allowing user created content and they took all the TSO “Lands” and combined them into 1 “Land”.

    It had potential, but I have the feeling they were really just winging it, and didn’t have an exact plan of attack, something EA shareholders don’t vibe with (yet, or ever maybe).

  • ubvman

    Does anyone remember that THE SIMS ONLINE was supposed to be first million player MMOG in the US market? That along with SWG later with similar expectations? How the “mighty” have fallen. Kinda proves its not the Intellectual Property that matters, its the GAME stupid!

  • Sutro

    Actually, the intellectual property does matter. It’s just that the Sims was the wrong IP to leverage into an MMO. People got their jollies from the Sims from living vicariously, not by actually having to work and interact with other people.

  • Merkwurdigliebe

    “E&B’s closing cost them a TON.”

    What was EA’s loss was CCP’s gain.

    I wonder how TSO compared to Second Life? Are their lessons one could learn from the other?

  • HHDO

    I have been playing TSO since it was launched, and I have some damn good memories from that game.. Im very sad that they are closing it.. But i hope they will come up with some good ideas to replace it.. It surprises me though that Second Life isnt also closed, because a more boring and totally useless game like Second Life dosnt exist.

    So please EA, come up with something that can make us all happy. A lot of players closely attached to TSO have lost a big thing now.

  • http://wowpanda.blogspot.com wowpanda

    I don’t understand why they do that. From what I see on the comments a lot of people seems to care about it. Why don’t they just stop development on the game, just let the gamers player and charge them, and in the mean time all they need to maintain the game is do a restart on the servers like Blizzard did to WOW (well, less the patches). So instead of paying some guy $20 to flash the toilets, they can pay him $20 each week to shutdown the servers.

  • Lee Quillen

    “Yeah Jeff, EA-Land = TSO. The name change wasn’t that long ago… kind of makes you wonder if it was sort of a phased thing to take off the edge of a Sims brand game failing.”

    I’m under the impression that’s what’s driving some of the more sensible complaints. People bought into it after the name change, and the nearness of the closing made it appear it was planned all along. Much like AC2 closing after it’s expansion released, as opposed to Earth and Beyond (and other EA titles).

    My opinion is there’s no behind the scenes conspiracy, but I can see why people would be upset. I’m not going to do too much research into it…. but there were several complaints by people who sounded like they bought in game money from EA after the name change (can someone who knows verify or discredit please) that furled their ire.

  • http://www.damnedvulpine.com/ J.

    “‘Cause, EA-Land closing is no big deal, but TSO closing – unsurprising or otherwise – would be an embarrassment to the Sims brand. Kind of a pretty gal farting in public, sort of thing… ”

    Unless other people spent money for the privilege of smelling her fart and then when she’s whisked away, complain about it, I’d agree that it’s meaningless.

    Yeah, that shoe might fit too well.

  • Fragged

    The cost of maintaining the servers is surely a lot higher than you are trying to suggest wowpanda, and quite frankly there are almost certainly recoverable costs (for example replacing the machines in whatever data center they are in with machines for Warhammer online, and who knows the server side hardware in place for EA Land may not even require them to replace the hardware, they might be able to reuse it.)

    Plus running a game like this has a real risk/reward factor for their brand – imagine if something like a pedophile ring took up residence in EA-Land and then was discovered by something like Dateline. That would hurt EA’s brand significantly. They’re almost certainly making the right business call by killing it off.

  • http://www.playercampaigns.com/ Bienchen

    I am writing this letter in response to the disappointing news that EA-Land,
    the online version from the Sims of Electronic Arts will be closing its virtual doors on August 1, 2008.

    Even though I am an adult , I truly enjoy playing the game with my 2 boys (14 and 16 years).

    EA-Land is also a genuinely safe place for kids to interact with each other.
    It’s nice to know that in these times of cyber bullying and cyber crime that there is such a place for kids to play.

    Most importantly, I think most of us who play EA-Land would miss the friendships that have developed.
    Even though most of us have never met and may never meet, EALand pals are true pals.

    With EA-Land gone where do we turn?
    Sure we can turn Second Life, WOW and even Pirates Online,
    but the truth is, we all want to be a little selfish, we all want that great feeling that only TSO (Ea-Land) can provide us with.
    The magic that we are Sims!! The magic there is a game without fights, sex, war and monsters!

    Please help us and make Electronic Arts reconsider their decision to close EA-Land.

    like we do on http://www.playercampaigns.com/

    Thank you for taking the time to read this letter.

    Sincerely,
    Bienchen

  • Please

    Hey, Bienchen, since you won’t be able to play games with your kids anymore; could you send me one of their computers? Mine is dilapidated.

  • http://wowpanda.blogspot.com wowpanda

    @Fragged , yes you are right about the cost, but what I am suggesting is that once there are no more developments, the cost can be low compare to income (amount of subscribers vis cost of bandwidth/space/electricity and managers salary)

    And I don’t think pedophiles will ruin it. There is no way you can block sexual predators out of those games. While one of my friend was playing WOW last week, a dwarf approach her and asking for cyber xxx.
    The best way to guard against them is some common sense and parents (heard of the dumb teen try to fly overseas to see her online friend?)

    also the labeling of pedophile needs to change too. We had 19 year old girl who had it with 17 year old and got labeled as such for life … That is just bad

  • http://www.damnedvulpine.com/ J.

    “EA-Land is also a genuinely safe place for kids to interact with each other.”

    ToonTown is still alive. Go play that. It’s fun.

  • http://www.playercampaigns.com/ Bienchen

    @J. like i said in my letter, we are a bit shelfish and we want the feeling to be a Sim.
    my boys are 14 and 16 they dont like to be toons.

    @please :D we still need the computers for ourself to save our game :D at
    http://www.playercampaigns.com/

  • Makaze

    The cost of maintaining the servers is surely a lot higher than you are trying to suggest

    8k players at shutdown X even $5 a month (we’ll pretend they lower the price) is still $40,000 a month. There is no way their hardware infrastructure costs come anywhere near that to only support 8k players.

    MMOs may be expensive to actively maintain (patching/customer support) and ridiculously expensive to make. But they’re damn cheap to keep alive by only leaving the servers plugged in. I’m not saying they should keep TSO alive, it was a complete and total flop and severely tarnished the brand. Only that it’s being shutdown out of concerns far bigger and more ephemeral than just monthly upkeep costs.

  • Makaze

    Errrr that first sentence should be a quote…

  • http://wowpanda.blogspot.com wowpanda

    “Errrr that first sentence should be a quote…”
    Agreed

  • http://kfsone.wordpress.com/ kfsone

    Oh, that’s what happened to TSO?

    Makaze: Sure, maybe you could cover physical presence, bandwidth, power, software/hardware/support/maintenance, [minimal] staff and etc operational costs for $40k/mo.

    But you’d have to shake the staff down to well below the minimum you need for the team to be productive, which means you aren’t going to be able to keep enough developers to actively develop anything of significance – which means you’re not going to keep any developers for long at all.

    Which is essentially a death-blow for the product.