Creating an Online Character

From The Sims - Wiki on Neoseeker

The Sims Online Header

Character Creation

After players logged on to their new Sims Online account, they would need to create a sim in order to play online. On the log in screen players were greeted by three empty Sims slots, or in the time of EA Land, avatar slots. Each of these slots allowed players to create one sim of their choice. They could choose from a variety of different sim heads, bodies, skins, tones, and clothes. Each of these different qualities would portray their sims the way they wanted others to see them as. But they would need to remember, once they've chosen these characteristics to be prepared for other people to judge them by the way they reflected their true personality, and attitude through their sim, even if it looks nothing like the actual player.

Click this to begin!

Players could click the Create a New Sim button on one of the blank sim/avatar slots to get started. If they used a completely new account each slot would be blank but after they've created the sim of their choice it would show up in one of the blank slots. Next a screen would pop up asking what city that the player want their sim to live in.

View of an Empty Sims Inventory

The city screen showed players the name of each city, its online status, and if it was currently available to live in. Online cities would turn up highlighted, giving their sim access to living there while offline cities would have a No under the online indicator. Each city had a status bar under its name ether saying Ok meaning players could live there, or Closed meaning new sim creation was not allowed in that city at that time, if players have already created a sim in a certain city, that city’s name would appear highlighted in blue on the City Selection screen not-allowing them to move another sim into that same city.

There were twelve open cities to move into during the years of '02 and 08'. Nine of the twelve were exactly the same in game play style even though each city has its own distinct personality.

The Cities

The Mainland
- EA Land

The Rumored City
- Queen Margaret's

Alphaville and Blazing Falls were known as the Sims equivalent of New York, a large, lively metropolis, whereas East Jerome and Calvin’s Creak had a more of a small town personal feel where everyone knoew everyone. The other two cities known as Test Center and Dragon's Cove brought a completely different style to the list of cities.

Test Center was a city designed specifically for the testing of new game functions and items that may be added later on in the game. The city may have been subject to rollbacks, or even partial or total wipes. While many people had made Test Center their permanent home, there was a risk that at some point in the future (possibly without notice), players may lose some or all of their efforts in building up their sim's life.

Dragon's Cove on the other hand was known as the “Hard Core” city. It brought about the toughest of ways to find money and gain skills. Every object that was used to obtain skills had lowered in percentage per sim, making it harder to gain skills then it was in other cities. Also every time players traveled across the city they payed a small fee but the fee was a drop in their sim's needs such as hunger, bladder, fun, hygiene, and all the rest.

Players could simply hit Ok to the city of their choice and would continue into the actaual creation of a sim or avatar.

Creation of a Sim

On this screen players had the option of naming their sim what ever they wanted as long as it was not inappropriate. There were a variety of 231 different heads that came in 3 different skin tones to choose from. Along with a variety of 224 different body types that came along with different clothes for each one to also pick from. Players could ether choose to just make their sim a mear human or they made robots, bears, aliens, ghosts, and all of the rest.

EA Land Login Page

On the create a sim page there were 5 buttons going down in a row to pick from. The first 2 toggled between gender and the 3 below those were players choice of ether Light, Medium, or Dark skin tones. If they've chosen for example, Light skin all of the 231 heads would change tones for that area, it was the same for the other two tones as well. Each of the 231 heads would appear on the top right hand corner of the screen, players scrolled through this list to decide what head suited them best. The 224 different body types would appear on the bottom right hand corner, players also scrolled through this list to decide what body suited them best. As the heads could all automatically change skin tone the bodies would change as well. The skin tones for a robot head and body were going to turn out being different then just the regular human head and body. It was the same with the ghosts, bears, gorillas, aliens, and all of the other non-human sim features.

Creat A Sim Mode

Players noticed as they selected heads and bodies for their sim on the very left their own personal sim avatar would be created showing them what the sim would look like in life form. If they decide they were not happy with what the sim looks like they just simply changed it and the avatar would change as well. After they've named and officially created what they wanted their sim to look like they got a choice of filling out their own personal sim profile. But players must remember what ever they put on this profile others would read it and judge them by what they wrote. Players made their profile sound like themselves, answered the questions that were given and they may have even found another sim that had the same likes and dislikes as they did.

Now that a player had finished with naming, creating, and describing their sim, they were ready to move onto the next step, living the city life. It would be a rocky start at first having been completely new to the city and it’s surrounding but if they immediately start by just going around to some of the popular houses they would make friends fast and some of these friends are going to be kind enough to help them through their adventures. Players sims only starts out with 10,000 simoleans (it seemed like a lot but trust me it wasn't). Players needed to use the money wisely, and as they gain more experience with the game they could even have gone to some of the money houses to earn their living in order to begin building their life, having started with a house. To enjoy The Sims Online players are encouraged to live their sim's lives to the fulliest!