Ever wanted to work in the game industry? Well now is your chance: Stratics is currently hiring Web Developers! Stratics is your gateway to opportunities within the Massively Multiplayer field. Many of our staff move on to well-paid positions within respected development houses. Now is your opportunity!

Applicants should have the following skills:

• Drupal CMS
• vBulletin (create and/or add plugins via the plugin system)
• php 5 with OOP
• Basic HTML
• Basic Ajax
• Ability to make, modify, and add java scripts

This is a paid position. Interested applicants should email: directors@stratics.com and include a copy of, or link to, your resume and any applicable references.

Stratics (www.stratics.com): Founded in Sacramento, California during the Autumn of 1997, Stratics became the world's first content-driven Massively Multiplayer network. Begun as a personal homepage dedicated to Electronic Art's "Ultima Online", Stratics has grown over time into a sprawling treasure trove of information and community services dedicated specifically to interactive persistent world environments. Stratics currently serves millions of unique monthly visitors and provides official site and forum hosting to multiple Massively Multiplayer development houses.

Begin your endeavor today!

The EA-Store will open 7/29/08 at 8:00PM Eastern Time/5:00PM Pacific Time. Opening time will be only for two hours. Mike Rizzo and Amoreena will host their final opening of the EA Store.

This opening will also have a "promotional code", which will allow the sims who hold this code to get any items without waiting. Please IM the following code to Amoreena or Mike Rizzo at the time of your visit to the EA-Land Store: PC-7stTN

DISCLAIMER: This code is valid only for the opening of the EA Store on 7/29/08 @ 8:00PM Eastern/5:00PM Pacific. This code is only valid if presented to Mike Rizzo or Amoreena if present.

It is the final week here on The Sims Online/EA-Land. Many of the players are left with mixed feelings. Some are confused. Some are upset. Some are enjoying the little time that is left. The years went by so fast; all 5 years, 10 months, and 3 days. To many of the players, it still feels like yesterday when they first created their sim and started their home. That’s where the journey began for most of them. This journey was an adventure that impacted the human participating in this virtual community.

The Sims Online/EA-Land was made of a community that was attached to the environment, with love for the basic concept. The game’s motto was "Be Somebody Else." Players around the world created characters that appealed to them; some were bears, robots, and even bugs. However, the majority made normal Sims. Some players even role-played, or played the part of, their character. Each player created goals for themselves, whether it was max skilling, working at the diner, making friends, or to simply have fun.

Many people are overwhelmed by the news received on April 29, 2008 about Electronic Art’s decision to close the doors on The Sims Online. Many are forced to dwell on memories of the past, and to relinquish certain sentimental game artifacts. Many friends are going to be left behind in the void of only memory, yet to only last in hearts forever. The places where each player raised their sim will fade away to only mental imagery. The involvement in such a community will be an experience that would last a lifetime. The true players of The Sims Online will always remember what they have done in the game, from the simple fun activities like kicking flamingos with friends, shooting cannons, skilling, playing Hide N’ Seek, petting our pets, or pizzaing to the more complex as running a contest, building a multi-million dollar RoofArt company, or participating in a city-wide organization.

The Sims Online deserves a special place in the heart of many because of those friends who greatly affected the gameplay and real lives of many of those players. Many people have discovered new things about themselves by playing this game. For some, it opened them up to broader horizons, and for others, it helped them realize the true personality that they are.

Let The Sims Online never be forgotten. Let it inhabit the hearts of many, recalling many instances of true friendship, fun, relaxation, and memories of an experience that lasts a lifetime.

In response to the game’s closure, a few Sims, including myself decided to get together and create a short 8:25 minute film. We would like to share it with you!

A Short Film created and directed by Mike Rizzo, Amoreena, and Sheri of East Jerome (The Sims Online/EA Land). This is the final New Beginning film created in The Sims Online/EA-Land.

DESCRIPTION OF VIDEO:
Kelly and Rae are back! And this time, for the final goodbye. After the girls realize their world is coming to an end, they reminisce about the past. They realize the value in life and how not to waste good times on the bad. When their last day in the world arrives, they are overwhelmed with eachother's great friendship. However, all endings must have a New Beginning... See how this sad story reveals itself in A New Beginning: The Beginning of the End.

FOR VIEWING:
The viewer may have to enlarge the video to read the chat bubbles clearly.

In Reference to the "Lazy Llama" Intro:
Lazy Llamas is a silly and fictional "Movie Association", which relates to the game's mascot, the llama.

I just want to thank everyone for such a great experience here on The Sims Online and on Sims Stratics. It has been a terrific part of my life, and I have enjoyed every minute of it. It has been a very sad and upsetting few months for me. I hope everyone here sticks out the last few days of The Sims Online, completing their goals and reuniting with friends one last time. It has been a pleasure to share this experience with you all and I really look forward to seeing most of you online again, either on Stratics or on another online game. Please take care of yourselves and have a safe and final Error 23 Friday morning! 

Sincerely,

Mike Rizzo

The Sims Online Stratics News Reporter 

This is Rizzo from East Jerome signing out with the news for The Sims Online one last time.

The EA-Land Store will open on Saturday 7/26/08 at approximately 12:00PM Eastern Time/9:00AM Pacific Time for two hours. Amoreena and Mike Rizzo will be the hosts during these times.

 See you there!

Since promotional codes went very well in the past opening, we will use it again. This time's promotional code is: 26st-pcJY.

DISCLAIMER: This code is valid only for the opening of the EA Store on 7/26 @ 12:00PM Eastern/9:00AM Pacific. This code is only valid if presented to Mike Rizzo or Amoreena if present.

The EA-Store will open tonight at 9:30PM Eastern Time/6:30PM Pacific Time. Opening time will be only for one hour. Mike Rizzo and Amoreena will be opening it up tonight! (with a twist!)

We have a special "promotional code", which will allow the sims who hold this code to get any items without waiting. Please IM the following code to Amoreena or Mike Rizzo at the time of your visit to the EA-Land Store: st7pc20-1

DISCLAIMER: This code is valid only for the opening of the EA Store on 7/20/08 @ 9:30PM Eastern/6:30PM Pacific. This code is only valid if presented to Mike Rizzo or Amoreena if present.

 Hope to see you there!

The EA Store will open in EA Land tonight at exactly 8:00PM Eastern Time/5:00PM Pacific.

Those who arrive first get a priviledge to the "random grab" of any items out on the lot. Shortly after, we will switch over to giving out special orders to each person one at a time.

See you there!

Two announcements were made by EA Parizad this week on the EA-Land blog:

We will be bringing our forums down Friday, July 11th 2008 to import restored user data initially lost in May. The following was posted in our Forum Announcements:

"On Friday, July 11th our message forums will be taken offline for approximately 48 hours while we restore the data we were able to pull from the old database and merge it with the existing data. The restoration will begin at about noon EST on Friday.

Users whose accounts were recovered from the old database will have those accounts merged with the current existing account, if the username and the email address match. For those of you who created alternate usernames we will be able to merge your restored account with your new account after the restoration has been completed.

If you have any questions or need any assistance with your account please email forumhelp@stratics.com or use the "Contact Us" link at the bottom of the forums."

Stratics IRC - 

Please feel  free to join us on Stratics IRC during the downtime! You can connect to one of our Stratics IRC servers using your favorite IRC client. A list of popular IRC clients is available on our downloads page, and for those who wish to chat via their browser you can connect via our java IRC client. (Java required - download here)
Connect to irc.stratics.com (port 6668) or choose a server close to you from following list:
     stratics.frws.com USA - Colorado (ports 6667 6668 7000)
     irc.glowfish.de EU - Germany (ports 6667 6668)
     stratics.afraidyet.net USA - Texas (ports 6667 6668)
     irc.gamers-irc.org USA - Colorado (ports 6667 6668 7000)
 

While we apologize for the inconvenience, we are at the same time very happy this scheduled downtime is occurring as it means we are returning to normality!

Looking for a new world to call home? Or maybe you just love a good beta?

Anna, a marketing representative of Metaversum - the makers of Twinity, has extended an offer to players of The Sims Online/EA-Land and members of Stratics to join the Twinity 3-D virtual online world community during the Twinity beta test period. Her message is below:

Many of you wrote to me for invitations to the Twinity Beta and I hope I didn't miss anyone's email. I read your responses to Twinity and some of it was quite encouraging! We are updating the client every 2 weeks with new features and bug-fixes. If prior multi-crashing made you feel like this
, come back and try us again!

WHAT NOW? If you never got around to writing to me or if you were on the fence about giving Twinity a try, all you have to do now is click this link!

https://twinity.com/en/signup_codes/Stratics/users/new

There are exclusive invitations to the first 50 people who register. It's our way of saying thanks to Stratics members!

Interested in learning more? Want to thank Anna for the outreach and the offer?

Click here to go to the Twinity Beta offer discussion thread.

Luc Barthelet has announced via the Tirnua home page the members of the development team. Followers of EA-Land/The Sims Online find the names familiar - they all have EA employment in their backgrounds and many have moved directly from EA-Land to Tirnua.

In addition to listing the team names, in the announcement Luc confirms that Tirnua's name reflects its emphasis on the environment and states that the interactive dev/community blog will open soon.

From Tirnua.com, here are the team's names and profiles:

Luc Barthelet CEO

Luc is passionate about engaging communities in developing virtual worlds.

Luc designed and built his own computer was in was 17 and then went on to write software for the Apple ][ and the Macintosh. His first company was purchased by Electronic Arts in 1988 where Luc continued to work for 20 years.

At EA, Luc was VP of Technology, CTO and then General Manager of Maxis where SimCity 3000 and The Sims were developed (among others).

In May 2008, Luc started Tirnua, Inc.

Kitesurfing, Humanoid Robots and Mathematica are also of high interest to Luc.

Audrey Gustafson Director of Production

No bio available.

Cort Oi Lead Enginneer

Cort Oi is responsible for applications design and programming.

Prior to joining Tirnua, Cort was a programmer at Maxis/Electronic Arts for 13 years, building games for the SimCity and Sims franchises.

Greg Kearney President

No bio available.

Larry Landry COO

Larry is a veteran of the games industry. Prior to joining Tirnua he spent 14 years developing games, of which over 8 years was at Electronic Arts.

His experience encompasses every aspect of game development having been lead engineer or technical director on multiple titles including PC, console, and online based games such as The Sims Online.

He has been the Technical Director of Z-Axis, the Senior Development Director of the Central Technology Group at EA Redwood Shores, and the Senior Development Director of the EA-Land project, an online virtual world experiment.

Laurent Meyer Director Web Services

Laurent is directing the implementation of Tirnua core web services.

Prior to working at Tirnua, Laurent worked at Electronic Arts, WideOrbit, EasyPlanet, Davey Bickford and CMS.

As if this was not enough, Laurent has programmed stores on eBay for his friends.

While Laurent is fluent in many programming languages, he has a preference for Delphi which he promotes wherever he works.

Lee Fancey Director Operations

Lee Fancey is an industry leader in large scale content pipelines and improving the efficiency of engineers through flexible software configuration management techniques.

Lee earned his BS in Business and Marketing from CSUS .

Lee joined the software industry in 1997 where he was first introduced to large scale engineering pipelines and honed his craft.

In 2001 he joined Maxis where he brought Software Configurations Management (SCM) process to The Sims Online.

In 2002 Lee brought those same techniques to The Sims 2 and established a studio group to oversee SCM for the Maxis Studio.

In 2005 he established worldwide SCM best practices and assumed the roll of Director of Configuration Management over EA Redwood Shores, EA Los Angeles, and The Sims Franchise.

Lee has been involved with numerous entertainment tiles on both the PC and consoles including: The Sims Online, The Sims 2, Godfather, and EA-Land.

He was responsible for best practices on EA's upcoming Spore and has participated on several tech councils and was nominated for innovator of the year for his work in large scale build and production pipelines.

Margaret Foley-Mauvais Director of User Experience

No bio available.

Sarah Flannery Chief Scientist

Before joining Tirnua, Sarah was a software engineer at Electronic Arts, working directly for the worldwide CTO, Scott Cronce, and, later, with many fellow Tirnua founders on her first virtual world.

Cronce described her as "a rising star [and] a dynamo of energy with great intelligence"! Previously she worked on the technical and scientific computing software product Mathematica for Wolfram Research.

Sarah has a BA (and MA Cantab) in Computer Science from the University of Cambridge, England.

In 1999 she was a winner of both the Irish and, later, European "Young Scientist of the Year" award for work on Cryptography.

The following year the popular-science bestseller In Code: A Mathematical Journey, written with her father David, was published at the request of Profile Books Ltd., London, and has since been translated into many languages.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The essays have been read, the simoleons have been counted and the winners have been notified ...

EAL/TSO Stratics is very pleased to announce the winners of the Win a Million Contest. All of the essays received were interesting, thoughtful and showed that the heart of The Sims Online has always been the player's sense of community and self. Thanks to all who sent in an entry.

In no particular order, here are the winners:

Winner of 1 Million Simoleons, Cherri Bear!

My one last wish before EA closes us down, is that we can all get together and have some of the most fun, exciting, happy, thrilling, carefree times I have had with all of you these past 5 ½ years. I want to make a place where we can all play, roll in the grass, hug, and enjoy each other while we are all still together.

Winner of 1 Million Simoleons, TKSpeedy (Mistress Scarlet in EA-Land)

I still have the first house I ever owned in TSO. It was practically
given to me by a dear friend, Mistress Sade for 10K. It seems like such
a small amount now, but it was so expensive back then. Ever since then,
I've wanted to give back and help other sims out, but by the time I
accumulated enough money, TSO was turned into EaLand, and everything
changed.

Winner of 1 Million Simoleons, miuf!

I hope I will have the time to acomplish all my goals, because time is running [out] fast and there is not much time left, but the main thing is I would like to [see] is other sims enjoying the game and not having to worry about all the repair needed - I would fix all that I can!

Because of the merits of another entry, Stratics has added an Honorable Mention to the Win a Million contest. Vanilla Skye/Amber Waves' will be awarded a collection of rares in EA-Land to sell or keep, as she chooses, in recognition of her entry.

Discussion and congratulations to the winners of the EAL/TSO Stratics Win a Million Giveaway Essay Contest happens here, in the EAL/TSO Stratics Big Tent forum.

Thanks to all who participated!

Yahoo Video Games listed The Sims Online in its recent list of "Big Budget Disasters":

Sims Online

VIEW GAME PAGE

Estimated budget: $25m

Although megapublisher Electronic Arts usually has a knack for delivering sales smashes, every time it's dipped its toe into the waters of massively multiplayer games since Ultima Online it's ended up badly burned. Its last effort, an online version of The Sims, should have been a smash hit, but, well, let's just say it underperformed a tad. Turns out the best way to make history's most successful videogame franchise into a massively multiplayer game is not in fact to remove most of the features players enjoy and then heap on a monthly fee. The Sims Online underperformed from day one, and although EA re-invented the game as "EA-Land" in February, it's currently marking time until the Grim Reaper comes to turn off the servers on August 1.

Keeping TSO company in Yahoo's list are: Daikatana, The Last Express, Ultima 9, Shenmue, The Getaway, and E.T, the Extra-Terrestrial.

Have something to say about Yahoo's take on TSO? Talk about it here, in the EAL/TSO Stratics Big Tent forum.

Want to break something?

So do we! This Friday the Thirteenth brings mass mayhem to TSO/EA-Land!

Come join the staff of EAL/TSO Stratics as we attempt to recreate the greatest TSO/EA-Land bugs of all time. Bring your party hat, have your screenshot finger ready, and start dusting off your old tricks - we'll be Cuddling into the Void, Swimming with the Ice Cream Man, and Sliding through Walls (assuming all those old chestnuts still work) and it just won't be the same unless you are there, too.

Stratics Bug Night
Friday, June 13
7 pm CST - ???
EA-Land
Seashore Estate owned by sim Niki King

Be there or be square.

Questions about Bug Night? Concerns? Talk about it here, in the EAL/TSO Stratics Big Tent forum.