I just realized why they wanted to go Online.

EA was trying to go online to charge you a subscription fee for a monthly or weekly cost. (Untop of that Micro transactions but that's irrelevant) They were trying to force this onto an Online Subscription base game. *** me It's all clear now! That explains the push for online - Olympus, that makes sense with how they were considering (even spoken about on review sites) on how EA was wanting to go subscription.

How would subscription fit into a sims game I thought.!! Now I know.

So the original plan for The Sims 4 was.

Olympus - Online

Subscription - (as there was talk of subscription on review sites).

So

Online Subscription base with Micro transactions was their plan.

and you bet your ass they they will add expansion packs and DLC Store content. (Review sites again talking about 'paywalls' aka Micro transactions.) on the single player.

I hate when mmos do that. In my book, it's either free to play w/ an item store, or monthly subscription and NO microtransactions. Not both. That's just a tad too greedy for their own good.
Blizzard pissed me off a big one when they started selling mounts and pets on the side in World of Warcraft. I mean, of course I eventually caved in and bought a bunch of them, I'm only human, but still!

You paid money for a funny looking mount and a completely useless pet? Ooookay.....

That's precisely why I don't play MMOs and never bought anything in the Sims Store either. I'm not paying for digital content or the right to play with a product I have already bought. Call me old fashioned, but I only pay for stuff that comes on a physical CD/DVD and I would have not played a Sims MMO. Keep your creepy, pink haired Sims out of my neighborhood...

Your surmise is as close to the truth as can be had by the ordinary gamer. EA has been focused on the on-line aspect (with microtransactions included) for about 8 years, and the SimCity debacle was the culmination of what their vision was supposed to be.

When that failed on such a huge level, then all dreams of putting the best-selling franchise game on-line exploded. The fall-out from this was huge, and the Q4 results from 2013 reflected it.

They've been retrenching ever since, and I doubt that this will not affect the future of their on-line status for a long time to come.

Perfectly said!

That's how stupid consumers are. They can only sell us useless "pets", custom skins and store-only clothing and hairstyles if we buy them.

I sure did, missy. Funny how addiction fucks with your brain, isn't it?
By the way, at the end of the day it's no different from spending money on store items.

ED: Sorry, I hadn't seen the last paragraph in your post. I had figured you for a pro-store person, but you know what they say about assumptions.
I agree that it's whack. But in mmos it's all about status. And if you feel like it's the only thing in your life you got going for you.. y'know?

The past isn't your future, every day can be re-written. Been there with falling for bullshit. The question is, what are you gonna do from this moment on. Every day is a choice, a chance for a new start - however long it takes - to make a difference, be who you are, choose another road.

Whether in life or online. Not getting screwed over is as simple as taking a stand. Like one of my favorite sayings "For all evil to succeed is for good people to do nothing"

Mark my words, The greed of Andrew Wilson (Head CEO) and every single person who lowers their head in submission choosing not to speak up for risk of their own jobs. In Maxis and EA, while they are making money off the backs of others (kids as well who play their games) by knowingly ripping them off to pay for their corporate suites and Jet engine flights are guilty!

I got fired myself from a Job for taking a stand, I also am to this day under threat of being arrested for taking a stand and speaking out against Greedy head officials of an industry that chose greed over a 15 year olds safety and got them killed which was covered up in front of the face of the public.

So no worker is with ****** excuse for not taking a stand inside EA while they watch all this go on.

Petitions are well and good, and forums are a good place to spread the word. But the real out come needs to be from people holding back their wallets. A petition is just the lull before the storm which a developer will see as an impending no payment for their game/product. That's why they try to appease you before the release date or even reply/respond to petitions. To just avoid the storm of the hip pocket. Nothing about giving a shit. People need to wake up to that.

Ehm, not to be rude or anything but I have played WoW for 8 years and I have never, ever felt the need to buy from their store because of some non-existant status you're talking about. Perhaps it depends if you play on US or EU servers, but on my server, we didn't even care what mount you had, even if it was just the plain old wyvern. We actually were more prone to laugh at storebought mounts than anything else. "That dude can't even farm his own mount, lololo, he needs to buy one!"
And if you feel that it's the only thing you've got going for you.....well, you should maybe try to expand your hobbies or something. Because that isn't standard mmo player mind-set either.

I'm also a guy, btw Just a huge Jean Grey fan.

I'm sorry that you struggle with something like that. While I have never had any addictions I have my own cross to bear with a sometimes crippling Anxiety Disorder that has screwed me up a couple of times during my life, so I can relate how powerless something like that can make you feel. But I would not just call EA evil from profiting from misery like that, but also Blizzard. When it comes down to it Capitalism itself is just built on instilling unreachable desires in people so that they spend money (see the Green Light in the Great Gatsby)

And yeah, no store fan here. Have bought a stuff pack or two during the Sims 2 days (more since they are now ridiculously cheap) but I want the stuff on a disc! If the store MUST exist it should only be for niche products i.e. era specific clothes/furniture (50s 20s Medieval Times) or fandom stuff like Steampunk style. Stuff that wouldn't really fit EPs and which some people really wish for, but most just see as clogging up their CAS.

I don't spend money on DLC myself, because I don't want to give out my card info to just about anyone, and because I try to keep myself firmly behind that line when it comes to gaming. Once you have spent money on DLC, it's easier to do it the next time, and before you know it, you've thrown away most of your money on something that really wasn't worth it, and you have a really bad addiction on top of that.

I'd still say there's a tiny little difference between sims content and a lot of other types of DLC, though. For the TS3 DLC, you download it and can 'keep it forever', to add something to the game, and you can play with it as much as you want (much like a downloadable SP/EP, only in most cases more expensive because you often get less content for the money). For type Facebook games, or other games where you have to buy something to get through levels faster, or simply to use as non-usable deco, or any such, you often 'lose' the content once you use it. Kind of like throwing money out of the window, because you don't have anything left for it.

Not saying I like how they did it with TS3 DLC, because I don't. They should have included the usable sets in EPs or SPs, or even in the basegame for some of it. DLC is okay for the stuff that some people might want but most people don't want in an EP, but not for things that 'everyone' would want.

I don't think so. Games that charge a sub fee are usually upfront about it early on press/development, because developers/publishers understand that there would be hell to pay from customers if they aren't. If they were planning a subscription based pay method for TS4 we would have heard about it before now. They most likely were planning on a model like the newest Sim City game, where people have to always be online just to be able to play and they balance out the costs of keeping those servers up by presumably using the always-online mode as a drm method and forcing people to buy the game if they want to play it.

You seem to have a very low opinion of MMORPG players...

Already said.

Seems to me that the main benefit of requiring people to be online to play is in advertising. You have someone attached to your server, you collect data about them, you sell that data to advertisers. What I don't see is why companies think people should pay when they're the product being sold. Facebook, for all its flaws, seems to understand that. It's a pretty safe bet that if you aren't paying, you're the product, but these days it seems that more and more people are paying to be the product. (I feel the same way about clothing with logos. Just ask my kids!)