EA-Land posts

There are lots of you who have been playing Battlefield Bad Company 2 for the PC have been enjoying it on its own merits. What you may not know is that while playing the first person shooter online you have already unlocked a way to get early access to a weapon in an upcoming Electronoic Arts game, Medal of Honor.

The official Battlefield blog site reports that the M24 weapon in Medal of Honor will be unlocked for anyone who played Battlefield Bad Company 2 online and uses the same EA account to play both titles. Both Battlefield Bad Company 2 and the multiplayer portion of Medal of Honor are being developed by Digital Illusions. Medal of Honor is due out late in 2010.

When The Sims first made its foray into the online space via The Sims Online things didn't turn out so good in the end. Even with its less-than-stellar performance the game and its publisher Electronic Arts kept the online world around for a long time. Electronic Arts recently attempted to re-brand the game as EA-Land, although that venture's lifespan was far shorter than The Sims Online's original jaunt into the multiplayer space. So when the head of EA's Sims division Nancy Smith talks about future possibilities with online content in The Sims series, we're a bit skeptical.

Granted, there's apparently a lot ton of money to be made in said online space. So maybe it's not too crazy to think that Electronic Arts could be reassessing their options for a spiritual successor to The Sims Online. Who knows? Maybe The Sims 3 has some online features yet to be divulged. Although we would wager that such an online component would probably be featured in an expansion pack, as per the series' standard stratagem.

Well that didn't take too long did it? Just two months ago the MMO failure that is The Sims Online got revived as a free-to-play game and relaunched as EA-Land. Now it's been announced that the revival has failed as well and as a result The Sims Online/EA-Land will shut down for good on August 1. The game, which still had optional subscriptions and microtransactions, will no longer be accepting money so the 12 people who are apparently still playing the game get a free ride until the end of the road and subscribers also get a $15 discount on any Electronic Arts game or three months of free premium time on their Club Pogo casual game service.

This pretty much makes EA's failure to capitalize on the MMO space complete. After the huge success of Ultima Online from their Origin studio (now shut down), EA tried twice to make a UO sequel and canceled both games before their planned release. Majestic, Motor City Online and Earth and Beyond all got shut down soon after their debuts and now it's finally The Sims Online's term. Will Warhammer Online finally bring EA their MMO hit? We will see.

[Via Joystiq]