One day, when you log into The Sims Online, you notice - for the first time - a tiny button — perched where it has been since January 13, 2005, in the upper right hand corner of your Select-a-Sim page.  That button says “Free Will”.  You are curious, so you click it, and the TSO updater prompts you to download a patch (due to freewill being a separate version).  Once the patch is complete, you find that you are offered only one choice of cities in Freewill Country:  Betaville (BV for short).  

Once you click “OK” to create in Betaville, the first of many differences between this area of TSO and the other cities becomes apparent:  You can create 1, 2, 3, or 4 sims all at once to play in this one city, and you can control their personalities as you desire.  The concept reminds you of The Sims® — the most popular PC game of all time, and the precursor to The Sims Online.

When creating your sim, the very first sim you create will be the Head of the Family, or “master sim”.  A master sim is the only one that can trade with another sim, send/receive in-game IM’s, or play group money objects such as Pizza, Maze, Code, or Band.  The last name that you choose will be the last name for every family member.  A master sim cannot be retired for 7 days, and if a master sim is retired, all family members will also be deleted.   A family member, however, can be recreated daily.  Starting simoleans are §10,000 - regardless of whether you have one sim or multiple sims - and recreating family members will not yield one single simolean more.

The major aspects of Betaville that are different from other cities are:  Free will, personalities, bills, and fire. This article is a detail of how exactly these four major elements and a free will society exists within The Sims Online, with all of the good, the bad, and the ugly. For ease of discussion, all gender of sims and any name of sims living in Betaville will be referred to as “Free Will”, or just “Will” for short.

Free Will — What is it?

First of all, you should understand that free will comes from the sim’s programming — something we are rarely aware of in other production cities, because in a normal production city, our sims depend entirely upon us to feed them, put them to bed, send them to work, etc.  Free will in the game means that Will makes decisions, and acts on them on his own. The directions given by the human are recognized as priority, as Will abandons his own idea and obeys his human. Will responds to his needs - that is - the amount of green in his needs bars.

A happy and content Will behaves exactly like a sim in a production city; he stands there doing nothing — but not for long.  After a while, he begins searching his need bars, and - if not being told by his human to do anything - will start to seek out objects to satisfy his needs.  Most of the time the objects Will chooses to fulfill his needs are quite appropriate, seeking out a toilet if the fastest changing green bar is that of bladder need.  Other times, though, Will makes us laugh when he seeks items whose coding suggest to him that he will gain fun/energy/etc. from it, and he may choose to paint when he is just about to faint from tiredness.  Will’s personality can skew his actions, his choices of objects to use, and his reaction to other sims.  Personality is defined by a complicated formula unknown to players, which adds even more to the mystique and challenge of understanding sim behavior in BV.

Will is a very social creature, and should his social need a little lift - as it almost always does - he will seek another sim to socialize with — oftentimes approaching a sim that is not in a very good mood (mood is signified by the five vertical bar spaces on either side of the sim face at the bottom of your screen).  A sim will not take kindly to a random socialization from Will when he has need bars that require attention — which is most of the time!

The amount of free will that you want Will to have can be adjusted from essentially “off” to completely behaving like a sim from The Sims®.  The free will slider bar is on the first of the 4 tabs on your sim profile titled “Sim Description”. There are 2 buttons there:  One is a ‘T’ for text of your sim biography, or bio.  The other is a half-filled circled button that says “personality”.  Once you click on the ‘personality’ button, you will see the free will control as well as the distribution of personality points for Will.  To adjust free will, use the slider.  As you hover your mouse over the slider knob, you will see the 6 levels of freewill in titles from top to bottom:

The speed of the interval is governed not only by the free will setting, but also by the level of Will’s green and his particular personality. When Will is skilling or working with money objects, he will not stay on his task until red as would a sim in a regular city.   Generally, Will stops work when his mood reaches 3 bars, or when any of his needs have dropped below half-green. When making money, Will may walk away from a full case of preserves or a completed typed story to go to the toilet, or perhaps to flip a coin with another idle sim.  You may find it is best to leave him on comatose so that you can quickly sell and order him back on task.

Any time you need to be AFK (away from keyboard) for a time, it might be prudent to let Will have his ‘normal” free will so that he will green automatically; but it is a good idea to check with your host or hostess first to make sure he or she doesn't have a policy against sims running amok on their own.  Some owners have come up with creative ways to segregate AFK sims that have potential to block greening items or busy themselves interacting with other sims on the lot, while others may simply boot the AFK family from the property for the well being of the other guests.

In creating your family, it is possible to form a unique personality by clicking on the bars in the lower left hand area as you create.  There are both good and bad consequences to straying from the default personality of “moderation in all things”.  There are a total of 25 personality points that you may redistribute as you wish in 5 general areas:

Mail (in the form of bills) is delivered to your sims’ mailbox every three sim days.   The amount due on your bill is a percentage of the items on your lot excluding any items for sale in a shop.  You may find it prudent to place tables near the mailbox or by the front door, to save steps when paying bills and just to be sure you never lose the mail. You might want to use one or two end tables, countertops, or one-tile dining tables for this purpose, or use a larger surface to hold either 3 stacks of mail (TikiDream Dining table) or 4 stacks of mail (Colonial Legacy or NuMica Folding Card table).   A table for four has an advantage for those times when you might have 3 stacks of bills backed up, and roommates pick up newspapers on their own and place them on the table as well.

Bills left unpaid for too long will have the Repo Man from M.O.M.I. coming by to repossess items.  New bills are white; 3 day old bills turn yellow; 6 day old bills turn orange; 9 day old bills turn red, and generate a warning of the repo man. If you do not take care of the red bills, Repo Man will arrive with his ray gun at 3 PM sim time, and your buy mode becomes disabled for 20 sim minutes to keep you from hiding things from him. He will zap something comparable to the amount owed that is owned by the roommate present, and will never take expensive items or animal crates.

A common occurrence in Betaville is fire.  Fires occur with great predictability and frequency — so much so that M.O.M.I. has a well-staffed Fire Department and Smoke Alarm Factory in Betaville.  Any time that a fireplace is lit and there is a sim or object within 1 or 2 tiles of it in any direction, there will be a fire.  Fires occur from stoves and grills if Will does not yet know how to cook.  Lastly, fires can come from the rockets used for recreation. Unfortunately for many sims, rockets can be used by any visitor, and seem to have an attraction for many personality types when they are looking for some fun!

True to behavior in other cities, most of the sims on the lot who are idle at the time of a fire will panic and rush to the flames.  Many a good sim has perished in this way because they got in the way of the fireman or wouldn’t calm down, and became trapped by the flames.  Wise sims not only make cooking skill their first goal in BV, but also place fire alarms near the stoves, fireplaces, grills, and rockets outside, in order to summon the BVFD as soon as possible after a fire breaks out.

A word of caution:  It has been reported that AFK sims perish in fires quite often on Money and Skill lots, or in their own home!

Many view Betaville as a pyromaniac’s paradise!  It is quite possible, however, to have a safe sim home that never once experiences fire by using common sim sense, gaining cooking skill for every family member of every roommate, and installing those fire alarms!

Once Will arrives on a property, he will behave independently from you, the human, for as long as you allow.  You can control up to four sims you have created by either using the ‘tab’ key to move between your sims or by right-clicking on their face in the lower right corner of your control panel on your screen.

There is no inactivity warning or timing out of the server in free will game play, but there are reasons that you would not want to let Will roam while you are AFK for extended periods of time, the biggest of which is relationships.   Free will sims will freely make enemies, particularly in their own family!   It seems that most interactions are auto-rejected as a result of personalities, mood, and possibly coding within the free will world.

The art of making friends is one worthy to be learned, but first you will need to forget what you know about making friends in production cities using interactions earned from friendships, since sims may not appreciate being serenaded or dip-kissed on his or her first encounter with your sim!

A big difference between free will game play and that of playing in a regular city is task management.  You can tell Will to study, but he will not obey for more than 20 minutes.  This results in much more conversation and less AFK in the skill houses of BV.  Skills are more of a time consuming effort than in another city, and therefore more rewarding to the player who manages to stick with the task.

Money is conveniently more abundant with the family concept of being able to make four times the amount in the same amount of time; but like skilling, this also requires more frequent greening of Will’s needs.

To view another sim’s profile you must use the right-click from either an IM box or from a property’s roommate/owner listing.  You can view the profile of any sim on the same lot with you by the normal left-click.

When you are not on your own property, the ‘buy mode’ and ‘build mode’ buttons are disabled.  This makes for a new way to get into ‘buy mode’ when visiting a store, you must hold down your F2 function key to enable buy mode. This poses a problem for some who own a keyboard with multifunction F-keys, and you may need to find the “f-lock” on the keyboard to unlock the normal function of the keys first.

You may wish for Will to check the newspaper or computer for a job.  Betaville has the same job tracks currently as other cities, but with one big difference:  You cannot follow Will to work.  Instead, he goes off screen while your view stays on the lot.  Promotions, uniforms, carpool, and salary are all the same as in all other production cities, but Will is in control of his job performance.   The carpool will pick you up on any lot you happen to be on when it is time to go, and you may even get to ride in a better car if a roommate on the property has a higher position than yours.  If you miss your ride for some reason, you cannot call a taxi in Betaville.  If you land on a lot after the usual time for Will to go to work and you see a car there, click on it to go to work.

Another unique feature about Betaville is that your family members generally follow the master sim wherever he goes, with exception of work.  Your family members can each have a different job; when they go to work, it is the only time they are separated from the master sim.

Free will is a broader experience and a much more challenging form of game play than is found in other TSO cities because it requires learning a whole different concept of play.  Much more player supervision is required to keep a family of “wild” sims under control; or, for a little amusement, you can allow Will to have his own way, sit back, and watch the results.  It is completely up to you!  Will not only has an unusual idea of proper social skills, but he also has a completely different idea of how he should approach greening up his need bars than his human may be accustomed to, which makes game play in Betaville always changing and always entertaining!

You might find you enjoy the challenge of Betaville, so go ahead — give that free will button a click!  Your new sim family is awaiting you!