EA Games will be launching The Sims Online as a free service under a new name "EA-Land" which will be in direct competition to Second Life.

The biggest difference between EA-Land and Second Life will be the monitoring and safety net of the game. So people can join and know that they are in safe hands of EA and not an individual like Second Life sometimes encounters.

EA is finally accepting that gaming should be targeting the Internet a lot more for functionality and multi-playing.

I have the game downloading at the moment on my fiance's computer (total of 1.5 gb) and will keep you posted about what I personally think about the game.

The game is still under development but still playable.