Community run re-implementation of The Sims Online™, based on the original FreeSO project by riperiperi. LegacySO or FreeSO are not in any way affiliated with Electronic Arts or The Sims.
News: Game Balancing and Pre-Registration
13th June 2025
The mission of LegacySO is to uphold the vanilla experience of FreeSO as much as possible. However, there are ways in which LegacySO will deviate in an attempt to make a more balanced experience for players, and to encourage people to start up lots of different types. Read on for information on pre-registration. Until then, without further ado, we’re pleased to share one of the first balance changes that we’re implementing in LegacySO.
Overfill Bonuses
In FreeSO, certain lot categories granted a bonus known as ‘overfill’, this allowed you to fill your needs (or ‘motives’) more than their original 100% capacity. One famous example included the Service lot category, which granted an overfill bonus of 50%, in Hunger, Energy, Hygiene and Bladder. This meant you could get 1.5 bars of each of these needs, to make it longer before you had to rest up again. Service Lots were popular in FreeSO for this reason, and it gave players a reason to own that kind of property, because lots of players would visit you for the bonus it gave them.
Unfortunately, this meant that lots of other lot categories were a lot harder to maintain and obtain visitors to without lots of effort. Lots such as Entertainment (which still offered an overfill bonus, but not to the same power as Service lots), Games, Offbeat and Residence – with the latter three of those categories receiving no overfill bonus at all – were often very quiet. The result of this meant that players who owned one of these lot types would quite easily get discouraged from keeping it open. In LegacySO, we aim to address this imbalance by implementing changes across the board to overfill bonuses.
Balance Changes
It’s now equally as beneficial to host a lot of more types, to encourage different gameplay habits and to stimulate interaction amongst the community. Here is a mock-up illustration of what changes have been made in-game:
As a rundown, and in case the image isn’t working as expected, here are the changes in text-form:
Where no changes have been made:
- Welcome Lots
- No immediate changes, these lots are still vital for new players and are encouraged by the traditional bonus of faster skills and increased money return for new players. Changes may be made in the future, but for now, things here remain the same
- Skill Lots
- These lots will always be popular, and for good reason. Because this is a lot you’ll go to in order to utilise your needs, we are keeping motive overfill the same here as well. Allowing overfill in a Skill lot wouldn’t encourage players to explore anywhere else.
- Money Lots
- As with Service lots, there is no reason to change the behaviour of these lots at present. Therefore, no changes have been made.
- Store Lots
- Due to the necessity of store lots, we have made the decision (at least for now) to make no changes. In the future, this may be addressed again depending on how LegacySO’s playtest performs.
- Service Lots
- These lots are great, and the benefits they give players are superb. For this reason, we’re leaving Service Lots alone. But that doesn’t mean you’ll just be visiting them exclusively anymore! Read on to learn more.
- OVERFILL BONUS:
- 50% Energy (Vanilla)
- 50% Hunger (Vanilla)
- 50% Hygiene (Vanilla)
- 50% Bladder (Vanilla)
- Entertainment Lots
- Comedy club? TV talk show set? Anything is possible in an Entertainment lot. Because they were already well buffed they have been kept the same as before — they’re still the best and only place to reach the highest overfill in both Social and Fun simultaneously.
- OVERFILL BONUS:
- 100% Social (Vanilla)
- 100% Fun (Vanilla)
Where changes have been made:
- Community Lots
- What good is having fun at a community lot with friends if you’re not getting a benefit? New to LegacySO is an overfill bonus for both Social and Fun needs to allow you to have fun whilst also getting that feeling of progression before you make your way elsewhere.
- OVERFILL BONUS:
- 50% Social (NEW)
- 50% Fun (NEW)
- Residence Lots
- The concept of a residence lot is great, as you can just build a lovely home for yourself. Unfortunately, there was never a great incentive for players to actually own one. Now, when you invite your friends over to relax at your place, they’ll feel the effects!
- OVERFILL BONUS:
- 50% Comfort (NEW)
- 50% Social (NEW)
- Offbeat Lots
- A criminally underused lot-type, but now there’s a great reason to roleplay and explore what kinds of properties can be imagined by the community!
- OVERFILL BONUS:
- 50% Comfort (NEW)
- 50% Hunger (NEW)
- 100% Fun (NEW)
- Romance Lots
- Is it getting hot in here, or is it just you? Romance lot types were seen every now and then in FreeSO, but here they have been buffed to encourage more players to own them.
- OVERFILL BONUS:
- 100% Hygiene (NEW) (use your imagination)
- 100% Social (Vanilla)
- Games Lots
- Casinos! Who doesn’t love a Casino? Well, in FreeSO, quite a few people because the lot type didn’t offer much benefit to the player looking to increase their skills or money by resting up. Now, hosts of Games lots can encourage players to visit and maybe tempt them to the slots whilst their guests are working on their needs!
- OVERFILL BONUS:
- 50% Comfort (NEW)
- 50% Bladder (NEW)
- 50% Social (NEW)
- 50% Fun (NEW)
With the exception of Community and Residence lots, which are special in the sense that they are not speciality lots, but more niche, all lot categories have a total bonus multiplier of 200%. This means across all of the overfill bonuses they provide, the sum is 200% overfill of any combination of needs. This decision was made to retain balance whilst giving each lot type their own unique dynamic.
We hope that these adjustments will be well received in-game and that players will enjoy visiting these lots and perhaps even open their own.
Pre-Registration Opens Soon
For those who have already signed up to the LegacySO Newsletter, thank you! For those who haven’t, why don’t you consider joining us? We are thrilled to announce that pre-registration for LegacySO will open on Sunday 15th June 2025 at 10:00am (UTC+1). Please note, this release window is for pre-registration only at this stage. You will be able to set up your account and register in advance.
Here’s a breakdown of when pre-registration opens in your time zone:
| Region / City | Time Zone (Abbrev.) | UTC Offset | Local Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| London | British Summer Time (BST) | UTC+1 | 10:00 |
| Paris / Berlin | Central European Summer Time (CEST) | UTC+2 | 11:00 |
| Johannesburg | South Africa Standard Time (SAST) | UTC+2 | 11:00 |
| Dubai | Gulf Standard Time (GST) | UTC+4 | 13:00 |
| Mumbai | India Standard Time (IST) | UTC+5:30 | 14:30 |
| Beijing / Hong Kong | China Standard Time (CST) | UTC+8 | 17:00 |
| Tokyo | Japan Standard Time (JST) | UTC+9 | 18:00 |
| Sydney | Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEST) | UTC+10 | 19:00 |
| New York | Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) | UTC–4 | 05:00 |
| Chicago | Central Daylight Time (CDT) | UTC–5 | 04:00 |
| Denver | Mountain Daylight Time (MDT) | UTC–6 | 03:00 |
| Los Angeles | Pacific Daylight Time (PDT) | UTC–7 | 02:00 |
| São Paulo | Brasília Time (BRT) | UTC–3 | 06:00 |
| Honolulu | Hawaii–Aleutian Standard Time (HST) | UTC–10 | 23:00 (previous day) |
Why Only Pre-Registration?
We want to let you into the world of LegacySO as soon as possible. But in order to make sure that the game is exactly as intended, we need just a little more time to get all of our affairs in order. We promise it will be worth it.
To thank enthusiastic players who register in advance, we will be granting a bonus of §10,000* in-game for each account holder’s first Sim. Once we see your Sim has been created in-game, we will credit your account as a way of saying thanks!
*This limited-time event is complimentary and does not constitute a prize or a tangible reward. You can’t buy in-game money with assets from the real world, nor is this event reward transferrable in any way. Any abuse of this promotion may result in its early termination and/or your right to receive this reward being revoked without warning. FreeSO and LegacySO are never, have never, or will never be monetised, allow donations, paid content, paid services or any similar transaction. We remain fully independent, community-ran and open source.
LegacySO has big plans, and to achieve them and make our launch the best it can be, we’ll be looking for players who can help us report problems and help us identify areas for improvement. If this sounds like you, and you’d be interested in helping us out, please join our Discord server any make yourself known!
The LegacySO Launcher
Because of our mission of keeping LegacySO as close to FreeSO as possible, in terms of the user experience, we’ll be bringing a custom version of the FreeSO Launcher (source) to players to make setting up the game a breeze. Not only that, but integrations into our blog and trending lots are all set up and ready to go.
We’ll be posting the source code of our modified launcher on Github to help other projects should they ever want to adapt what we’ve done in the future themselves in the interest of game preservation.
It looks like Bob Newbie might be a little lonely on his own over there..
The Launcher has a little ways to go before we’re ready to ship it. But we hope it won’t be long before we can get it into your hands prior to launch.
In Summary
There’s a lot of really cool things coming to LegacySO. And we hope you’re as excited as I am to see the world begin to grow with players just like you. Consider joining our socials below to keep up to date. It’s where we’ll be posting all of the latest news. You’ll also get notified of brand new blog posts, like this one!
Until then, take care everyone.
-Ben