The Alphaville Herald

Secrets of the Top Props, part 1: Wild Nights

by Alphaville Herald on 07/03/04 at 11:25 am

In this new feature, our intrepid reporter Snoopy Magoofee checks out the top ranked properties armed with questions about what it takes to have a top prop ? the strategies employed and the problems encountered. We begin by interviewing the sim Wild Nights, who owns the Wild Nights store in Alphaville. If you are a top prop we’ll get to you eventually, but if you can’t wait feel free to IM Snoopy Magoofee in game and let her know you just can’t wait to share!

Snoopy Magoofee: How did you discover TSO, and why did you come to Alphaville?

Wild Nights: I’ve played sims offline for years and I got TSO from my sister. We lived in BF at first but wanted a quieter city so we moved to AV

Snoops: Why did you decide to run a skill/money/entertainment/etc. property

Wild Nights: I enjoy numbers and math, a store seemed the best way to have fun and help people who wanted items that seemed out of their price range.

Snoops: How many hours a day do you log?

Wild Nights: I play for various lengths, usually around 10 hours a day ‘K I am a Simaholic.

Snoops: Do you have a strategy for picking roomies?

Wild Nights: I usually interview potential roomies to see if they would fit well with the other roomies in the house. I’ve meet a lot of great people from the roomies I’ve been lucky enough to have.

Snoops: Do you insist that roomies spend a certain number of hours in the game?

Wild Nights: I don’t require roomies to be at the house for any certain period of time, most of us are friends and we enjoy playing.

Snoops: Do you have payouts for visitors (if not, do you have an opinion of them)

Wild Nights: I have had payouts and contests in the past but I don??t have them on a regular basis. I think that if a house wants to do pay outs there’s nothing wrong with it. Everybody wants to have a fun place to hang out and it’s a great way for new sims with not so much money and/or skills to make money faster.

Snoops: Does running a #1 property detract from the fun of the game?

Wild Nights: No. I don’t think what number you are matters, just as long as you still enjoy playing.

Snoops: Do you ever feel burnt out and want to leave the game or quit?

Wild Nights: LOL Oh yeah, but then out of no where a customer will tell me how big of a help I was to them and it makes me change my mind, I don’t think I’ll be quitting for a while.

Snoops: Do you feel competitive with other properties? Is that part of the game?

Wild Nights: Competition is not part of the game for me. I know other properties compete with me but I honestly think there is no greater benefit to being number one then number 10. The number doesn’t matter, the visitors and how their experience was is what really matters to me.

Snoops: Do you have any secrets for keeping the property up near number one?

Wild Nights: My only secret is incredible deals on items and friendly service )

Snoops: Do you ever have to settle disputes between roomies or visitors? How do you do that?

Wild Nights: Yes. I try to be fair and reasonable whenever a situation arises and try and make a decisionin favor of the greater good or majority.

Snoops: How do you manage problem visitors?

Wild Nights: I talk to them and if that don’t help they get banned!

Snoops: Do you even ban visitors because you *hear* that they are trouble?

Wild Nights: I ban other top stores because I have had too much trouble from a lot of stores in my year of playing. Some Im-ed visitors and said nasty comments out loud, some came in here to give me an enemy tags and wrote pretty horrible things on their house bios about me when I had never even met them or spoken to them before. I think it is all drama and I don’t pay $10 a month for drama I can get free elsewhere, so my solution was to ban all top stores.

Snoops: What do you think Maxis could do to improve the game?

Wild Nights: I think instead of a “ban this sim button” maxis should have a “ban this account button”, that would prevent scammers, stalkers, and taggers from recreating and continuing to do it.

Snoops: How long do you think you will keep playing? And will you keep running a skill/money/etc house?

Wild Nights: I’ll keep playing until I stop having fun and ill run the store till that day. I give it another year at least maybe longer.

Snoops: Do you have any advice for people that want to boost their property rankings?

Wild Nights: Be friendly and have a lot people enjoy visiting.

Snoops: Any secrets or tricks of the trade that you can share with us?

Wild Nights: Be honest and fair )

Snoops: Thanks!