Jeez, I knew I should've put off looking into Sims 3 until a while after it was out, because now that I've read all the information on it, I cannot find it in myself to play The Sims 2, even with all expansions and a gig of hacks and custom content.  What I really like is that the player can recolor things themselves, including skins, eyes, and clothes.  That's going to be so much fun, and tide me over until the community devises tools to create new stuff.

The seamless neighborhood and simultaneous aging... It sounds like it'll be a constant resource hog, but still sounds pretty sweet.  Can finally visit my sim's friend's house and mooch some goods off of THEM.  Unless of course other houses aren't open to you, which would be stupid, considering yours is to them.  But!  Particularly the simultaneous aging appeals to me, since one of the biggest problems I ran into in the sims 2 was having way too many families to keep track of, and hardly enough time to play them all, much less keep them on the same time table if I'm storytelling.

Is anyone else turned off to the sims 2, having done their homework on 3?

I don't think this'd be much of a difficult request to implement but if it is, you can tell me.  One thing I've always wanted to do with my sims is have high stakes poker matches or even pool games, with thousands of simoleans on the line for my high rolling sims.  The default amounts that are betted in these games are much too boring to make the activities worthwhile.  I'd like for it to be possible to have a sim that is a professional gambler.  As my game stands, it isn't possible.  Of course, if you go ahead and do this, there should be an option to go with the default amount, in the case of casual games and the like.  I'd need the mod for EP8