To be very honest, I was one of those "Never give in" people who played Sims 1. When Sims 2 came out, I fought a hard and mostly useless battle to not have to get the Sims 2.

I almost felt like a traitor when I did get Sims 2, because I had saved up enough money to get the Complete Collection for Sims 1 not that long before.

But since I've played Sims 2 far longer than Sims 1, and have enjoyed it immensely, to hear that Sims 3 resembles the first game more than a fair amount makes me angry that EA has slopped together features that do not mesh, do not work and end up in a game that has dubious technical perks for the advantage of "enhancing gameplay", IE, the "seamless neighborhood".

To have all the joy sucked out of the game by EA is not my idea of fun, and while there are some features that I'd die to have in Sims 2, I will not give in to their blatant money-grubbing exercise this time. Enough is enough.

EA is doing themselves no favors by whipping a dead horse and then putting a price tag on the body. They've doing a damned good job of it, from what I've read all over the net.

The fact that some very talented and creative modders have put every effort into improving gameplay, is a testament of the highest order to their ability and dedication to the fanbase, including old Mr. Pescado, who (despite legions of 12's descending on his doorstep by the hour) has graciously and fervently made mods to actually put EA's programmers to shame.

If the game is a hit, it will only be because those people put more effort into the game than EA ever thought of, and will continue to do so until they feel their talents are not needed.

I applaud them for their work, and hope they continue. But that does not make me any less angry that EA has truly "stopped the clock" with Sims 3 and it will not induce me to buy it.

To be perfectly blunt, the Sims 3 is going to go by the wayside a lot faster than one might imagine, surprisingly-because EA is not correcting the problems that the game is causing so many people, and it is literally turning fans of the series away from Sims 3 back to Sims 2.

My evidence? The Sims 3 forums. They're full of people complaining about the glitches, the crashes, the freezes and just lousy general gameplay. Of course it's dependent on the computer, so if you've not gotten it, make sure you can run it before installing it.

Besides the technical problems, people are starting to notice the lack of features that they hope and pray will be corrected in the inevitable EP's that are being planned.

All in all, Sims 2 is still alive and kicking. You might be surprised that it will be around a lot longer than everyone is suggesting and promoting.
Too many people are getting burned by Sims 3 to ditch Sims 2 completely.

Sims 2 sites that dump the content are going to be sorry to have done so prematurely at this rate. The smart ones, like this one, MTS, MATY and some others, will not because they have the wisdom not to just throw everything away at the drop of a hat from EA.

They're smarter than EA. They like to please their customers.

I have every reason to believe it was the Tiki bar and puddle, because previous to putting it in, I had absolutely no issues dealing with the "shower disappears and sim reappears in another spot" problem-it had never occurred in my game, usually very stable and reliable.
I had just put the mod into my game before this happened..so I think we can say it's 99% certain that this mod does this to the showers.

In fact, the first time this happened, I could not understand why it was happening and uninstalled all my game, and reinstalled it-then put the mod in and the problem reoccurred, with a freshly installed game. So for me, this is the cure.

But I would like to know why it generated such a clash-to make the shower itself disappear and the log file saying "cannot load shower effect" or some such message. I can't replicate it because the mod no longer is in my game and the logs are from today.

This is from an interview with the WSJ from May of this year:

"The first time game designer Rod Humble viewed The Sims, which allows players to control a virtual family through the minutiae of their daily lives, he was confused. “I didn’t get it,” he says about one of the best-selling videogame franchises of all-time. “It’s a game about watching other people sitting in front of a computer.” A co-worker quickly attempted to explain the game to him. “He said that I didn’t really understand this game, but I really should.”

The article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052970203658504574191553273411052.html

This is the man who you should blame for the unfolding drama that is surrounding Sims 3.

That's one I do have-and I have it in my game. Thanks for the heads-up, and I'm going to take it out now, because I never use it anyway.

Yes, it's true. You can't see into the buildings that your sims go into, and cannot interact with your sims while they're doing things in them.

That's why they're called "rabbit holes", and they're despised by all the players now. They don't add anything to the game and they detract mightily. Add to that fact that you can't even make your own community lots and that really blows.

Yes, they made the Sims 3 mighty shiny. Wonder if anyone at EA even ever played the Sims 2? By the looks of this game, they didn't even try to figure it out, and built Sims 3 from air.

The problem is that EA and it's developers, marketers and executives have never once been in the "community" to see what we want. They assume they know what we want, and work around a false assumption on computer use and game style using knowledge they don't have, or want.
They also brought in people who have never played the damned game, and they set those people to work on a game they have no idea about.
Let's be honest-they canned the original studio that developed Sims 2, and made a new one for Sims 3, using none of the previous ideas or coding from that game to make the newest. They're working from a blank tablet, so to speak and erased whatever was left on the chalkboard.
It shows in the game. It's a utter piece of empty garbage. The sooner players realize this, and start protesting it, the better.
But no, they want more EP's with more bad coding and gameplay, in false hopes that it will improve the game.
It won't. It will only make a bad game even worse.
The latest development that I've read is that the framerate of the game is excessively high due to the fact that there is no Vsync in the game at all.
That is totally unacceptable to me. I would rather throw my computer out the door than burn it up playing a game. For EA to have ignored a basic game engine to make Sims 3 "seamless" is beyond stupidity.
This isn't a jet engine, and computers cannot run at high speed frame rates endlessly until they melt down, which is what will happen if one does not take care to correct the problem.
So players of the game can keep playing, oohing and ahhing. When their computers finally croak, then they can cry all they want at EA for having done this to them.
As I stated before: Caveat Emptor. Let the buyer beware.
It worked for me.

I think I have found the problem, finally! I pulled a classic "Ness", by having two copies of the same hack in my game-the Bathroom controller. They were in different places, and were differently dated. I've played several houses, and they are all ok without it.
Now I have to download the newest version and re-install it.
I do feel a little dumb. So, check your downloads carefully. You can never be too sure! I certainly was!

Well, if you do find a link between a download and the problem, please post..I'm still very curious as to what's causing this.
First time I've ever had this one happen in my game. It's not like the ordinary "jump" bug-more like "jump and vanish from the shower" bug.
Weird, no matter what you call it.

There is one other thing I'm going to try-I have the neighborhood placed in a map that has no corresponding SC4 file in the SC4 folder. I'm going to change it to one that does have a file. Perhaps it is related, perhaps not. I'm surprised the thing works if it has no related map in the game! (I have Mootilda's Hood Replacement Mod).

Just a ray of hope here: I recently re-installed all my game, and I thought I had patched the EP's I had-Uni, and NL. I had done the Uni one, but I checked the patch for NL, and it had not been installed, so I did. I haven't gone into my game yet again, but will in the next few hours.

I think that might be why it's doing strange things-I had not applied the patch to it. Have you patched your game? It might be worth the time to check your installed game files and patch files-if you registered with EA, it will be in your game file in the installed game.

Crossing my fingers and toes with hope. Will report back when I've played for a few hours.

Edit:
  I did put the patch in, and it seems to solve a few of the problems-but not all the houses are affected. So if you do have an unpatched game, patch it.
  For those houses that are not enabling the shower, I'm about to throw the owners out and get a new house for them. Perhaps it's the age of that particular game-it's one of the earliest versions of my favorite neighborhood, so it might have become a bit corrupted in the meantime. Of course I've been running the Lot Debugger on every single one of them, so the memories are going to be reduced.
  Otherwise than that, I can't say what's causing the problem. Damn, I wish I knew the answer. Sorry for not being more helpful.

I, too, checked my skins-I do not have any default replacements, but I do have ChristianLov's Skintone Replacement picture loaded with Stefan's and other skins.

I checked the skins on it, and they're working. I thought at first it could be related because the skins change during the shower back to Maxis basic. Updated the skins in it, and they stay changed, but the shower still screws up.

Jacob, you don't have that (ChristianLov's replacement picture) in your game, do you?

A lot of them, and they've found out in their haste to try the new goodies what they have traded Sims 2 in for. Read the Sims 3 BBS sometime for a real eye-opener; there are at least (as of today) 30 pages + of complaints of the game crashing on rigs that exceed the game specs, and assorted brokeness.

Check it out for yourself:
http://forum.thesims3.com/jforum/forums/list.page;jsessionid=8412029802CC318EF90E1F4BD14DD3C4

There are entire threads devoted to petitions to change the game radically, and to change it to something that resembles Sims 2. Of course EA is not hearing or reading the threads or complaints, so almost everyone is angry about that. Great customer responsiveness, for sure.

Of course EA states that they're not to blame for anything that goes wrong in the game: "You bought it, you own it. Too bad if it doesn't work...you can't return it for a refund. Thanks for the money. Oh, and check out the Store, while you're visiting us."

That is a non-starter for me-I don't have any default replacements for the cheap shower, or any hacks for making it better.
It might be something more subtle-but for the mean time, I'm just skipping the cheap shower and putting in another style. That does work, and it stops the disappearing act.

But looking through my texture logs, this message pops up:
 "WARNING,TextureManager,Cannot load texture 'waterStream' "

That message comes from not only the Texture Log, but also the Production Messages Log in my game.

That's because EA knows Pescado can do code better than any one of their staff, and he can do it blind drunk.
Of course they don't care about the community when there's so much money to be made. It's all they think about, and the next EP.

"Crashes? Don't care. Freezes? What did you expect? You say you want a patch? Are you kidding? We're not making enough money to justify spending money on people fixing our own mistakes!"

And finally, this last great statement (that hasn't been made, but ought to be) "Sorry, it's not my job."

"Have a nice day and Happy Simming!"

I had the same thing happen just recently-I don't know what's causing it either-but it hasn't happened recently.
Weird, because my hacks have not changed since I reinstalled the game. Hope you find out what is causing this one.