I agree with the majority of the points Chaavik made, in particular the positive ones, but there was no mention of a few very important negative aspects.


1.  The sims themselves.  Go around the numerous posts about the looks of the sims in this new game... EA did not put enough emphasis on this one important aspect of the game, and simply put, TS3 sims faces and body customization are a huge letdown.  You would think that after all the hype about the many sliders available to shape a sim to your liking, one would be able to create unique looking sims in every respect, but it just isn't so.   Faces follow a general 3D model shape that consistently share common elements, in particular, eyes, noses, foreheads, and and overall roundish appearance of the head, that in the end turns out cartoonish and lacking in uniqueness.  There's a hack by MTS (Delphy) that forces the adjusting sliders out of their intended bounds, but remember this a hack that has to be present in any game sharing sims made this way, and yet another preliminary hack that pre-empts many others from exixting in your computer.  As far as the sim bodies, only overall fatness (or skinniness) and overall muscular appearance (not as noticeable as fatness) adjustments are possible.  Forget about being able to adjust separately upper or lower body parts, so no manly chests or bigger boobs, and no calf adjustment for skinny or muscular legs.

2.  Single neighborhoods.  While this is great as far as having a hood which is alive in almost every respect, there is no solid promise from EA that we will be able to generate our own turfs or place lots or roads anywhere we please.  Believe me, even with the additional Riverview neighborhood, the game can become redundant.  Yet, hopefully they will surprise us later.

3.  TS3 basic design to limit third party modding and custom content.   Here everybody agrees: the game isn't as open as before because of EA's increasing desires to milk the players.  The EA store is the No. 1 proof, go check the neverending posts opposing this practice.

So, generally speaking this is a gorgeous game to look at on your screen, with gameplay a lot deeper than The Sims 2, and I have to say that high computer specs are not really that necessary for it to run smoothly.  Here EA wrote better programming code than with TS2, I have not changed one thing in any of my two main PC's, and this game runs better than TS2 for sure.  But again, my TS2 is fully expanded and TS3 is still basic, which has to be considered too.  But then again, TS2 doesn't give you an entire neighborhood all at once (or so to speak).  As for the loading times, it loads fast, but there are two loads, one for the main game and then for your saved game.  My recommendation to you find someone that has it and check it out first.

Good luck.

Simgirl20, if you're still reading this thread.  As explained above, Sim City 4 (SC4) is a City simulation game, it is neither The Sims 1 based or any other of the Sims games, it's Sim City in its 4th reincarnation.  Sim City (originating in 1988) is what actually gave way for the creation of The Sims, not the other way around.  The neighborhoods in The Sims 2 were based on small SC4 cities (there are 3 sizes), and only the basic layout, topography (including some flora), streets, and one bridge in particular could be imported into The Sims 2 via TS2's built-in ".SC4" data file interpreter.  No buildings could be transferred into TS2 through the .SC4 file generated by Sim City 4, so forget about creating a neighborhood with all those.  The saddest part is that once accepted and modified by TS2, you can't bring it back to Sim City 4 for further modification, like adding streets (Sim City 4 cannot read TS2 .package format).  You would have to continue to work with the initially created .SC4 file in order to make further mods to a TS2 neighborhood using Sim City 4, which TS2 will accept again only if you create another new neighborhood, sims and all.  There's a Neighborhood Modder utility by (Mootilda) which makes this process of adding streets a lot less painful, but like I said, once a neighborhood has had lots placed or moved around its topography will differ from the .SC4 file used to create it, and considerable editing will be required for TS2 to accept the re-modded .SC4 file.  In any case, the Neighborhood Modder utility forces TS2 to re-accept a modded .SC4 file as a replacement map for an existing neighborhood, so it's very useful if you give it time.  Another thing worth mentioning is that The Sims 2 imports a mirror image of the original .SC4 file, so in your mind it won't be easy relating to where everything is supposed to be.  I hope this helps.  

You mean, those EA swines released the game with swimming pools and they didn't include a diving board, are you sure?  If true, that's the kind of attitude on EA's part that keep adding to the negativity of so many fans of the older sim's games.

Good for you, Pierre1!.  Maybe if EA acquired more and more devoted fans, in spite of what they've become lately, they would eventually start producing Sim games everybody would want again, just like the good old days when they had the real Maxis team.  Too bad so many of us will no longer support them, in my case basically for what they did to the Sim City franchise, and now The Sims.  It was good while it lasted.

For those hopefuls, more power to you and I hope you'll be satisfied with the game for a long time.  But, even if we haven't played the game, it's all too clear, EA is now all about making even more money than they managed to milk from the faithful "Maxis" followers.  They know that multitudes of blind "Maxis" followers still exist.  They exist even after Maxis died a few years ago and it's obvious from their intentions of releasing a game with Sim's faces akin to Pillsbury's Dough Boy relatives.  Add to that a game tightly controlled by EA's servers, limited objects with the initial purchase, no capability for creating neighborhoods, and the high probability of tough object customization and modding by third parties, and all we have is the new more complex trait system, the capability to change the colors of everything, and two pretty neighborhoods which can't be topographically altered.  From the reports of game testers thus far, there are hardly any elements from TS2 expansion packs (like ceilings) present in the base game, those will all be sold to us, all over again.  And the objects, let's not forget the much needed objects that will only be available at the online store.  So why is everybody screaming so much and looking at June 2 like it's the 2nd coming of the savior? 

It does indeed sound a lot better than what we were hearing for the past few months,  However, Humble didn't specifically say that SecuROM wouldn't be on the Sims 3, but generalized about how it's best not to use DRM methods that are overly invasive.  How invasive, is the question, but for now let's give him credit since they are promising to give out more details later, and for promising there will not be internet connections required to play the game.  But, will there be a requirement to go online to install?  I'm not opening my arms wide to EA just like that.

I'm going to continue to "guess" why those sims in TS3 look the way they look.  I say guess, because the game isn't out yet, but based on what I know about programming I'm absolutely convinced that TS3, and not just its sims, looks that way because the game was ported to the PC, as opposed to TS2 which was designed for the PC from scratch.  I'm pretty sure that this game was originally coded for consoles and is being ported to PC's and Macs, even the interfaces look like those EA created for console games.  If I'm right, the whole thing is very much in line with EA's recent thinking about giving priority to the hot console market over a declining PC gaming market.  I would imagine that in order for EA to release a much improved sims game for the PC, an I mean, really improved in every way, the system requirements could be met only by a very hefty gaming PC most current TS2 players wouldn't be able to afford or be willing to spend money on.  The seamless neighborhood with beefed-up graphics would probably be too tall an order for any other machine and the game would go the way of Crysis.  I may be one of those who wouldn't fork out $1400 for a super PC, but judging by the way TS3 is shaping up, I'm pretty sure it's not the game I want, and if custom content will be a thing of the past, then I know this kid isn't buying the game.

Sorry if I'm lame, but I haven't found a way (through preferences) to look at threads by the date they were started.  I honestly have very little use to look at threads by the latest post made to it, mainly because I end up reading old threads all over again simply because someone that hadn't seen it made a comment.  Is there such an option?  Thank you anybody.

In my opinion, another TS2 expansion is less likely than EA releasing games without SecuROM.

My expectations of TS2 are varied, and at the same time a little of what most fans have mentioned above.  But my biggest doubts are how reserved EA has been about the info they've put out.  TS3 is obviously not designed as a PC game from the ground up, it just doesn't look "PC" like the early shots of TS2 in 2004, and that becomes more believable after the recent announcement that PC and console versions are being released at the same time.  I keep thinking that EA wants to avoid the headache of so many users complaining about crashes and program features that stop working as a result of hacks and mods, so I wouldn't be surprised about a good loss of modding flexibility there.  I'm not looking at TS3 as a continuation of the Sims series, but rather as a continuation of EA's recent attitude to be more in control of everything they want us to buy, and I don't mean just their employment of SecuROM or whatever new method of making the game less enjoyable they're planning.  One important aspect of concern to me continues to be the fixed neighborhood, and not only fixed, but ONE neighborhood with a set layout of roads and elevation.  They've promised a 2nd neighborhood download upon registration of the game... if it will be available when the game ships, why not include it as well?  That sounds a bit fishy.  All in all, my current decision is NOT to buy.

Some of my comments are shared with "openguin" above, I'm not here to defend EA but one must look at the sims and other "close-ended" games like Crysis differently.  True, EA's graphics still leave quite a bit to be desired, and that's because I don't think that with their actual programming skills EA could produce a game that would run well on the majority of PC's out there, actual proof of this is the poorly coded expansion packs coming out, they've lost touch with the openness of their own game and regardless of the money we've put in their pockets they have decided to let it be as it is.  It looks like with TS3 things will be different, the single 'hood tells me they're trying to maintain more control of the overall game.  From the beginning, the TS3 screenshots haven't looked right to me; more like clay-molded figures and cartoonish faces that don't appear to be the next "higher-up" stage to the evolution of TS2 3D characters.  The rest of the graphics look OK, not at all like typical 3D rendered PC graphics but good overall.  Recently I've read about the simultaneous development of the PC and console versions, and that's where I really get suspicious about TS3 in that its looks appear to be those of a game being ported from a console version instead of a game originally developed for the PC like TS2.  If so, that would explain the relatively short release date (from the time it was officially announced), the single neighborhood, and the graphics.  I'm still a hard core fan of TS2 for its highly customizable nature and general openness, and I'm sorry if anyone is offended for my lack of trust in EA, but for the past 2 years they've proven time and again that they will attempt to sell what THEY want to sell and not what we want or like.

An absolute doll without a doubt...

Nicely done, it gives the feeling of privacy and seclusion; away from the busy, noisy street and nosy passersby.  The only place where usability could be lacking is in how long it takes for the working sim to reach the sidewalk for his/her carpool ride.

I'm not sure I understand what was done here...

Did you convert the "afBodyFig" mesh that came with University to FitChick Hi-Res?

Or did you convert some other new mesh that came with Freetime to FitChick Hi-Res?

I don't have Freetime nor plan on getting it.

Alpha meshes are it, too bad they're more complicated to work with.  Thanks to you and all that produce 'em, and the skinners that never give up.