I've been away from Sims 3 for a while now, but is there any way to pull in the game's default versions of Sunset Valley/Riverview so I can edit them in Create-A-World, and then use those saved/edited versions as the new defaults? My computer knowledge is pretty good, though I'm not an expert by any means, hence my cry for help. Thank you so much if you know what to do!

you can use CAW to edit the game maps, yes, but you can't make them the default version. Let's say you edit Sunset Valley, getting rid of lots, placing a few roads, or whatever. When you package the world up, it becomes a custom world, and will work just like any other custom world, i.e. you would have to start a new save in that town.

Well, poop. Thank you though. :D

If you make a custom world, you can migrate your current town to it pretty painlessly with the NRaas Porter, which basically packages every Sim (and their relationships) into one Uber Houseload, and then unpacks them into the empty houses of the new town.

Alternatively, the NRaas Traveller lets you send your active Sims on vacation to any other town you have installed, not just the WA ones. Once there, you can use the option which sets it as your home town either temmporarily or permanently.

A few weeks back, for example, I got tired of my buggy Sunset Valley, but I was in the middle of a WA quest-string so I wanted to keep my active Sim, well, active. So I packed up everybody else with Porter, went on vacation to Starlight Shores, unpacked areverbody else and set it as my home town. The only drawbacks - this being a special case - were that I had to have my Sim meet all her friends again, and go back to Sunset Vally on vacation to Total Annhialate the old populace and get them out of her relationships panel. Simply relocating the town with Porter, or using Traveller to explore, wouldn't add those complications.

http://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=469942

Thank you so much!