This was the dominant reaction, but then and now I feel that was a little unfair. People saw quests/RPG elements and dismissed the whole expansion out of hand, saying it was all too restrictive, ignored player creativity, it wasn't right for a sims game, etc. To be blunt, many of them clearly never gave it a fair try, because if they had they would have realized something. Yes, the tomb system was really cumbersome and yes it does take a while to figure out even the basics. But the amount of customization and creativity you can put into creating your own tombs is extremely underrated. There were a limited number of preset adventures, but players had unlimited opportunities to create new ones. I understand being wary of RPG elements, but all in all WA was a careful and limited experiment with a new form of customization and the backlash was unfortunate. IMO, WA fit perfectly into the series. Compare how linear TS4's Strangerville is to WA and it's a real headscratcher how WA was the one panned and forgotten for breaking with tradition.

I may have said this before, but to me the reception of WA was a real turning point for the series. EA never put anywhere near the same level of effort into an expansion ever again. THREE new worlds? Skills and Expansion content fully integrated with Base Game careers? Could only dream that they still cared that much when they pumped out University Life.



I don't really remember ITF being that hated. I think by that time we hit expansion pack #11, there was general fatigue with the series, and people were underwhelmed by a futuristic theme being the final EP. But SHT and WA got way more anger, afaik.

World Adventures was a first for the series, but I believe it managed to add enough sandbox gameplay, while at the same time focusing on puzzle solving and quests. As a Tomb Raider fan, it was my favorite TS3 EP until Generations came along (and later Seasons). I just had a great time exploring the tombs, and playing around with the new skills. The three skills in this EP were some of the best skills in the series. Martial Arts has a ton of unique animations; it's fun to discover all the different Nectars and harvest the new fruits; and the Photography skill is amazing as well, and I love going to the different worlds and trying to capture all the "Themes." There was also snake charming, songs you could learn in each location, mummies, fortune cookie maker, incense, tents, etc. It also added cash registers so we could finally replace some of the rabbit holes with open community lots. I spent a lot of time renovating Sunset Vallet and Riverview to get rid of the non-workplace rabbit holes.

Like @Spamaccount said, it may be the largest EP not just of The Sims 3, but of the entire series. In terms of size, it is the heaviest of The Sims 3 with 3.4 GB of data (Pets comes in second place with 3.12 GB of data). It's sad some people didn't give WA a chance, because it's a really good EP. It may not be the most sandbox EP ever, and it may not add that much content to day to day gameplay, but it IS a very fun EP and that's ultimately what we want when we play a game: to be entertained.

I do understand why people didn't like Showtime. It felt like Late Night 2.0 for many. It also added a TON of features that people didn't want in their Sims game, like online features, SimPort, integration with The Sims 3 Store, achievements, and more. But if we're talking about the quality of the EP, it's actually a pretty decent EP. A new world, three active careers, a new skill, new traits, and what makes it REALLY good in my opinion: a ton of new objects for community lots and returning objects: new arcade games, karaoke, DJs, the mechanical bull from TS1, the dance sphere from TS2 Nightlife, photo booths, mini-golf, dominoes AND the reintroduction of POOL TABLES!

I too don't remember people being upset about Into the Future. A lot of people were frustrated with The Sims 3 back then because Island Paradise's world was very laggy and with the announcement of The Sims 4 a lot of them were probably ready to move on. In terms of quality, once again, Into the Future was superb. The amount of work they had to put to make a believable futuristic world was immense. It was like doing Medieval or the base game again from scratch. They had to replace phones, cars, roads, lights, NPCs; they added a new method of mass transportation, and TWO new methods of moving/travelling; new interactive objects; small pets; reskinned versions of not only all base game objects but also MOST EP objects like hot tubs, pool tables, arcade games, bunk beds; three new skils; plumbots, which are one of the most in-depth life states in the game; open restaurants and stores (without having to buy a Store set); a completely new version of the painting skill (holographic painting); a ton of new mechanics, 2 new jobs, 2 new traits. On top of that, they did three version of Oasis Landing (granted, it was mostly the same just reskinned but still).

World Adventures - I don't think it was hated, because it did come with 3 new worlds and tons of new stuff. I believe the fandom was split 50/50 on it, because it wasn't an expansion pack in the way we were used to with TS2.

Showtime - yeah it was and still is hated. I kinda like it because of CAS, the items and the world though. Careers are trash.

Into The Future - if I remember correctly, people were indifferent to it, a bit bitter even that it would be the last expansion pack, nobody really requested such an expansion pack.

SHT is hated still because people feel like the features were cut out of LN. But truth is LN focused on bar hoping and not so much on building a career of fame and the fame feature is actually more like a reputation level advertised as a fame level. The cut content from LN that I know of that reappeared in SHT was the pool tables. But on the other hand pool tables were patched into the base game code I think via ITF patch and as of 1.63 really only need a pool table object to work, which wasn't included in the patch.

I don't hate SHT, I like it for what it is. The Superstar EP of TS3. While LN was the NightLife/Hot Date EP of TS3 or in simple terms the EP that got you out of the house.

My problem with Showtime is that it missed an important opportunity to create a truly unique entertainer/fame system.

Instead of three limited pre-coded careers, the Showtime system should have allowed your sims to perform using any skill- and the band system should have been revised as a 'band skill'.

As such, you could have a sim perform a piano concert, a sim demonstrating how to carve a sculpture, a sim telling jokes to a crowd, etc.

Likewise, it was a missed opportunity to create a more in-depth fame system, with more interactions and realism (i.e. agencies).

Agreed. It would have been nice if sims gained fame and celebrity status by actually doing something, such as performing, rather than by just chatting up other celebrities. Also, there's that big sign up on the hill in Starlight shores, just like the one in Hollywood, so why no movie studio?

Wasn't the movie studio included with LN? I mean I guess they could've added SHT version, but I have doubts it would've functioned any different than the LN one.

Yeah. The movie studio would have made a lot of sense with Starlight Shores rather in Late Night, but then the three professions would had to been in Late Night to compensate for a job.

Hmm.

I won't claim to like the Sims 4, I think it's an installment that needs a lot, a lot of improvement. But I can't find myself shouldering the blame on them completely, and this is coming from someone who hates brands and companies but EA especially. I think that EA does certain things because they got away with it in past iterations. Babies being objects in the Sims 3 led to them being objects in the Sims 4, ripping things from packs and places them in the Store probably led to even more piecemealing in the Sims 4, as two examples, and I don't remember seeing any outrage over that. At least, not any substantial outrage like we're seeing now for things like better babies and just demanding that EA listen to it's community.

But they aren't objects in Sims 3. Although admittedly they are not as interactive as they were in 2.

No, babies weren't as great as they were in Sims 2, but they certainly aren't objects. Not sure where that kind of rumor has come from. There was plenty of annoyance in the beginning about babies being stuck in blankets and being unable to bathe them, etc, but EA made it clear that unwrapping them really wasn't a priority. Bathing your cat or dog in a subsequent EP was FAR more important to them than bathing your baby or toddler.
There was also quite a bit of outrage in the store forums about items from EP's or SP's being "repurposed" into the store, but a lot people seemed to give EA the benefit of the doubt, about making sure players had access to certain items without having to buy an EP. I think it was more just EA's usual capitalising on stuff due to its greed, but whatever.

What I think more than anything has led to the Sims 4 being such a disaster, apart from EA's "single player games are dead" bullshit, is the obvious willingness of sims players to pay for something, even if its rubbish, and even if they don't like it. I see plenty of people on the forums saying that they don't like a pack but they will still buy it. There are also so many players that just excuse or whiteknight EA's complete and utter greed, without demanding value for their money.

The "EA is a business and needs to make money" excuse becomes incredibly thin after a while, in the face of such blatant fleecing of their customers.
This is what EA counts on, every single time. And they will continue to provide garbage packs and substandard games as long as this behaviour from players continues.

Maybe the funny bundle blanket they came in confused people and made them think they're objects Although I think it's cute, it's still kinda lame that you didn't really get many options to change them without using mods and couldn't do stuff like wash them in the sink etc. I was really impressed back in TS2 days when I realised that babies are bathed in a sink and toddlers in a bathtub. It just made so much sense and was adorable at the time.
Yeah, they did add a changing table and baby monitor in the store, but I agree that these should have been in EPs or SPs instead.

"The "EA is a business and needs to make money" excuse becomes incredibly thin after a while, in the face of such blatant fleecing of their customers."
Oh heck yeah! This is the weakest possible argument anyone could give.
If modders can make such amazing things they do out of passion and for no gain, even though they also invest their time and effort into it, then no less should be expected of people who DO get paid for it.
But to be fair, I still don't blame the developers. I can see many of them actually having had the passion and care for their work in the beginning before realising that they're expected to churn out content like on an assembly line and make it as "safe" or generic or "hip with the kids" (or whatever their idea of it is) as they can so that it could be sold in the largest quantities possible in the least amount of time. That must be soul-sucking and motivation-destroying,

Even Sims 4, for as much as I don't have a great opinion of it, it still isn't literally complete garbage with no redeeming qualities. There are still cool, fun and/or useful things in there under all the missing features and the lack of soul or personality (ironically). But it is just potential forever to remain untapped, because unlike SIms3, which may have its flaws but at least in theory you could see almost limitless possibilities for it in the hands of an extremely talented coder, Sims 4 is just fundamentally lacking and no matter how much you add up to the flimsy foundation, it won't make the house any more stable.

Yeah, you're right. To be honest, I should have probably worded what I meant about the babies in Sims 3. They may not be objects per se, but they could--or could've--definitely been improved. But ultimately you summarize my thoughts on the downfall of the Sims franchise. That being that EA does what it does with the Sims 4 because they know they can get away with it. People will make excuses for them, people will buy packs they know they shouldn't, etcetera etcetera, just feeding the beast that should never be fed.

I'll return back to the hated EPs if you don't mind.
I was amongst the people who hated World Adventures. At first, I was thrilled that the first EP will be vacation-themed, because I loved Vacation and Bon Voyage. But when I learned more about its tomb riding features and the fact it's only for YA and older, I started to hate it. Those who know me probably realised why. Because I am family player and this was the exact opposite of the family vacations we've got (and I so loved) in previous iterations. I also did not like the linear RPG gameplay, about which I said that if I wanted to play tomb riding, I would've go and played Tomb Rider, not The Sims. Both these things bothered me so much that I postponed the purchase of Sims 3 base game again (after the first time being because of my PC, but at the time of WA release, I already had new one that I actually build to play Sims 3, oh the irony LOL), since I felt that where the franchise is heading is not for me. That much I was disappointed with WA back then. I only bought the base game after Ambitions came out (and along with it), because I started to believe that maybe WA was a one-time slip and the future of the franchise is not as doomed as I thought. And I can't tell I was wrong. Of course, being completionist, I eventually did get WA and I started to see it in more positive light. I still don't like the tomb riding much and I hate the lack of family interactions in that pack, which still makes it my least favourite EP, but there sure are features I like about the EP. Nectar making, martial arts skill, No Bills LTR etc.

I don't hate Showtime as much as others, but I still do feel that some features would be better as part of Late Night, or at least if they if they interacted better with LN. This goes especially for the singer career. Why can't we have a band with singer? Never got that, to be honest. Still, it has many features I love. I just wish the cross-EP support was better, but that's not a problem limited to Showtime. I feel that's something Sims 3 didn't do very well overall.

Into the Future is a totally different beast fot me, though. As a Sci-Fi fan, I loved it the moment I've heard about it. I did hear some hate about it, but it was not really to the degree the new Sims 4 Star Wars pack is hated. And for me the EP was a dream come true.

So, that's my view on this.

WA was an interesting change of pace, it took the formula into a more RPG route which I can get why some hated it for that. I loved it, even though I was disappointed at the stereotypes it portrayed. I've been to Egypt before and it is nothing like WA. Trying to raid the tombs would get you arrested. Not that I would know... :D

Well sure NOW it would get you arrested. Yet we wouldn't have museums full of Egyptian artifacts across Europe & USA if our ancestors weren't robbing Pharohs tombs. Sims exists outside our timeline.

WA grew on me, but it took time & Nrass.

Interesting thought.

Oh yeah, I think cross-EP support is definitely lacking in TS3. I can't speak for TS4 but I heard it's a little bit better?

I can't talk about Sims 4 either, but Sims 1 and 2 were little bit better, but really a little, mostly just with items from older EPs appearing on newer EPs' lots, like, for example, pets items from Unleashed appearing on Vacation lots, or the Gadget Kiosk from University appearing on Nightlife lots. The biggest cross-EP support I remember are some magic recipes in Makin' Magic requiring items from previous EPs and dreams about previous EPs' things in Dream Pod in ITF. But that's pretty much it.

You mean Supernatural? For example, the Bottled Mummy Curse to turn Sims into mummies requires a scarab and a crypt moth, two insects from World Adventures (the pack that introduced mummies).

But there's actually a ton more of tiny bits of cross-pack integration. They're so tiny they may go unnoticed. For example, Sims with the Proper trait from Supernatural will ALWAYS refuse to pose nude (an interaction that came with University Life through the sketch book). Or Sims with the Natural Born Performer trait from Showtime also get a bonus if they're in a band (bands came with Late Night).

I remember Makin' Magic having at least one spell that required the black roses left by the obsessed fan from Superstar.

Personally, I am still not overly fond of this entry. It has it's place, and I appreciate that it was ambitious in retrospect and do occasionally play it, but on top of it losing a lot of the charm and grit of it's predecessors, my main real issue is it was a MASSIVE missed opportunity....

One thing I've recently realized is what makes The Sims 2 so special for me is that it doesn't really restrict how you play, and simultaneously provides several different ways to approach playing a family. Best of all, it doesn't force you to stick with them if you don't want to choose. In The Sims 1 you were just messing around with functionally immortal never aging dollhouse people. With a lot of spontinaity thrown in for good measure, but no matter how many families you make the gameplay will usually boil down to messing around, skilling, and trying to buy more expensive stuff/upgrade your house.

But The Sims 2 has several different things you can do with a family. You can do legacy play, or just fool around and try to upgrade their house ala Sims 1, or you can try to create drama with the in depth backend simulation systems (regarding social interactions not always leading to equal social feelings on both sides, the memory system, etc), creating entire families for storytelling purposes, or you can make what I call function families (artists, store owners, resturauneurs, etc) that actually contribute to the other families in tangible ways.... And since one neighborhood can have dozens of families, you can make a fully functioning community, and have each family actually truly contribute to a greater whole... Which on top of being extremely rewarding and satisfying, adds an extra layer of immersion as you know this town/region and these recurring characters. Because it isn't only random townies.

Now you may be asking why I am talking about The Sims 2 here... And it's because most of the best features in The Sims 3 are just screaming to have that kind of setup! To be in a game more like The Sims 2. The immense amounts of occults, the significantly expanded skill pool, the open careers, the traits! They are all begging so hard to be in a game that doesn't try to railroad you into legacy play (and not well mind you since eventually if you keep having more than one kid, you'll have to kick members of the family out of the household, possibly to never be seen again thanks to story progression sucking without mods).

Imagine a Sims 3 where you open into the neighborhood like all the other Sims games, and can choose whether each family ages, and are effected by story progression or not. You could boot into one family with a vampire novelist, and jump to another family of insane equestrian chefs who pick up the books the vampire novelist sells at the bookstore. And then there is an evil alien mad scientist and his plantsim wife plotting on world domination, and your standard legacy family of crazy assorted sims.... None of this is possible, at least without complicated mods, and it really should be standard.

The gameplay itself feels designed around it. Other than like World Adventures, and Into the Future, most of the packs add a diverse and huge variety of content clearly not designed to all be done by one family (inconsistant in quality and depth mind you, but that's a whole other issue.) They designed the gameplay and expansions like The Sims 2, but without the key component of why The Sims 2 EPs were designed that way in the first place.

It makes sense to have a pack add a wide variety of ownable businesses including toy and robot stores, and salons, and resturaunts, and bakeries etc in a game where you are expected to play more than one family. Does it really make sense to have a pack that adds five occult states in a game where you are expected to play a single family? When you have to make several bloated saves to experience all the content in a single expansion without it feeling forced, or waiting several generations, (not to mention you will never see said playable families interact since they are completely different saves) I think something might be a bit off in the game design department...

You are forgetting that Sims 2 did limit the the players who wanted to play just one family. You yourself mentioned that Sims 2 expected you to play more than one family, but that's not right. The right wording should be that Sims 2 forced you to play every family in the game, unless you wanted to see the same faces over again and again. They fixed that in Sims 3 and thank goodness for that, because it makes legacy gameplay even possible. Yes, it did make the rotational gameplay more complicated and that alienated some players who preferred that way, which was not good and I agree that EA should give players more choices over that, but that still doesn't change the fact Sims 2 did have this one limitation that made legacy gameplay with just one family very complicated, if not even impossible, thanks to the lack of communal aging and story progression. That's why your statement about Sims 2 not restricting you how to play is just plain wrong, because it did.

I completely disagree with that blatantly false assessment for a few reasons:

First of all, The Sims 2 CREATED legacy play. The term legacy comes out of the Sims 2, and it was touted as a big deal, because playing multiple generations was a huge change from The Sims 1.

Secondly, The Sims 2 does actually provide an option to age up family friends when your sims do. (It was a late addition to the game, but I am talking abouf each game with full expansions here.) which opens up more slots for the game to generate new characters. And unless you are seriously that anal about literally all people in the game not aging equally, you very much can just play one family. With things like the aforementioned age up options, or the cowplant (or any death really), or just the fact that marrying townies removes them from the townie roster, you can very easily get more new faces into the neighborhood, because if someone is removed from any of the NPC pools, another takes their place, and it's not like there are just five townies at a given time or anything, but hundreds of characters. So it isn't that big an issue anyways. Certainly not one that breaks legacy play. To think otherwise comes off as kind of a petty shot. Because the fact the game handles aging differently really isn't a fatal flaw that destroys legacy play.

People age at roughly the same rate in real life yes, but people also don't usually get mummies curses or make robots out of scrap metal, or throw up rainbows.. Some suspension of disbelief is necessary in any even remotely decent game.

Third of all, The Sims 3 despite having an entire pack dedicated to fleshing out the other age groups still falls kinda flat when it comes to this part of the simulation side of the game. The game's mechanics are very much focused on young adults, and the other age groups are practically afterthoughts in 3, and generally just not all that fun to play, whereas they were more integrated in 2. For example, in 2 Sims who die will send out inheritance to family members. 3 reduces this to a lifetime reward, which is... a blatant mechanical downgrade in every way. Another example is there are significantly fewer unique interactions between the different age groups except when interacting with adults.

Then there's the fact genetics are broken in The Sims 3, so there goes a good portion of the fun with legacies in the first place. You'll never see a sim with their grandparent's hair or eye color, skintone, or facial features that aren't directly tied to their parents, and if their mother or father dyes their hair whilst pregnant, the child gets the dye! Talk about immersion breaking!
And none of this is helped by 3 having far worse AI in general, family never really act or feel like it. Esp children and toddlers to their siblings or pets. And since all relationships are equalized in 3, there is little drama to come out of familial matters. (Which kinda makes arguments for story progression kinda moot since the kinds of relationships sims can have with eachother are so limited anyways. Do you really care if townie #78 gets a divorce, when the only real difference is they just don't like eachother anymore and live in a different house?)



So I'd argue the inverse. 3 broke a lot of what worked in legacy play and made it engaging. It replaced it with other things, sure, but the familial touch and attention to detail is absent in a way that seriously impedes the engagement that, at least I personally have with that type of play.

And as one final point, I ALWAYS have at least one legacy family going when I play The Sims 2, and I literally give zero shits about rotation play, I play who I feel like playing when I feel like playing them, sooooo... That alone proves legacy play is very much possible, and if it wasn't enjoyable, I wouldn't waste the excessive time required to do so.