All the base game spawners are there in this world Demoness. ^_^ There's no Uncommon Lake 2 fishing spawner, but all the fish it spawns are available in the other spawners, so that's no loss.

Ohh, great to know - thanks so much!

It looks beautiful but at that price, and with all of the negative comments, I think I'm going to hold off on it for a while. It's ridiculous that EA can get away with poor quality work like that. A part of me wonders if it's the teams in place or the fact that the teams aren't allowed to do what they want. Sometimes it seems like there are some real shining moments from the EA team and then poorly made decisions other times. It makes me wonder why they're so wishy-washy. Hopefully they'll eventually lower the price to an actual reasonable amount. I don't mind paying for an EA world, but 25 or even 22 dollars is just far too extravagant and there are far better made worlds that are free.

OMG!! I just checked the official site and I can't believe someone gifted me Hidden Springs!! I don't know this person - I don't think... but she gifted it to me. I'm installing it now as we speak. And no, it's not on my wishlist. I'm excited I got this and thank you for the unexpected pressie

I also checked the Simsfan.de interactive map of HS and EA really needs to read up on the tutes our builders have because they need help in the building department. Major fugly houses in this world. As soon as I get that world installed, I'll be bulldozing a few properties.

~~runs off to start up the bulldozer~~

Ha!! Yeah, they only make up about 15% of the population but are the loudest. I do know someone with a Harley, but he is also an engineer, so a rather uninteresting person.

On a recent trip to Greece, I was trapped in a taxi with a taxi driver who made a huge point of telling us that things in Greece were worse than anywhere else in the world. After listening to him, I didn't feel quite so bad about things in my own country. LOL I guess it is all relative.

Thats probably the work of a little too enthousiastic intern.

'Hide teh Fountain of Youth? I can hides fountains relly good Raarrrr! *hides fountain in the back of buydebug*

I've got it (my lovely sister gifted it to me) and am going through the various lots and there are a number of hangout lots which seem to me to have been designed to be edited into LN clubs

Haha, just thought about it, the museum I created has more magic and supernatural than the one in Hidden Springs. Mine do have both styles of egyptian sarcophagus, and the magic spellbook, roped off and untouchable to the public. If I allowed the sarcophagus to have a mummy in them I wonder what will happen?

When I looked at the museum in Hidden Springs, I went into a laughing fit. Thought about all the sims going into the stomping fit because they can't access those computers, unless they are kleptos. LOL!

I bought it, too. I bought sim points the other day at 30% off, and that combined with another 200 points off the price, I decided to splurge as that reduced the price to an acceptable amount for me. So far I like it but I agree that by the time the WA lots are placed, there aren't too many empty lots left. Terrain painting could be better but the scenery is beautiful in-game.

If anyone is interested, you can buy 1,000 sim points from Origin for $5 by using the code HIDDENSPRINGSPOINTS. That would make this world half off. I used it four times to get 4,000 sim points for $20. From what I've heard it doesn't appear to work in all countries, though.

Thanks for letting us know about this! I just got a bunch of points at half off, so now I don't feel bad about splurging on Hidden Springs.

BTW, I love the world, but it is cramped. I'm going to be doing a lot of redesigning of the downtown area. A great many rabbit hole rugs will be employed... heh.

Question, heh: Granny Shue, the one from the previews who has four adopted kids, has the "surrounded by family" LTW. She can't use those four kids towards the LTW, can she? since she didn't raise them from babies in-game? :p

It is nice they have that sale for some lucky people living in the right places. It isn't nice for those who get left out. EA doesn't appreciate all its customers obviously.

It appears also that the whole thing is a marketing ploy to get more purchases for Hidden Springs. A quick way to show that it is a success. I'd have bought it, if I could have gotten it at that price too, so I expect the sale will pump up the sales quickly. Nothing should surprise me anymore, but using that code does. They are basicly announcing why they are selling the points half-price.

Well..it is pretty but not worth it. I am going to have to take the time to put it in CAW and get rid of the bright green, which is horrible, and fix the holes. Trust me..it is not even worth $10..unless you know how to fix it.

I think other countries are having other sales. I know that the Australian region is having a half-off sale of all bundles and apparently there's a UK sale going on as well, from what I've heard. So it's not just the US that's getting it. But Germany and around there does not seem to have a sale going for points.

The new digital agreement makes it impossible to buy points for someone that does not live in the countries the sale is going on at. I had arranged to help someone in Germany that I know to get the simpoints on sale, then gift them after they paid me by paypal. The disclaimer came up that I couldn't gift to someone that doesn't live in my country. So that was the end.

Is it normal for sims to spontaneously combust in the game? I was playing Francisca Vanderburg when the camera suddenly left her house and zoomed in on Granny Shue's house and she was flailing around in the corner of her living room with her butt on fire. I can't figure out how she got set on fire or how it showed her when she wasn't part of my active household. I ended up switching to her house after that and sure enough, she was still on fire, and since she didn't have a shower I wasn't sure how to put her out, so I just cheated and deleted the moodlet and the fire went out.

If she was inventing, then that can set Sims on fire. I know they can get zapped by electricity sometimes when they take their laundry out of the drier but I don't know can you combust with it.

Whether it's worth even $10 is a value judgment...

For me, what decided my purchase wasn't simply the world itself, it was all the additional items. The build stuff, the outfits, the lighting fixtures, and the park bench. THEY sold me at least as much as the look of the world did.

Of course, YMMV.

But at ten bucks, with all the additional items, I certainly think it's worth it. The size allows me to play the way I want, with a world which isn't too big or small. I've looked at a LOT of the free worlds out there and have yet to find one which is good for the way I want to play. Some look nice, but when you go into the houses, they're practically unplayable. Others just have too many trees or effects. Builder's World II is great for building, but for me, most of the small custom worlds are too small, while the large ones are too large. HS is pretty darned near perfect for me. Like I said, YMMV, but that's what makes this game great, isn't it? It can't possibly be all things to all players -- what you like might not appeal to me and vice versa.

And as for the comment above about how EA is being blatant in trying to sell HS by giving these discounts on points... um, DUH! Why shouldn't they try to entice players to buy their product? It's what every company on the planet does. It's called good business practices. What are you, a freaking communist or something? You think EA should just give you whatever you want, because you want it?

I think HS is way more value for the money than, say, the Town Life SP... and if you don't, that's cool.

One last thing: a lot of people are saying the green terrain paint is garish... you obviously don't live in a place where your grass is a nice deep green. For me, I like the painting on this world. And it's not because I prefer cartoony or garish colors. Where I live, we get so much annual rainfall that during Spring and early summer the grass is about as green as in this world. Come to think of it, the mountains, water, and dirt roads work pretty perfectly with my area.

Hmmm... guess I'm going to be rethinking how I makeover this world...

Thank you for that! Haven't sent my Sim to any venues yet, her life has mostly been eat sleep work since I started playing with her. I'll have to go check those out now to see what I can do with them. Can they be turned into lounges/bars too or are they pretty much just dance club material? Actually, a thought just occurred to me. My sim is a cop and sometimes when she's going to work, a memory comes up that she just visited a park, which I think is funny/weird. But it made me think just now that I could probably change the venue types of existing lots in edit town mode so as to satisfy my Sim's wishes to go to bars or lounges. Unless there's already a venue or two that qualifies for those? I'll have to fiddle around today and see what I can find out I guess.



I probably would've just let her die and made the kids orphans (again). Cuz I'm evil like that. hehe

Writerchick, I agree with everything you say *except* the comments about the green grass. I live in a very green country. I have seen endless greenery, of many shades. The greenest I've ever seen in my life - even in photos - even in oversaturated photos - doesn't come close to the radioactive madness of Hidden Springs. I like the dirt roads. The water is the exact same colour as Sunset Valley, etc, but that's fine. The mountains across the lake are unfinished in terms of their terrain painting, and any CAW user can see it.

All that said, I am not saying you should agree the world is a rip-off, I'm simply saying there are some quite good reasons why people are making such a value judgement.

I love the objects in the world, especially the barns, but the store is already drastically over-priced, well out of an average working person's price-range, and the objects are often faulty (as with the spellbook and the gothic library). For what is essentially a luxury brand we should get much higher quality. Normally the affluent consumers would demand it.

EA is lowering the points because of all the problems with the world. They are aware of the criticisms and they know exactly what they are doing. The sad thing is that they kept the price ridiculous in the first place so that all the really diehard folks would pay the $22 first and now will feel really cheated! Not good PR. At the very least they should have waited a week so those folks don't feel so duped.

And Kiwi is right. This is a VERY BADLY done world as far as routing issues and terrain paint. As a world creator, most of us can do better and we know it. I cannot believe they would release this world like this...although a bit naive on my part after Bridgeport I guess.

Not only is the store over-priced but people in other countries pay at US rates, even if their currencies are at a different exchange rate. So the $10 you are paying is still much more for others. Some area paying 10 euros instead, more than $10. I don't feel ripped off..but then I can afford to spend the money (and had lots of simpoints that sat unused for a long time) but I don't think the world is worth $10, sorry. The build stuff is nice, but not as nice as custom stuff.

Writerchick...I live in Florida, for goodness sake! LOL It is very green here...but not THAT green. I am also a geologist, so traveled all over the place...it is not that green anywhere I have been. And I have never seen mountain rock that green...not in the Rockies, the Alps, or any other mountains I have seen or studied. Kiwi reported how bad the colors were but I was stunned when I opened the world!

So far I've turned hangouts into a dance club, an exclusive lounge (the ski lodge lot), a local watering hole, a dive bar and a poolside club (the enormous pool lot).

Kiwi and rian:

Here's a picture from EA's site about Hidden Springs, and one of the area where I live... you tell me the two don't share a similar palette...

Writerchick, Hidden Springs is darker, in palette - grass and trees, but It was done for a reason - Contrast. While I like the grass in HS, there is no terrain paint to match it, for blending, or usage outside of HS.

Oh, EA... sooooo muuuuuch faaaaaail...

Well, first of all, they don't share a similar palette. You've only given us the tiniest glimpse of Hidden Springs and its misrepresentative of the world's palette.

Let's use this as an example instead:



See the weirdness of the blue-green? Real lush greens are cleaner and lighter than the ones in HS, and blue-greens are generally closer to the bastille end of the tonal range - especially at altitude. This world is supposed to be sub-alpine, not sea-level rainforest.

Second of all, that wallpaper from wallpaperplazza.com looks very suspiciously like it's had the saturation ramped up a lot and/or colours edited. The greens in that picture look unrealistically angry. Even setting aside that (I think valid) concern, such lushness tends not to glower over an entire sub-alpine landscape, but to concentrate in beautiful thickets, yet look at HS - it's livid even with the distance fog obsuring its full saturation:



Compare it with the distant terrain which, for all its lack of detail or nuance, looks considerably more realistic in its hues.