i am not sure of the exact definition either, but personally when i think of preteens i think of people who are in 5th-8th grade. so ages 11-14. yes, TECHNICALLY when you're 13 and 14 you're a teenager, but if we're talking about adolescence and personality-wise of children aged 11-14, it didn't quite seem like you were a teenager (that's how i felt at least) i feel like the way we (my classmates and i) acted and the responsibility we were given at the time wasn't quite the justifiable definition of a teenager quite yet. i wasn't allowed to go to the mall with my friends without an adult until i was 14, and when i was 11-14 i was still obsessing over boy bands (no, not nsync, but nirvana and weezer) when i was 15 i was in high school and learning how to drive and more responsibility was put on me. i no longer had little crushes at this age, but more developed feelings for others.

anyway, that's how i see preteen. back on topic: that being said, i don't see what kind of content or [useful] gameplay could really be added by adding a preteen life stage.

as for the OFB/university mashup thing: i personally never had either expansion so some may feel i'm out of line when i say this. i really hope they don't mash university and OFB together simply for the reason that since these two EPs are so highly demanded, i feel like if they put them in one it would be half-assed or not everything people wanted. i can see why OFB people may want to have it in university so that they can get the features sooner, but personally i think if they wanted it done right and wanted zero lack of features, it would be better to make them separate EPs. don't get me wrong, i can totally see how they can implement the OFB features in university. i'm not saying it's not possible, but i feel like there is less room for disappointment if they make them separate EPs. sorry if i offended anyone because i've never owned either and therefore may not know what i'm missing.

if they make university as "complete" as i've heard supernatural to be (don't own it) and as "complete" as seasons looks, i think a lot of people will be happy.

OFB and University really don't mesh that well at any rate. If they deliver Uni with new careers that require a degree (as indicated in the survey), that doesn't mesh well with owning your own business where a degree may or may not be helpful, but in most fields is certainly not required.

Am I the only one that misses the TS2 feature of inviting the headmaster home and get your sim children into private school with their little uniforms? That was so cute. It was also hilarious when things went wrong while inviting the headmaster over. They should have included that with Generations. Maybe back with they'll add this feature back with the Uni EP. Children in private schools would have a better chance of getting into Uni for example as would children who got o boarding school or do extra curricular activities. By this I mean all sim offspring child and up.

Well... they can if you really want your sims to own a business. I did it in TS2, of course I didn't have Uni in TS2 but one of my sim families had mom owning and running a bakery and dad was a doctor and it worked out alright...(ah memories). Besides, a friend of mine who worked on the line at GM from high school all the way thru university finished his masters and decided he was going to stay on the line at GM because it paid more than working at another job using his masters degree. Also a lawyer friend who decided to go to cooking school to be a chef instead of a lawyer... so hey... it can work out that way in the sims if it happens in RL

LOL... I didn't mean they won't work together! I was responding to people claiming it was a good fit to put OFB into Uni.

I could work, if Uni works like professions. Of course, if certain professions were locked and required a degree. Like, if they added a degree in business, one of the professions to unlock would be running a business. Of course, players could cheat and skip university altogether, like every other job. Same with any other career, like Oceanography could also be added back in, and it would involve water and marine research.

Of course, if they did this and added in apartments, it'd be a REALLY big expansion pack. D:

Le *sigh*. That's not the point. The two are completely different type of game-play and coding and overall theme for an Expansion Pack.

^That...

Knowing how underdeveloped many of the remakes of TS2 features are, I'm beginning to think that University might just add the university building and the classes, and perhaps a stupid rabbithole dorm.

Well.. what would really be great is IF EA put in OFB with Uni, AND give your student sims the capability to run their business "part time" after school or between classes. Say your student sim sells food in his/her food truck and employs other sims to work for them.....

Nah... you're right. Too much to ask for. I'd love to see that food truck be a non-rabbit hole for something like that though. New job - food truck vendor - that would be very cool.

I wish I hadn't just searched for information on what OFB was about just now... now I really want that too! Hopefully there will be another expansion after University at least.

Nobody's saying we can't have both. There is nothing at all to suggest there is one last EP. In fact, there's only proof that there ISN'T one last EP, what with the new surveys just released.

The open world is perfect for OFB and yet EA avoided making the EP for sims 3 so far.

It's a marketing ploy, probably. String 'em along, keep them hanging, in the hopes that they'll stick around on the off chance that OFB will be the NEXT one. If, and I mean IF they do a proper OFB-style pack, I'm betting at this point they will wait until last.

Back to the talk of the University town: I think there should be one, easily traveled to and from with any installed world.

However, it should be a University town-- not as big as other worlds, but having more to it than the University. College towns have "townies": families not affiliated with the college, as well as the professors, University staff, etc.. One should be able to create "townies" for the college town if one desires. (non-Young) Adults living in town should be able to try romantic interactions with the college students, which might occasionally work, but have a much higher than usual chance of being viewed as "creepy."

Even non-romantic socially, the students should discriminate somewhat against townies, although that barrier shouldn't be as hard to cross as the romantic one.

The college town, being smaller, could be expected to have fewer careers: You don't see military bases, film studios, or major journalistic enterprises in college towns. Such towns definitely need law enforcement though, as well as culinary workers; they have criminals; they would have teachers/schools for townies' children; and they still need a mayor and council (political career). So one could live there even as a non-student (plus most active careers wouldn't be out of place).

They should also add a Professor career only available in the college town, and even though it's only marginally related, bring back the Slacker career-- available anywhere (marginally related, as many real life Slackers do live in college towns long after they graduated).

I've gone on way too much about townies, but I'm thinking of the college town as separate and different, and not a full town (and connected to the town one is playing), but also set up so one could just play the college town if one wanted to, even if you didn't choose to have only student sims.

The life as a student doesn't have to be altered too much from the TS2 version of University, and many posters have already talked about how it could be fleshed out some.

Note that there would need to be bars (Late Night-style is fine, with emphasis on the dive bar types) or it most definitely isn't college. I'd also like to see it not go by so fast as it did in TS2, although I already use Twallan's Relativity, and would use it to an even stronger degree in University, to stretch the student experience out: It won't give me more days, but the days will go by much more slowly. But the length of the "college student" stage should be alterable, just as any other life stage is now, for people who don't know of or don't want to use mods to be able do it.

One other nice feature would be grad school. One might need to complete it to be a professor.

That's an unfair stereotype that has nothing to do with being a student and everything to do with being an asshole so it would only make sense for Snob or Mean-Spirited Sims to act that way. If students Sims want to go out to the local pub and befriend or hook up with the bartender or some NPC townie, there should be no barriers to the interactions.

Personally, I'm not crazy about having to leave my main hood to go to University and would love for EA to create an even large world map with more space so I could put a small college town there. I just hope our Sims in Uni can travel back and forth between worlds to go home whenever they want.

I was stuck between pressing agree or disagree on your post, so I did neither. I fully agree with the first paragraph of your post, couldn't have said it better myself. But I think, realistically... We need a separate town for the university. Yes, they could make a big world map with a small uni town in a corner or something. That'd be ideal! But what about the other EA worlds, and the pre existing custom worlds made by players. How would our Sims from those worlds go to uni? I know there isn't enough room to put a small uni area in the world I play, Los Aniegos by coasterboi. And that's a big world.

Have to agree with olomaya on that.

Plus, there is nothing in the games so far that allows any sort of discriminatory behavior. A good thing, I think. Even if you wanted to use it for relatively benign purposes such as a family rivalry. Seems like a lot of coding effort on EA/Maxis behalf that could possibly lead to some very ugly game play which in turn could impact their game rating.

Seems like that's something you have to bring to your game with your imagination.

I like your idea, though I'm not too sure about the students discriminating, because like olomaya said, that would be more appropriate with traits. I'm not too fussy about the size of the university world, and would be fine if it was still large like the other words, I just hope there will actually be a university town and not just put a university and dorms into the normal worlds.

I suppose if there wasn't a university town, I could use NRaas Traveler mod to switch my hometown to another town, then switch back once my sims are finished university, but that would be a hassle if I was playing multiple households and wanted all of them to attend university at the right time.

Don't get me wrong, I wasn't advocating for a "one or the other" scenario. I fully expect there to be a new university world, or worlds, (styled after Oxford or Cambridge would be great) but much like we weren't forced to play Bridgeport or Starlight Shores to take advantage of the new EP venues, I'd like to be able to have a university in my base world, especially if we do get real apartments again which would free up a lot of space. I play a lot of worlds, LA being one of them, and there are some that I could fit a small community college type setting into and others that are just so full they can't accommodate any more EPs (hence the need for a larger map, EA!). Regardless, none of them are going to be as fleshed out as an entire world dedicated to the university but that's how it is in real life too, you get much less of a university community feeling when your school is just plopped in the middle of a city but all the same amenities are still there: libraries, bars, clubs, people to screw, etc.

I remember thinking in TS2 uni "Y'know, they could have just stuck this area in the regular neighbourhood" and they could, cause the setup of the TS2 uni hoods was very weak. They didn't even have any educational building of any sort in the hoods. That, is un friggin' believable. Student dorms and student hangouts was all we really got.
If the TS3 uni area is as insignificant as the TS2 one, it will fit on an existing TS3 map. Not even a large map would be required.
Now, after playing TS2 uni, I recently discovered on Google Street View that north American campus areas are massive, much larger than I thought. It really is a whole town. In England we don't have 'college towns' in this way. The closest thing to that would be Oxford, which is an area littered with many many Univerities and Colleges, many of them ancient. But Oxford is a city away from it's educational institutes too. It has many other things that any city has, but it's famous for the colleges, regardless.
So looking at what North American college towns are like, and their scale, I honestly think a new traversable sub-neighbourhood is required to get the real experience of a college town. This does not mean it has to be a small hood when I say sub-hood. The american town I saw was much bigger than even the largest TS3 hood available.
You can't just shove it into the corner of a hood an build around it, it's too big for that.
Anyone who has tried to build something like a large airport or motorsport race track will come to the same conclusion. These things need alot of space to do properly.

That's just the case in a few North American places, such as New York City that has multiple colleges and universities but those buildings are really just a part of the city.

I don't know if we need a larger map, I think it depends on how the creator utilizes the available largest size. EA is always going to build small to accommodate all user's system specs. But I've downloaded maps that I had to abandon because there were way too many lots to fill. Every time I went into edit town a swarm of empty lots would rise up over the horizon...

I'd rather have too many than not enough, as seems to be the case with most EA worlds.

The main thing that I have to disagree with is a college town with families that have nothing to do with the college and primarily Adults... Er what?

And the point that Tizerist has brought up is quite true, that the campuses alone in college towns over here are significant to call a town of their own.