The event says 11am to 11:30pm, so around 11am they will post the small news.

I really hope for witches and wizards, in the Sims and the Sims 2 we had to wait till the last released ep to get magic. Hopefully that won't happen with the Sims 3.

The sims 1 got magic in the last EP too, so I see a trend here

As long as the game gets playable again, the spiral stairs, kid interactions and the strollers are probably actually enough to get this EP. Because I really need them. The other EPs I didn't needed.

I didn't needed WA to travel to Egypt and solve stupid puzzles.
I didn't needed needed AMB to take some repetitive part-time jobs. (But the recycling box was nice.)
And I surely don't need LN to have my whole city full of vampires.

What we really need is more family life and I hope/expect Generations to fulfill that. If EA doesn't, then I think they don't care anymore about the game and I will move to different games.

That's a pretty good summary of the situation, jonha.

I think there's been a lack of proper direction with Sims 3. It started off OK, and only needed more stuff and interactions, and vacation towns and seasons and this and that, and it would be just like Sims 1 and Sims 2, but better. But... in subsequent expansions they tried to take it away from being a neat little "toy" and into "computer game". I feel they wanted to use this Sims to get more casual players interested in the wider games market (by introducing much more goal-oriented + collectors-like gameplay), specifically so that EA could hopefully sell more of its games. And, that was logical and good business, no doubt. But it's not exactly what the people that grew up with Sims 1 & 2 wanted.

Now, I think Sims 3 is pretty fun, but I'm not really one to collect all the rocks and insects and such. For me, it's always been about family dynamics. I really want the Sims to come back to focus on that. Generations might give us that, and I'm hopeful it will.

BTW, your post has inspired me to uninstall the EPs I've had enough of. Before I'd read what you had to say, I just assumed I needed to keep all that rubbish in my game, whether I was actively using it or not, just to make it complete. But they're virtually self-contained now, so I don't think it's that hard to remove some of them like it was in Sims 2. The only thing I'll miss are some of the objects that come with them. It's not that I'm that hard up for space, so I probably won't be removing things soon, but I'll definitely keep that in mind when I truly have had enough.

Oh, and I think the pets expansion will likely be a stand alone game, like the recent Medieval game. There's a number of reasons I think that (which might turn out to be false!), but it makes sense if it is. And that's something I wouldn't mind at all!! I like pets, but having them constantly roaming the neighborhood gets tiresome after a while. Having a game and separate neighborhood with tons of animal-focused stuff would be awesome! Hopefully there'll be a horse jumping park and stuff. Hopefully there'll be a way to import characters into the new game too. Or, maybe it won't be separate.

Anyway, thanks for the interesting idea, jonha. Cyas.

I so agree with this, especially the bolded part.

The Sims, as a franchise, is the second biggest selling computer game series ever. Super Mario is first. That gives an idea of just how huge The Sims is - clearly people love this game. So why, when they have something so popular, did EA feel the need to try and appeal to a wider market in the first place, especially by making fundamental changes to the game, like making it more RPG-based than its predecessors? Surely the best way for TS3 to reach the tens of millions of copies that TS1 and TS2 sold would be to keep the basic gameplay the same - as happened with TS1 and TS2 - and just move the series forward by upgrading certain features, because it's the basic gameplay that people enjoyed most. Anything else just alienates the massive number of already established players who are the people that bought all those tens of millions of copies of the game in the first place! Surely they're the people you want to appeal to!?

Basically, if it ain't broke, don't fix it!

The EPs which people seem to like best are the ones which focus on everyday life so hopefully Generations will do that. I like the sound of it so far, but so far we don't have much info.

@tryguy: I very seriously doubt Pets will be a stand alone game. I think EA would have a lot of very angry people if they are never able to integrate pets into their existing sims 3 neighborhoods. I do wish they would come up with an original title though an not recycle the name for the sims 1 pets expansion.

I'm not sure yet about the generations expansion. Right now it doesn't sound too exciting, but they usually don't until more info is released. As many have already said, I will be very happy if there are more and improved interactions between sims. We have needed interactions between toddlers and children and toddlers ever since the base game!

Something that has been annoying me for a while now is the frequent lack of awareness/reaction by sims to what is going on around them. For example, the other day I had three sims in the same room, two sisters who are best friends and one sister's husband who is enemies with the sister in law. The husband and sister in law began fighting and eventually the husband slapped the sister in law. What did the wife/sister do? Nothing! She might as well have been on the other side of town. I had to direct her to go over and yell at her husband for hitting her sister/best friend. And then of course she wasn't really even yelling at him for that. I just had to pretend.

I also wish the trait system had a bit more of an impact on how the sims react or feel in certain situations. There is a lot of inconsistency. It makes no sense to me that a sim with the trait 'doesn't like children' still gets the happy moodlet during pregnancy and for a new baby. Shouldn't they get a negative moodlet?

These are just two examples of what is overall my biggest complaint with the sims 3. In some ways it actually feels like a step back from sims 2. I love the open worlds and the building capabilites. Those were vast improvements over the older games. But as far as the sims themselves go, I see very little evolution from 2 to 3. In some respects I think they were actually more lifelike in 2 than 3. I think one part of that is the lack of memories, but it's also the frequent indifference to things they shouldn't be indifferent to. When a kid is brought home after curfew (I hate the teen curfew to start with. I would prefer something more similar to the sims 2 version where the teen just got caught sneaking back home if a parent saw them) by the police a parent quickly gives a lecture, both get a negative moodlet and that's it. It just feels a bit flat to me. The parent should be able to ground the teen, they could then try to apologize and beg their way out of the grounding, the teen and the parents would stay angry at each other for a couple day or until the teen/kid was able to successfully apologize. Just seems things like that would bring a lot more depth to the game without being terribly difficult to do.

If generations adds even a little bit of the depth to family life and sim interactions that I have in mind I would be very pleased.

And one other thing. I really miss the in game story editor. I loved being able to work on a story for a while, then go back to playing and getting some more shots for the story and working on that again when I wanted to without ever having to leave the game. Personally I hate having to go though those tiny thumbnails in the launcher and waiting for them to upload, etc. Usually I can't find the pix I want for the story and it would take forever to upload them all (I love taking pix while I play). Creating stories in the game kept me much more interested in the sims 2 over the four or five years it was the current game than I was in 3 by the time the 2nd expansion came out. Right now I am still coming back to the game eventually, but I find myself playing less and less.

If I still had a computer able to run the sims 2 I might give it another try. But I now only have a Mac and my sims 2 disks are for PC only. But I suspect I would really miss the open worlds and wonderful scenery of the sims 3 anyway.

From the facebook page:

Seriously? So they changed the date so they can announce Generations and the pets expansion on the same day. LOL! Isn't this where they were a month ago? They already have the trailers ready (obviously), what the heck is taking so long.

What a bunch of clowns.

what a load of crap!
so instead of big news we get little news just so we can have them give us even bigger news = mindblowing

they know what it is so why make us wait even more?? makes no sense.

Lol a new new store set is not a surprise but like most buy it anyway

Well, it did mention that there would be more surprises throughout the day. I only hope that it's not all Store-related. I want some EP details. This is the first time in the history of The Sims (out of that I know, anyway) that news for an EP has not been available when so close to the release date. If it comes out in May, then there is only a month to promote the hell out of the new EP. Then again, if a farmer can milk a cow in no time, then so can EA.

The big surprise is next week, so I'm not sure why people are getting worked up over some store sets. The only worse-case scenario for me would be another stand-alone game like Medieval being announced. As long as that isn't the surprise, they can announce their intention to stand on their head for all I care.

Other than that, the new set is a cute little country kitchen.

I have been thinking about this. People who don't like children in general can still love their own children. People who love their own children can still find them tiring and annoying if they have to spend too much time with them. Then again, this is a game. The "doesn't like children" trait should be clear cut, not complex and realistic.

i hate delay...
the medieval storm is over..now give us news about the new and exciting EP(s) we have all been waiting, and waiting.....and waiting for, dammit!!!

So what was the super secret they promised to announce yesterday? I still see the text in the event invitation but I don't seem to find any announcement.

There was supposed to be a big announcement today but earlier in the week they decided to push it back to April 5th because they're going to make two big announcements on that day instead. So today they just made a small announcement which was that a kitchen set will be added to the store.

If you feel like trawling through endless posts of nonsense to get the one that EA made informing us of the store set then it's on the Sims 3 facebook wall.

Today's super secret reveal was just a few store sets. Expansions to the Frontier Finds, Street Couture, and Fairy sets. For some reason they didn't update the event page but they put it on their Sims 3 page: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?f...5078&aid=281622

I wasn't expecting Generations to be announced today, but if it isn't announced on the 5th I'm going to laugh if the name suddenly gets changed to "The Sims 3 Forever" when it eventually does get announced. Just saying.

Man, I wish those sets would have at least looked good. For the exception of a few nice deco items in the kitchen set, they looked quite blaah. Anyhow, thanks for the info guys.

That's what I was thinking. The sets are very unflattering. Heck, one of the sets that was a set up to be a surprise is just a different set but scaled down for teens and kids. How disappointing

Was anybody honestly interested in that set when it was for adults?

I would say the sets look lame but to be honest I feel pretty much the same way about all sets on there - Not worth the money.

EA probably delayed whatever they were originally going to announce just so they could advertise the store even more.

Bah, how can store sets even count as a surprise? Don't we get new ones every month? That's about as surprising as Tuesday arriving after Monday. Way to go, EA.

If the announcement was new store sets then EA basically had everyone on hold for...a commercial. WTF! An example of how EA sucks at times.


I also agree with tryguy and EL fiel that it was illogical for EA to tamper with The Sims the way they have in TS3 since the original game play is what made the game so popular to begin with.

Guys. Look at the calendar >.>

*coughs*It's obviously April Fools.

The content = recycled and uninteresting.

Either that or EA is just stupid.

Maybe they decided to push back the announcement because of Great Ideas day. They probably didn't want to confuse people.

Wow, was the big announcement really about some sets? *sighs* I lost internet connection yesterday and even resorted to loading the damn Sims 3 website on my mobile (which took ages) just to check the news!

Disappointing. But, it seems the EP news might come next week, April 5th. If it's more sets, I might just cry.