I think that may well be official. I heard there was a trailer at E3. I am rather pleased, but will be miffed if we get single size dogs and cats again. I want to own a farm (without controlling every last cow thank you very much) with dogs and cats that grow and are controllable, plus other pets. I mainly want farms!

From watching the vid, I don't think the dogs will be single size, like someone else said, there seem to be small dogs, and big ones, so hopefully they will "grow". I hope they can breed too! I'd love to have little puppies and kitties in my game! lol

Y'know what annoyed me in sims1? Noone ever got bitten by the hampster!

lol true! In real life they can give you a very nasty nip!

It also annoyed me that the guinea pig could kill the whole household! Guinea pigs are cute and sweet and innocent! They could never do a thing like that! lol

i can just picture it now....a RABIES outbreak! muahahahahaha! i wonder if they included it in the game...i hope so! *evil grin*

maybe yes.. Maybe no.. maybe there is niw "WooHoo" Interaction with #ahem#...

And maybe there is new death type.. and new NPC.. Anything is Imposibble now..

What is the Official name? I've read somewhere it is "New Life" or something like that.. I'll check back..

Yay! I'll have my new computer by then. :D

I'm looking forward to the EP, although, it would be nice to have more animals then just dogs and cats. We should be able to breed other animals and sell them (too?)...like rabbits, or something.

I think people are complaining for no real reason. It's only May - it probably won't be released until November anyway with Maxis' pattern thing, you know? Plus, EA has a ton of games and stuff they have to do for E3, they can't take a whole hour to talk about one small expansion pack. Remember with the first one for the Sims it showed mainly cats and dogs, but you had plenty of options when you went to the pet store.

I'm sure they're going to combine Open for Business with this Pets idea, so that means more jobs. More items that will be pet related, plus a ton of new pets and interactions. I'm hoping they'll have werewolves, since with NL and Uni, they hadded the two other main themes: vampires and zombies.

Just remember to not judge so harshly right now when this expansion probably won't be released for another five months! The other expansion packs had a lot to offer - this WILL be an expansion pack, not an item pack like Family Fun Stuff I haven't been disappointed before so I'm sure they're not going to disappoint us now.

As for the video, I think it looks really good. The dogs and cats look like they definately fit in with the Sims world and how everything looks. I just can't wait to see what some creators will create with new animal meshes

I hope they increase the number of members that a family can have: with two parents, two kids and a servo, that doesn't leave room for many pets!

Well I would hope pets wouldn't be a part of the family in that way. I never had unleashed, and I'm not sure I'll get this (I have to wait to find out more about it). But I wouldn't want to have to control pets, that's not like real life, and would be way too much to deal with if you already have 6 or 7 sims to control. Pets should be able to interact, but not controlled....trained and told what to do is fine, but you having to tell them to things all day would be too much, IMHO.

Hmm.. I really Hope that Pets is not a part of family member..

Still leaves three spaces.:P

I just hope they don't turn the pets into NPCs because of the family limit. I'd rather have only a few pets and have them as family members than being able to have loads but unable to control the animal.

I'm curious, why would you want to be able to control the animal?

To make them 'whoohoo' and breed kittens/puppies of course :D

We were able to control them in Sims1. To make them eat, go to the bathroom. Why wouldn't we want to control them in Sims2?

So I can get them to interact with the world around them, like in Sims 1. With each other, with objects, with the Sims themselves. In Makin' Magic, the dragons you got there were NPCs, and they were not as much fun because you couldn't control them and they kept running away. Plus, each pet in real life has it's own personality right?

Chobitz: I get that, but maybe they could add an interaction, like introduce this dog to another dog, and hope for the best?

Dandello: I have no interest in telling an animal to eat and to the bathroom. Pets, IMO, should know to eat when hungry (AI), and sims should train their pets to go to the bathroom, or they'll have accidents. I just don't think you should have to control a pet to make them eat, they should be able to do that themselves.

If you have to control the animals, it would be a major con. (Which is part of the reason I'm on the fence about getting it before I get more information)

I never had Makin' Magic or Unleashed. But you should be able to interaction with your pets, by playing with them, or clicking on objects, like throw frisbee or toy, for the dog to play fetch, etc. The pets could have their own personalities with also being NPCs.

Meh, I still have to say I'd prefer the immediacy of having them as a family members rather than random 'guests'. Plus, the personality and the training won't be as good if they were NPCs.

With actions like chase tail, pounce on mouse, attack sim, guard etc. Stuff you can't really do from a third person view.

lol thats practically the concept of Spore so i doubt that much creation will be inthe EP, unless... :confused:

oh and if there are werewolfs it could be like when a stray dog with rabbies bites you or something you become a WereWolf/dog

I thought that the servos should have been NPCs too... just like in TOS. I would like it better if the pets were NPCs, after all in real life you have to train your pets to do what you would like them to do (well, actually, my cats trained me to do what they wanted me to do!). I'd love it if they brought back the guinea pig or Claire the Bear, though.

I wanted Servos to NPCs too, and am still disappointed they're not.

I posted a poll thread about whether pets should be controllable or not:
http://www.sims2community.com/showthread.php?t=16157

I think I would prefer both Pets and Servos to be NPCs, as they take up valuable family-member places. this is less of an issue in The Sims 2 than The Sims 1, as I rarely have 8 family members anyway, but in the original I didn't like the fact that pets took up the spaces of children.

I am in two minds... Controllable pets would be nice... but It shouldn't limit the family members

I agree with that. If anyone noticed tho ever since nightlife came out. I think maxis was prepareing for animals or larger families for a while now. When nightlife came out, if you kept adding more and more people to the family so it exceeded 8 wiht boolprop, aa new panel apeared next to the original 8 instead of going on and on up the screen to the point where you could see anything. There are also animal files in SimPE that ive noticed and other people also have. No matter what, pets are going to be controllable because there are things we wont want them to get into such as rooms. I cant imagine pets in the sims 2 as ghosts though. And I to relaly REALLY hope that there are various ages. I know theres gonna be a ton of sizes and dogs but I hope they grow. If you think aobut it though. Dogs live around 10 to 15 years. Thats about 1/8 of a human life time. Someone could calculate an estimeate of days a dog would live in a sim life if we knew how long an average sim lived. Cats live from 15 to 20 years.

The dogs Ive noticed so far are

shitzu- a little blakc one in the tub
Doberman- playing in the fountain/looked VERY plasticky
Black Lab- playing in the fountain with its owner/ water wiggler
Dalmation- laying in front of owner
Lab- ALl over the place
Boxer- Thanks to PennyTheCorgi. It is in the tub
???- small whitish dog that was playing with its owner in the begging of the movie possibly a puppy labrador retreiver?
???- orange adn white dog eating trash with a lab and 2 next to eachother barking at owner
???- if you look really close in the movie, you see a nanny petting a small black one way in the back/ you cant tellw hat it is at all.. it could be a cat

Cats
There have only been 3 different cats and they all seem to hvae the same mesh

All orange tabby
Orange body and white face tabby
All white tabby

Thats what ive seen so far