This is my biggest question right now. I've tried starting several legacy families, but I've only gone as far as having the first generation get pregnant...
My question is: How long does it take (in hours of playing the game and days in real life) to get through a generation (meaning from a Sim's birth to their first child during adulthood), or go from cradle to grave?
Also, how many generations have you gone through, and how long did it take?
When I first heard about the Legacy Challenge back in 2005 on the TSR forums, I thought it'd be relatively easy to go from one generation to another. But now I'm finding out it would realistically take at least a year for a Sim addict to go through 10 generations. Probably even longer for people who don't play the sims as often and aren't as committed (like most of us)... But then again, who on here isn't a Sims addict?
I'm also wondering how to keep the game interesting, especially during the more boring moments like college, old age, etc...

Well I rotate through families. I think in a year I finally got to 3rd generation LOL.
And I don't do college. I use a hack so a sim can get any job, degree or not. College sounds soo boring to me.

I'm starting Gen 4, after beginning to actively play Pleasantview (almost exclusively) about a year, year and a half ago. I rotate through households, one sim-week at a time, and I typically go through three or four families in a play session. I have A LOT of households to rotate through, though (at the moment, it's 33, though there's a few teens about to turn into adults and seed their own households).

As for boring moments... I don't do a lot of university. I will on occasion, to change things up: I'll pick a few teens to go off to university and then play them as a single household as long as I can stand it. For example, this next round, I have a set of triplets going off to university at once.

Old age - many of my elder sims still have underage kids living in the house, and they normally keep their jobs until close to death.

Math: For the purposes of this analysis, we will assume 30 minutes of play time = one Sim day. This can be significantly more if you take your Sims to community lots or pause frequently, or slightly less if you fast forward through more than sleep. Let's also assume, for the sake of speeding through the generations, that adult females will have one pregnancy on the third day of adulthood. This includes our CAS founder. I'm going to skip Uni completely, because there are simply too many variables (when you send the teen, do they graduate or drop out, etc.). To further speed through the generations, we will also age everyone up with birthday cake before the game forces aging at 6pm. Life stages will therefore be:

Baby: 2 days
Toddler: 3 days
Child: 7 days
Teenager: 14 days
Adult: 28 days
Elder: determined by status at each birthday, average @ 20 days.

CAS female #1 - pregnant after 90 minutes of play, gives birth at 3 hours. That baby becomes an adult at 16 hours. Repeat for 9 more generations, never playing any spares = 160 hours.
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Personally, I play a Prosperity hood in rotation. It currently takes me 2 weeks to advance the neighborhood one day.
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Keeping it interesting: http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=334957

I started up a basic mom/dad/toddler family in CAS about 3 or 4 weeks ago (The Pagnottos). The family expanded with the addition of three more children, and the two oldest daughters currently have children of their own (3 grandchildren total). My intent is to have the family grow into an extended family, kind of like a Prosperity with twists of Legacy. How far am I willing to go? Probably until either my game corrupts itself from so many people in the neighborhood (if that can happen, never had that happen before) or my computer with the beyond abysmal RAM decides to commit suicide instead of suffering through another round of the Sims.

I've been playing my legacy for a little over a year now and I am on generation four, with a technical generation five baby due soon (but in a sense it's also generation four...long story). However I have so far played all my kids through college and I play all my spares. Right now there's maybe about eight houses I'm playing in with no sims in college currently. I play in a cycle. The most amount of days I play with a house is 6, then 5 in two others, 4 in four houses, 3 in one house, and 2 in the other. Depending on which house I play in depends how long real life time I spend on them. One of the six,five or four day houses takes me about an hour. One of the other houses maybe takes half as long. It also depends on if any big events happen in the house, birthdays, babies, weddings, sending a teen out to find a potential future spouse, alien abduction, a scandalous woo-hoo, a vacation, or the actual building of a house. (Which can take me two to almost three hours, depending on the house.) I never imagined one challenge would take so long....but it keeps me busy and I love it!

I got to generation 7 in my current legacy in a year. I play all the spares and their families as well. Not in any order, I just pick who ever I feel like playing. Currently my legacy is on hold because of the great computer crash of 2010 where I lost everything, and the memory stick my backup is on is in storage but I will get it back in a few weeks after I move. I really hope I the backup works and I can save my people and continue playing them by integrating them to my new hood. In the mean time I started a new hood, where one of the families is officially a legacy. It's still a new legacy as generation 2 consists of one toddler, but theoretically all families are legacies as all my families have one favourite child who will be inheriting the house and any businesses the parents leave behind.

I made a Legacy once in 2005 and found out that I don't like to focus on one family only. I used to play the spares too. I got to generation 6 and stopped due to the first child syndrome.

My current hood is two years old. I started with one sim.
I altered the lifespan of my sims so I can keep them longer.

Atm I have more than 33 households and 115 sims.

Rotation through families and running owned businesses help to keep things interesting. I have childless households, single households and families with one to six kids.

this morning one of my teens aged to adult, it was probably the fastest ive ever raised a kid from birth to adulthood ever. It only took me like 2 weeks!! the furthest ive ever made it was the founder's grandkids (i would call that gen 2 but some people would call it gen 3)

Well gen 5 of my legacy was just born today (is mildly surprised she's alaready half-way through). I have been playing for six months, so I am average a little over a month-and-a-half per generation.

I never do legacies but each family you do play is one with or without rules

If I started right now in 12 hours I could be on my 3 generation because when I do play I will turn it off after three hours then go back in an hour or two cause I want to download custom content. Now I want to install the game but I have to read chapter for sociology class.

How are you getting through 3 generations in twelve hours? *give side-eye*

I just do. I usually speed up things with number 3. I may have a kid when the 2nd Generation grows into an adult. It takes me 2 hours for college - maybe less.

I like playing in marathons. Then I take a break. I haven't played in over a month or two.

I keep rejuvenating my sims or turning aging off... this makes a legacy a bit impossible. (as well as having toddlers who have all their skills and 10 BFF's before aging up. lol)

But even with them being toddlers so long that the want tree breaks for them I've managed to get as far as the third generation being born.

I played my previous legacy to gen 10 in 1 year. I played randomly, sometimes I took a month break from it.

I've played my current 'hood for two weeks and two days, and I'm on gen 3, soon 4. I have 17 households and about 90 sims at the moment. Quite a small 'hood compared to my main one: over 40 households and around 270 sims (gen 2, aging off).

My general playstyle is Properity-based...sort of; I start with between 5 and 10 random CAS-made families in an empty 'hood, and I let 'em run wild, pretty much. (I've never been much for the Legacy Challenge because I tend to get tired of playing the members of just one family.) So for me, the first few rounds of a new neighborhood are quick, and I'll get some of the families to the 2nd generation pretty quickly. But as new households are formed (Which happens quickly because I kick teens out of their birth houses and into Uni, a marriage, or single life pretty quickly; thank you, Inteen, for making teens un-boring! ), it gets pretty bloated pretty fast. *laughs*

My biggest 'hood at the moment is nearing the end of Week 6 (I play each household for a SimWeek, and Uni Sims for two college years per rotation, with the semesters shortened to two days rather than three), and has 24 households (including Uni households) and 117 playables. The oldest families are currently having the matriarchs/patriarchs die off (Except for those who are immortal, of course), and those who had kids all have great-grandchildren, and one has a "great-great" on the way. So I guess that makes it the 4th generation, heading into the 5th, if you count the founders as "1." I've been playing this 'hood since August, so...you do the math. I've had neighborhoods get up to about the 24th or 25th generation before imploding due to sheer size, I think. *laughs*

I know there's a topic for this, but for me, in general, doing different things with different families keeps me going. Like I'll decide that a certain family is going to a farm family. Or a crafting/artisan family. Those types of families won't have jobs and have to earn money from the land/their craft. Others will be a standard family with jobs. Others will be family business owners. Others will be all about the aliens (Thanks to a hacked telescope ). One could be a crazy cat lady who shares a quaint little cottage with a dozen cats. One could be a pair of Romance-Sim "swingers" who adore each other but who each want to woohoo 20 different Sims and have no problem with their spouse achieving their goal. Really, since I play families in rotation, there's always something new coming up, so I always have something different to look forward to, which keeps me going if I'm finding that a given household is dragging. So that's always my suggestion, if you tend to get bored: Switch to a different family/household doing different things!

I like to take my time, so the family furthest in terms of generations after almost 2 years of play is in the 3rd/4th gen I have a lot of families and really adore the childhood stage, so that gets extended a lot. Plus winter and summer vacations prolongs it a bit as well.

However, before my hiatus when I did challenges, I think I finished my first legacy in 3 months.

At that speed you gotta be missing a ton of stuff, think about slowing it down you might be pleasantly surprised.

After reading through some of these it also makes me wonder what is the biggest legacy anyone has ever played? I mean that has to be true dedication of the simmer and love of their family legacy.
I've never gotten past Generation 3 and seeing someone go up to 10 is amazing to me.

I've gotten up to 7 generations before they imploded It was my fault mostly cause I was trying to move their house and the game got closed or something and they got destroyed. I've never made it farther than that. I usually give up after 3 or 4 and make a new family ^^; I usually just play mainly one family until it gets boring and then make a new one. I've tried rotating through spares and stuff but I just can't do it :\ I prefer to focus on one family

I can never get a family generation past the first. Mostly because my chances with "Try for Baby" aren't well.

I tried the Legacy Challenge once and I had my sim looking sky and five minutes later she was crushed by a satalite. So my legacy challenge lasted about 15mins. -.-

A month today, I began a legacy challenge. Playing no more than six or seven hours a week, I've managed to get my Generation 6 heiress to adult.

Sometimes a real month or more... other times forever, other times 20 minutes... :P