TS1 was freaking brilliant. The developers of TS3 should be forced to spend a couple of months in a monastery where they aren't allowed to do anything but play TS1 and meditate on its awesome charm.


Hi, my name is Fernweather. I'm 43 and I still play with virtual dollhouses.

TS2 pros:

- More clothing options. There are a lot more styles to choose from. Despite the create-a-pattern feature in TS3, I prefer TS2 CAS.
- Better, fully EPs. I only had two EPs, but they felt well done and not. . . halfassed.
- Clothing stores. Srsly, I loved these. D:
- Facial structures. Unless your graphics are on high in TS3, they look like crap.
- Memories. I love to look back on my sim's lives every now and then.
- Story telling.

Sims 3 Pros
- Open neighborhood
- Neighborhood aging
- Story progression (even just the capacity for it)

I'm wondering - is there a mod that ages the entire neighborhood in TS2? Or a mod that lets you edit the ages of sims, much like Twallan's supercomputer does in TS3?

I loved Sims2 but when I tried to go back, the things that irritated me slightly back then (screen loading waits, game lag when witches appeared, shopping areas that looked interesting but were rather boring, fridges running out, werewolf dogs attacking mine, recolors, badly designed apartments) irritated me even more now. So I packed it up, along with the expansions and gave them all to my nephew... cleared up a TON of computer space too

I agree it depends on your play style, I never got into the aliens, witches and werewolves or the University and I never even looked at "memories". I do miss the changing seasons, but that's about all ... and I figure we'll get that eventually

Brilliant, after reading this i had to get sims1 and MM installed just so i could sodding churn butter and make all the charms. Cheers guys hahaha!

I enjoy 3 more than 2, I have no idea why though. I do miss uni though, which no one else seems to haha

Well, for me I sadly gave up on the Sims 2 around BV. I don't own the expansions past it; but honestly I have no desire to. I loved the Sims 2 for a long time, with it's boxload of features added by expansion after expansion. I loved weather. I loved supernatural sims. I especially loved memories and they are one of the most painful losses in the transition for me. There was a lot to love about the Sims 2.

Only... the fact that the neighborhood never changed a bit, it's resident's locked in stasis, with Mortimer Goth still coming to yell at your 8th generation Elder the same way he did that Sims 1st generation ancestor... Well, that always ruined immesion for me. The fact that if you wanted anything more than a hermit Sim it was load screen after load screen after load screen to go anywhere. Little annoyances like having a Vampire in a basement with no windows still getting scorched by the 'sunlight'. How memories would reset under certain conditions, so that you could have an Elder married with six kids 'Woohooing for the first time'.

Sims 3 has the three things that always seemed glaring in their absence in TS2. Things that the lack of killed TS2 for me.

Open neighborhoods; having an entire town at my Sims fingetips. Being able to pan around the towns while my Sims sleep, watching the stars and looking at Sunset Valley lighthouse. Being able to take my Sims on hikes, or just pop next door. Soon this will be taken to new heights witht he ability to walk down the street to a local club and party. And. No. Loadscreens. In. Sight. Sure, we still load into holday destinations, but once you are there it's the same deal.

Story Progression; I know some people hate the default one and use mods, but personally i'm over the moon with it even existing (faults and all). The 'hood is always packed with old and new faces. New children are born into the world to mix with my own sim-kids. Best of all... no grumpy old Mortimer coming over to bug my Sims throughout three centuries thanks to universal Aging.

Not to say it's perfect, it's just that TS3 fixes all the paticular gripes I had with TS2. I'm always annoyed that the supernatural creatures all in in some manner, soon enough including vampires. Only; mods and effort can fix those paticular gripes. It's also justifiable in some manner. Ghosts return to the netherworld. Mummies, no longer in a sealed enviroment (such as a tomb), will rot over time exposed to the air. SimBots arn't as advanced as Servos; so their parts either eventually malfunction beyond repair, or the 'life core' eventually runs out of whatever power the life-fruit gives it. Liberal use of life fruit can help with the Mummy, and soon Vampires i hope.

If all your Sims start to look the same with Story Progression adding 'default' look Sims it's a pain yes, but you can always spend half an hour making outragously odd looking Sims and planting them around your town to add more deversity over a few generations.

While TS3 will never be TS2 with an open world, after all it's expansions are out it should be just as substantial. Right now we have, basically, what TS2 was with Uni and Nightlife. It felt pretty lacking then too. It wasn't til around Pets that it really came into it's own in my opinion.

I'm actually about to start an experiment with an alternate save and my current family. I'm going to have the cook create as many Ambrosia as she can (some with the replicator glitch) and put them in a chest (where they don't seem to rot, despite becoming 'normal' quality food). I'm then going to make one of my Teens into a Mummy using the buydebug (getting the Cursed Sarc) menu and have it 'sleep' in the Sarc until it needs to eat it's Ambrosia, and then again. I'm going to put aging onto Short, and fast forward time. I'll keep this going as long as I can, and then i'm going to see how the neighborhood looks, under the 'care' of Story Progression.

Off topic I know, but just wanted to mention it.

I play both of them, but more so Sims 2 than Sims 3 because the Sims 2 works amazingly on the family PC even with all of the expansion packs installed. Unfortunately the Sims 3 is so slow on that PC, so I put it on my MacBook because even though it was technically bought through my school for school and is already 2 years old, I have more than half the memory left on it. Unfortunately it's still slow, but it's more tolerable than on the PC and because I don't have all day to wait for a sim day to pass, I play the Sims 2 more often so I can actually make some kind of progress and get past generation one.

I cant go back to Sims 2. I've tried, but it bored me to death.

The Sims 3 is pretty slow on my macbook pro, so i installed The Sims 1 for old time's sake. lmao. I'd love to get the Sims 2 again and install that.

The main thing I miss in TS2 is OFB, and I miss it quite alot, especially when I see booming businesses in RL. So I might go install TS2 with OFB and a few other packs. But it seems weird going back where townies never age on their own xD

I love my sims 2 because of all the packs but after I got my new laptop and the sims 3 worked on it, I haven't played it since ^ ^

Nope, haven't touched TS2 since I got TS3 at launch. Although I very much miss pets/weather/OFB/the slap dance from BV/restaurants, I know we'll get these things eventually (okay, maybe not the slap dance but I can hope), all I need to do is be patient. I've been hoping for a seamless neighborhood since TS1 so that's one thing I can't live without now that TS3 has it. Plus, by the time TS3 was out I was tired of the graphics and loading screens so I was open to change.

Lol I agree with this, but my Sims 3 townies either age extremely fast, or extremely slow. My active family can all go from toddlers to elders and the townies will only change to one other stage, or die before my sims even hit children. It's insane.



YES! Finally someone else feels the same! I have felt nothing towards the Sims 3 expansions so far. I HATED World Adventures, and really find nothing exciting but wasting time with Ambitions.

I agree that the gameplay in TS3 is better than TS2 in many ways, but I've got MUCH more CCs in TS2 than TS3- some of which I haven't even tried yet. This is what makes me reluctant to let go of it.

I think that one is a matter of personal taste. I find that Sims 3 has more decent clothing options in the base game alone, than Sims 2 did with 7 expansion packs.

Yes, Sims 2 had page after page after page in the catalogue, but it was all crap IMO. The outfits were either dowdy, dorky, or hookerware. I love not having to slog through 80 pages of chicken suits, diving gear, kilts, togas, and just plain hideous crap to find the handful of outfits that I deemed usable (most of which were from the H&M pack). I had so much cc in Sims 2 that it took 20 minutes for the game to load. In Sims 3 I have 2 pairs of downloaded pants and a few odds and ends from the store, and yet my Sims never want for something suitable to wear. :D

One of the things that bothers me the most is men's adult wear.

In the base game, there are three full outfits for men. Three. That's it. And they're all dressy type. Female children had more full length outfits then adult men.

In TS2, there were dozens to choose from. I didn't have 5 people wearing the same shirt. Even if you don't like something, it's still okay to have variety because someone else will.

I'm getting more and more into TS3 the more I play it (although mostly still creating a world at the moment). I keep saying I must go back to continuing unfinished projects on Sims 2 as well as playing as my families as I loved them, but it's just not drawing me back at the moment.

I think from a building/creative point of view TS3 is so much more flexible and homogenous, even if it doesn't have the amount of CC in it that my TS2 game has. I mean, you could be playing a sim, take them to a comm lot you've built and then notice something in that comm lot that might need editing/tweaking, so instead of the tedious process of taking your sim back home, saving the game, going to the neighborhood view and then loading the comm lot to edit it - as in TS2 - it takes all of 10 seconds to do it in TS3. I really like that aspect. It's like you're creating your hood "in situ".

I miss the memories aspect of the game but I can see why EAxis didn't do it this time - potential corruption etc. It makes TS3 sims a little less soulful I must admit, but there's no worry about saving a copy of a favorite sim you're playing in the library and then putting them in a new or different hood to interact with other characters.

Given that full outfits are generally going to be dresses or suits, I'm not surprised that little girls kick ass in that scenario. How many suits can you possibly have compared to dresses? Plus, little girls kicking ass is cool!

And I've never yet had two townies show up wearing the same thing in Sims 3 (which was a common occurrence in Sims 2). Maybe the same outfit, but I would never know it, not given the different sizes, colours and designs.

This is probably one of those "agree to disagree" things, but it's most certainly not an automatic pro as far as Sims 2 goes. In my opinion (take that for what it is worth) quantity does not equal quality.

I do agree though, that men are ignored in the Sims fashion world, as are elders.

I had the Sims 2 installed for a while after I recieved the Sims 3. At the time, I was just so disappointed in the Sims 3, that I would go back - and often.

However, I decided to give it a try and forced myself to play for about a month and soon enough, I really began to enjoy it.

There are some things I truly miss from the Sims 2, such as seasons and pets (Pets did need a little tweaking though). I miss the thousands of custom content downloads that made my neighborhoods and interactions unique. I miss babies with legs and brightly colored eyes from birth, not the cookie cutter version in the sims 3. I miss the snow, my kitties and changing tables. I miss that big teddy bear that came with OFB, lol. I miss the bunkbeds I had downloaded - badly.

Even though I miss all this I realize that some of it came out years after the initial game came out. Like all good thing's, one must wait. I love the customazition in the Sims 3, from the traits, to being able to get my entire household covered in one theme. It saves me from having hundreds of downloads. I also like the fact that you can have natural triplets and can travel to egypt to explore tombs and customize your neighbor's looks by giving them a makeover.

So far the expansions for the Sims 3 have been a little "so-so" for me. Ambitions is great, but as a bit of a family oriented player it's hard to play someone on the job while also minding their spouse and five children. Traveling is fun, but it's more difficult with a family in tow, and going alone on vacation sometimes seems pointless, lol. Don't get me wrong, they are great. I just hope for something a little more...mainstream. I know the upcoming expansion is akin to Nightlife for the Sims 2. Of all the expansions for the Sims 2, that was my least favorite. I enjoyed the vampire arc - for about 10 minutes - and the town, but it wasn't my favorite by far.

I'm looking forward to family oriented XP's. Season's and Pet's added to my gameplay and incorperated fun interactions and goodies, such as snowball fight's, raking, building a snowman, kittens and puppies, and rain. I love stuff that the children and parents can do together. And I want bunkbeds back! (I really need them, lol).

I'm the kind of simmer that likes different interactions within my family, items to improve my home and looking out my window to see rain (Just maybe not ever 5 seconds like in the Sims 2). I want my toddlers to interact with each other, not just over the play table.

I know good things are in store for the Sims 3 and I can't wait! As for the Sims 2, it is sitting on my shelf with all it's expansions and quite a bit of dust. After getting so involved with the Sims 3 it's impossibe to go back now.

Until I can see the rain and have a houseful of cats, I'll be content with what I have now. I love the Sims 3 and can't wait for more!

Happy simming!

No, because I enjoy TS3's new features too much: open neighborhood, collecting stuff, improved skill system, and most of all, traits!

I also agree that TS3's base game has much better clothing than TS2 base game with the ugly flat jeans and attached sandals, or that wonderful pair of female trousers with flames drawn on them lol. Plus all the possibilities opened by CAST!

Now what I miss from TS2 are all the touches that made the game more special, and made you more attached to the Sims: the memories, cut scenes, which made first kisses, woohoo and marriage feel special. The cute cuddle interactions which made for great and easier to take pictures, the kid and toddler interactions. Of course, I also miss some objects, though I bet we'll be getting most of them in upcoming EPs (no bowling though *sigh*).

But now I couldn't go back to the loading screens and aspirations instead of traits, so I'll wait for TS3 to be improved, and am hoping for a great Late Night EP as Nightlife was my favourite TS2 EP, with Seasons.

It sounds like you and I play the exact same way. I don't think I ever played with a vamp or even saw a werewolf the entire time I played TS2. I don't think I ever looked at memories either. I do miss the cinematics though.



That actually makes two of us

I play University all of the time and my daughter can't get enough of sims "college life"...we'd both miss it horribly if we didn't have it.

Very true, it always takes me for-ever to figure out what to chose for them, as there are barely no options. Thankfully I found some basic elder clothes through mysims3blog and dressing elders is easier now, no easy, just a bit easier.

Other than that, I have to say I like how elders are now. In TS2 I had to use the adult clothing for elders hack, because EA:s version of elders was way too saggy for my taste. I also like that they don't become elders so young like they did in TS2, I think it was 50 or 60. Elders are much more viberent and active now.


I miss the idea of uni, but not the way uni was implemented in TS2. Hopefully they will bring it back in some form.

I still play The Sims 2 and even The Sims 1 TS1 have something in it that makes it special and I really love this "something". I can't get enough of Open for buisness and Univercity

The open neighborhood is over rated. You can't take your Sims from place to place like you could in TS2. If you go on vacation (WA) there is a loading screen like in TS2 but at least your Sims in any one of your neighborhoods can visit those destinations. The rest of the neighborhoods are limited to residents only which since everything has been a town of some sort until now (WA excluded) it didn't really matter but now with the next EP we will finally have a city and in order for your Sims to utilize any of what they have to offer--they have to live in that town. If not having loading screens means impeding the Sims freedom of movement from place to place and giving up active community lots for RHs then I would rather have loading screens. TS3 Sims are flat and lifeless compared to TS2 and TS1 sims. The new TS3 EPs tend to grow old and boring within a month so...what's the point?

I love TS2 and have been playing it since shortly after it came out. I also have all the expansion and stuff packs.. I bought TS3 a couple days after its release and loved it but it just didn't hold the same charm for me that TS2 did. Not to mention that fact that it loved to randomly turn my computer screen black for about ten seconds then return to normal.

In TS3 I love the fact that you can catch more than just four types of fish and the open neighborhood, the neighborhood again, and common things like that, but there wasn't much else that caught my attention like TS2 did and still does.

In my personal oppinion, I think that if they were able to combine the idea of TS3 (like the aging, fish, collection, and so on) with the graphics, memories, and all out awsomness of TS2, then that would be like the best sims game they could have. Plus if they add the beautiful magic charms of TS1 in the mix there would be nothing in the world better. Of course, that is just in my oppinion...