Maybe it's not hard at all, but they just don't want us to have that yet.

Ewww. Seriously ewww. I didn't think the Simport thing would be so bad. But I had no idea that they were going to take the least entertaining aspects of Zynga games (Farmville and the lot) and put them into the next EP. My guess is that even if you don't buy the EP, the interactive stuff will come with the next patch. Bleah.

I remember when I got asked to take the Sims3 Survey. They asked what expansion you wanted and two of the options were Sims3 Showtime and Sims3 Fantasy. I really wish people had taken time out of their lives to do this survey like I had. I BEGGED for the Fantasy version and it took me only five minutes to explain why. Of course I guess the other people who did take the survey wanted Showtime. It's sad to say but we kind of asked for this. I don't want my game to be locked but I do like that I can finally chat with my friend and play Sims 3 with her. Unlike most people I sit right next to my friend on separate computers and we play together. Now we won't have to be in the same room. I like that feature, I don't like I'm going to pay for stuff that is locked but to me it's worth it for the Genie and magicians. I wanted magic and even if it's an act I'm willing to pay for it.

Although I hate the way the new social features sound, I'm not writing SHT off just yet. I never buy EPs as soon as they come out. One, because they're usually buggy pieces of shit until the patch; and two, I can get other people's opinion about the features and whatever. If it ends up being as horrible as we think it's going to be, then I might not buy it. But I'm not giving up hope just yet.

I've hardly played TS3 since Showtime's annoucement, maybe once or twice only. Now I don't know if I am ever going back now that these 'social features' exist and seem worse than I thought they would be. It's been TS2 all the time for me now. It's a shame because I really did like TS3 At least I really like TS2 too.

I've grown up with Sim games, starting with Simtown as a wee kid... To me TS3 in overall has been not much but a huge step backwards in every possible way, when looking at it in the entire Sim franchise. It's a big mess technically, visually and gaming vise. A big, sloppy mess. They haven't improved the game since TS2, they kinda just well... ruined it all. The game could've been ---So Much More--- than what it has been.

I mean really, look at Sim City 4. THAT is what I've been dreaming for The Sims to be like one day, always waiting for the day to dawn. But looking at TS3... yeah, starting to feel like it's just not happening. Not by EA at least.

Laisanae, I completely agree with you. This game could've been so much better and I don't mean some crazy unmanageble stuff, but little details and sandbox gameplay. I also don't like how it turned out very, very mainstream and easy. Where's my heavy metal station, as in sims 1 for gods sake? Yes, the customization is good, but I find myself building and creating worlds instead of playing. Recently I even created a small no lag island all for myself, populated it, tweaked mods and I still cannot play it for more then half an hour. It's just plain boring and predictable. I thought it was just me, but then booted the sims 2 and my family had to chase me away from the PC.
And I find it hard to believe that those producers or developers play and test these EPs before they come out, no matter what they say. How could they miss the vampire and celebrities bugs? What about spawning cars? And what worse is all that bullshit coming from puny kids on the official forums when someone tries to discuss these problems - "don't like it, don't buy it", "coding is hard, what do you expect?" Really, it just makes me mad. And don't get me started on Store, social crap and e-book gameplay, I'll better play D&D with my friends or read a normal book.
I'm seriously considering joining the dark side lately, at least they have cookies.

What bothers me is when you compare TS3 with any of EA's other work, some of which is superb. How can you look at TS3...and then at, say, the Mass Effect series...and possibly think that's anything other than EA just willfully not giving a shit about TS3? That's the equivalent of a brilliant student turning in a half-written homework assignment because he wanted to sleep late that morning despite being perfectly capable of blowing the teacher's mind.

You're right, but the reason for this is that there is a lot more direct big-budget competition in the market with Mass Effect, so in order to sell like an amazing game and stand out above the rest and be the one game that people choose to buy over any other competition, it has to actually BE an amazing game. (Which it is, don't get me wrong...)
On the other hand, there is no direct competition to this sort of 'life-simulation' game (at least, not on the same big-budget scale as the Sims franchise), so it doesn't have to be nearly as spotless. It's the only thing available. And there really are great ideas and imo some things are really implemented well, but it's ok that there's more glitches and bugs and corporate whoring because we, as a market, can't just laugh at it and go somewhere else.
So in the case of your metaphor, it'd be like that student knowing that he's really the best kid at writing papers by far, maybe he has to work hard to excel at math and science, but eh he really doesn't need to do all that much for his writing, since he'll always be the best anyway.
Competition breeds exceptionalism.

I don't really believe that for individuals, but I do believe that for institutions.
Just my thoughts, maybe I'm way off.

If you go to the BioWare forums, the general opinion there is that EA owning BioWare has brought both the Dragon Age and Mass Effect series down. BioWare cares about making great RPGs. EA cares about marketing BioWare's games to wider audiences, and therefore 'streamlines' (or 'dumbs down') RPG elements to appeals to people who play shooters and adventure type games.
Sims stopped being a Maxis game ages ago, and is totally EA created.
BioWare still produces DA and ME, while being pressured by EA suits to change their games to appeal to these wider audiences rather than just the niche RPG market. Whatever is still great about DA or ME comes from BioWare, not EA.

True. Mass Effect was a bad example. I had some sort of brainfreeze that forgot BioWare (how I do not know).

I'm upset over the fact that we have to have friends to unlock things we paid for. NONE of my friends play Sims 3, and I honestly wouldn't even tell them to buy it considering how screwed up the game is right now. They'd all probably be angry I made them waste $30 on a game full of glitches.
I just hope SHT isn't as horrible as EA is making it sound.

When I ask my friend, who is a tremendous Dragon Age fan, how the series are doing with EA, she starts spitting acid. She says that the plot is much more linear, character customization is improved, but what is the point if the dialogs and quests are stupid. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

I watched a Totalbiscuit video lately about Bioware and noticed that the complaints TB and the general public are making feel familiar. In short, the problem is that once you buy the game there is a very important piece of content which is already stored on the disc but you will need to buy it for 10bucks at launch. Collectior's edition has it for free. Either way, it's milking a lot of money. I was kind of listening and thinking about our DLC version, the Store. Massive amount of content, both with and without additional gameplay, for ridiculous amounts of money. Yeah, EA is making their presence known in other games as well.

It does. DA2 was much more dumb, than DA:O. It was rushed, bugged, way to easy and short. Not to speak about combat... Yeah, the effects looked nice, but come on, no friendly fire, no need to position your allies to win? Duh.
Beating the Boss at the very end was like kicking some regular darkspawn from DA:O.

So it's almost the same with Sims, it could have been So Much More and Better but they half-assed it.

I am not buying Showtime that's for sure. No I do not want to unlock things, I already use cheats in single players (Single that is) so I can unlock stuff, I create my own maps and worlds if it's possible like with Oblivion or Dungeon Keeper to make it my way.

Sadly, I feel like in the past few years games have changed way too much. Gone is Sims 2, GTA: San Andreas, Oblivion, Pokemon etc, hell even the older games I miss Dungeon Keeper, Creatures, Sims 1 (Although wasn't that big of a fa, it's still the reason I played Sims 2), some game named O.D.T or something, all these games had something in common. NONE of them needed the damn internet to play most of the features (Even Pokemon Black & White needs more online features, ahem Dreamworld. D/P/P never needed an entire new place to unlock and need the internet for).

Now we got Sims 3, Skyrim, GTA IV (Or is it V?), all of them needs the internet. While I have it, it is a pain in the freaking ass. I cannot play GTA IV instantly? Why? Because there's a stupid update that needs the internet, and my connection is so crap the update doesn't finish and tells me it won't do it. I can still play it but it's still annoying to wait 5mins). Skyrim took me aleast five hours to download the whole damn thing because of steam and my crappy connection. And even before I had a bad connection when I got GTA IV and Sims 3 first, it was still annoying, why?

Because they all needed the internet. They shouldn't need the internet, they should be fine the way they are. Sure you want to create a virtual reality game, I am all for it. But leave Facebook, the internet and all things related out of it, and that includes MMORPG. Half of the old games I mentioned, you never had to buy anything from an online store to make the game feel more like a game, the only thing the internet helped with was mods and they weren't necessary (Patches are always going to be a pain though).

This is what has happened to games. I shouldn't need Steam updating something all the time, or GTA IV making me wait 5-10mins for an update that will never complete. Aleast Sims 3 doesn't require you to have the internet to play it, no you just need an online account and to install it with a connection.

EA aren't the only annoying companies and I am sure the internet will take over single player games like they did with Showtime. (By the way, I enjoyed Nightlife very much but next time, Showtime should have been with Night Life!). All they seem to care about nowadays is money and even getting it on FB.

RIP games from the 90's and before, RIP games from even 2000-2007 (Whenever all of this started). I will surely miss all those games that the only thing I needed was a proper computer for it, that I could install and play. Sure they had their bugs and glitches. Oblivion crashed a lot, Dungeon Keeper did the same but they were still better.

I will still play Sims 3, GTA IV (Maybe Skyrim, but it crashes without warning to desktop like Fallout does, so I doubt I will play it) because well I gotta do something in spare time, but I may not be buying the games that require the internet (Maybe, depending). I can be thankful the Legend of Zelda and some other games haven't turned needing the internet (Even Pokemon B&W isn't as bad, just can't access Dreamworld because I am sick of the Wifi and trying to connect it to the previous Pokemon games). Sims 2 will always remain, while still had it's glitches and bugs that destroyed my neighborhood, half of the time never gave me trouble. Unlike Sims 3, sending them to a vacation might kill my game upon other bugs worse.

I can understand the concept of having an internet connection to easily mass distribute patches etc. However, paying for something and not getting to use all of it because they want to force you to use facebook or whatever other site is popular with the teenie-boppers now is just rediculous. Some people who play TS3 technically can't have a facebook page, for instance, I have a friend of mine who is an english teacher at a local high school. Part of her employment requirements state that she can not have a facebook account due to the amount of students that are on there and the potential for issues to arise. With things that this going on does EA expect people to get a new job just to play a game that they decided would be good online? You'd think they would have learned back when sims online crashed that there are a lot more sims players that enjoy the single player aspect of it. I also do a lot of hardcore MMORGP gaming and for me TS3 is a nice way to be left alone and enjoy time without being disrupted by someone else. Granted the face that you can turn off the social features is a nice thing, but having items in the game that you have to utilize social networking is just counter productive. I like being a pale-skinned basement troll and don't want to deal with other people all the time. It's part of my appeal i guess.

Devil- I know this is off topic but teachers can't have facebook? Wow and I thought EA was annoying not allowing us to fully control our sims and decide when they can break up or be accused of cheating etc, Hm then again I guess real life really is mirroring the Sims 3. I think it's stupid a teacher or anyone can't have a FB, who cares if their students uses it, just don't add them, plain and simple.

But you have a point, EA screwing people over more then making this EP any good.

MTV article about SHT that EA is pushing on facebook, with an interview with Perry.
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/16...-showtime.jhtml

She's apparently just discovered that you can totally change a sim's haircolor. Because anyone who's buying an EP, not the basegame, totally didn't know that.

*cringe* This is starting to become more than embarrassing.

Ok Guys, just been searching on the web about issues with the new patch 1.31 needed and installed with showtime; and what I have found in general are skins not working properly as well as CC. Others were raving about Store content having to be reinstalled. Others said that it was suppose to fix left over bugs of the previous EPs. I had so many issues with pets, I reinstalled all my stuff and patched over 4 times and finally got it to work with other people's mods and fixes; that this time I refuse to patch and install this EP until there is a larger concensus of what is going on with this patch. So far it does not look good; will this time there be a tool to fix skins or other borked items like the last time! I have no idea why people keep on buying EP's from EA while others have to clean their poorly made additions.

They do have a feature to disable the new online feature; however it is plain stupid that they have managed to sell 6 EPs plus stuff packs and every single time they ruin something else, while moders rush to the rescue and save the day with tools to fix borked items, other rerouting worlds with bad builds, etc. Sims is about making easy money for EA, while others mop-up their mess. I am so angry right now, Icould develop an ulser wonder if I can sue them for mental stress

I doubt it's that way for all teachers but I know that at her school they had a problem with a teacher and a student if you catch my drift, so they just told the teachers that they couldn't have a facebook to try and curb any future problems.

I agree with most of the posts here. Quite a few have hit on the real problem with this game. First off I would like to say that I have liked it and hated it. The liking it part though, came from the modders out there. If it wasn't for them, this game would be unbearable. Back to the real problem. EA, electronic arts. Every single franchise they buy, they destroy. As with most companies they understand that with 7 billion people on the planet, there will be enough lemmings that they don't really have to create a quality product. Which means that the rest of us have to suffer through it, or find other hobbies. I'm thinking of reading the classics, and dumping everything 'modern' that is out there, because the quality of games, phones, tv, movies, etc. etc. etc. is horrendous.

Good for them. inyourfacebook is for morons. So is twatter.