Game Or Store Updates? What's Going On?

[Blondboy2835]

Hello Simmers.

I have a bit of a concern according to my favorite Sims 3 Game. I was wondering when there will be any more vacation destinations for the World Adventures expansion pack. I explored all three destinations as I explored all the packages of tombs, but I am not interested in making my own tomb basement. To be honest, when I make a tomb in my basement, I don't believe that it is that fun because it requires a lot of work and will easily remember how I created the tomb. Instead, it would REALLY nice if there was a tomb generator, so that the game can make a tomb for me. For example, I can choose an icon from the Create A Collection Window to set up a theme for the tomb, so that when I clicked the Christmas lights icon, the game will generate a Christmas themed tomb, or something like that. I just got really fascinated when this came to my mind, but I was hoping for a game update.

As soon as I went to The Sims 3 Store, I have completely and shockingly discovered that both the game AND the Store has not been updated since 2014, which I find a bit suspicious. Do you know what is going or why EA is doing this? I looked for a forum similar to the one that I'm writing right now, and I claimed that a Simmer said that EA is only focusing on The Sims 4. I talked to EA advisors several times for good suggestions like the above, but I haven't noticed anything yet for MONTHS, ESPECIALLY when they will be able to release the CAW feature for MAC, not just PC.

Should I find this suspicious because I don't think that EA should just be focusing on one game as there is also a lot of glitches and bug problems in The Sims 3 Game? Can anyone help me with my concerns. Thank you SO MUCH!

[igazor]

@Blondboy2835There's nothing suspicious going on, it was all actually very above-board. The final expansion pack, ITF, was released in late 2013, the final meaningful game patches in Jan 2014 and the final store set in Sept 2014 -- the last few months of store sets were clearly created prior and were just waiting in their queue for release back then. The game concluded its development cycle and there was no TS3 development team after that January. They all left or were put to work on other games (including TS4, of course).

This has always been how the end of development cycle has gone when an iteration of the game has concluded its evolution.  That doesn't make TS3 any less fun to play, but no there isn't going to be a WA 2.0 or other new worlds forthcoming from EA beyond what the existing 11 expansions and the store already have.

There's tons of player made content out there; perhaps you might look for custom content tombs and custom designed worlds that include tombs if designing your own isn't really what you had in mind?

[puzzlezaddict]

@Blondboy2835  Just to piggyback off of what igazor said, there are individual tombs, and worlds with tombs, you could install if you wanted.  Here's an example of a tomb someone made a couple years ago to go on one of the lots in Shang Simla:

https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/933102/an-extra-tomb-for-shang-simla

The same creator has made at least one other tomb that I know of: a desert-themed tomb for one of Rflong's worlds.  The tombs and the worlds overall have been playtested and most if not all issues worked out, so they're safe to add to your game.

As mentioned though, Sims 3 has been out of development for a long time, and as happens with most older games, no one is actively working on any content for it.  That's just what happens.

[Blondboy2835]

Thank you Puzzleaddict HERO, that was very helpful. If I don't have to make more cases, could anyone help me with two more things. One is the CAW for Mac. Since I've seen tools from The Sims 3 Store available for both Mac and PC, such as Create A Pattern, how come Create A world isn't available for Mac. I feel like if I have bought the sims 3 games for Mac, then everything else should be available for Mac. Is there any way that I can try launching CAW for Mac; otherwise, do I need to try purchasing parallels desktop and install the CAW on it?

Also, since there has not been any updates for both the store and game, I encountered a weird bug issue on the Sims 3 launch window. I got the Sims 3 game through Origin, and currently have a Mac OS X Mojave. When I first click on the game app icon, I saw weird glitchy bars on the downloads and installed content buttons, but I was luckily able to launch and play the whole game fine. I just can't download many things from The Sims 3 Store because of the glitch and bug problems. Please inspect my attached photo and tell me why this is happening and how I can fix it, so that I download things into my game more easily.

Thank you again! ;-)

[puzzlezaddict]

@Blondboy2835  CAW has never had a Mac version, but that's no surprise, since there isn't really a Mac version of Sims 3 either.  The game that runs on a Mac is the Windows version inside a wrapper that translates it for macOS, which is the main reason it runs so badly compared to Windows.  Point is, I'm not surprised EA never made CAW for macOS, since it didn't make anything else for macOS, and the chance of it being made available now is pretty low.

If you do want to use CAW, and you have enough drive space, I'd go with Bootcamp rather than Parallels.  You'd buy a Windows license either way, but Bootcamp Assistant is built into macOS, so it's free and supported by Apple, at least to an extent.  Running Windows alone on a partitioned hard drive is much more efficient than running Windows through an app (Parallels) on top of the macOS that's already running too.  And you might find you want to play Sims 3 in Windows as well.  That version of the game runs so much better, it's like upgrading to a whole new computer.

I see the same graphical glitch in Mojave as well, but it's never affected my ability to use the launcher.  I just mouse over the boxes, and they disappear.  I doubt that has anything to do with why you're having trouble installing content.  Downloading from the store can be annoying at times, but I've always been able to make it work.

The three things that help the most in macOS are using Firefox rather than Safari or Chrome, opening the launcher before clicking the Download button, and only downloading one item at a time.  If you do all this and still have trouble getting your content installed, please let me know what happens when you try.