Expansion Packs: Most Played to Least Played.

I think you will find that the majority of TS3 players on strong enough systems, despite the silly warning from Patch 1.69 that can be permanently dismissed anyway, play with all of our EPs all of the time. So for many of us, that would be all 11 of them.

If what you really meant was which features of the EPs do we call upon most often, even that gets difficult. I wouldn't at first say that IP. ITF, and Showtime directly impact my sims' everyday lives as long as they don't live in the EP worlds...but then I stop to think about how many of their objects, skills, and seemingly unrelated things (like Dip Kissing, Astronomy, and Soil Rugs from ITF; Genies and domino tables from Showtime, CAS parts from all of them, etc.) one can take for granted. Even if my sims never travel, there are so many game elements offered up by WA and Uni that I can't imagine playing without them now.

For a re-introduction to the game, you might want to start out with something basic like base game and one or two of WA, Ambitions, Generations, and LateNite. Then as you play and your game progresses, slowly add one or two EPs at a time into the mix as you go. There's nothing wrong with adding EPs as one goes on, there's only problems with ongoing saves if one tries to remove any. There's even an entire style of play progression based on this slow re-addition of the packs with each successive generation, although of course one doesn't really have to take things quite that slowly.

The packs that impact everyday gameplay for me the most are probably Seasons, Ambitions, and Generations and UL. I send sims to UL constantly and I prefer my sims to get the additional UL traits whenever possible. I use the self-employment careers more than the rabbit hole careers and frequently have a sim master sculpting or inventing. Seasons gives a nice sense of time progression that I can't imagine playing without. Generations adds afterschool activities (which all my child sims enroll in) and a host of other interactions that I use in every family that I play. I do love WA and ITF. I send my sims to those world frequently and use the objects and interactions from them so much that I can't imagine playing without them but I don't use them in every game I play.

I haven't really incorporated much of Showtime or Pets into my gameplay aside from CAS and Build/Buy mode objects. I enjoy the genie from Showtime but I haven't done any of the careers or played in Starlight Shores.

It's like igazor said, I play with all EP's installed. And use all features through each other (often don't even know what's from which pack exactly, apart from the obvious features like for instance adventuring and open careers).

Seasons is the most needed and realistic one!and i use it in all my gameplay

Nrass mods make such a huge improvement on game play. When I first started loading up on expansions and everything (before finding mods and maintenance tips) I found the Sims 3 to be unplayable because of how buggy and laggy it was. And it really astounded me how a game that old could run so bad when much much higher end games ran so smooth. With the nrass mods I've noticed a massive improvement, and I use a batch file to do maintenance (I made this by following a tutorial form someone here on the forums to delete the 5 cache files by using just one, I just added a few other files to the list that are recommended to regularly clean out).

That aside, here is my expansion pack list of most to least:
supernatural & seasons I honestly can't decide which of these is more important, so they're in first place together. I tend to make certain characters in every sims game, and my favorites are a family of sorcerers, so supernaturals to me are very essential.
Seasons adds so much more to the environment that makes the game feel more alive and I absolutely love it, plus the plethora of new activities isn't bad either.

World adventures
Growing up my favorite games in the world were the tomb raider series (I love archaeology and ancient cultures, so it adds a tiny pinch of that). World adventures felt very tom raider esque to me. The first time around I was super unimpressed with this pack and shelved it for awhile after I played it. The second time around however I stuck it out a lot longer in terms of investigating ruins and quickly fell in love with the pack. It's safe to say this pack will never be shelved by me again.

Generations
This expands gameplay so much if you're a family simmer (which I am). The objects and new features are super enjoyable.

Island paradise
I love this mod in conjunction with the nraas traveler mod as I can visit the tropics on vacation without having to move there. I also really love houseboats, mermaids, and diving.

Pets
I try so hard not to love this pack, because I always wind up spending a lot of time picking up strays, cleaning them up and naming them, and giving them to Sims around town (if I don't keep them myself). The pets are adorable and the amount of effort that must've gone into some of these animations is staggering. It's just a beautifully done pack.

Ambitions
This one took me awhile to get into (and if I must be honest, I still have a lot of stuff to test out), but the more I explore the content the more I love it. It adds a LOT of stuff to do and a lot of stuff I make regular use of.

Least played:

University life There really isn't anything wrong with this pack, I love a lot of the objects in it. I just haven't had the time to sit down and enjoy the full experience of it, and it seems like there is always something keeping my main family from utilizing the university features, so I haven't really gotten the chance to test it in full. I think the main reason likely is that the Sims I play most had just started a family at the time I got this pack so I'm more involved with raising the sim kids than sending one of the parents off to college. I plan to start a new save once I finish my most recent CAW project and will make sure to use university when i do.

Late night
The vampires were fun, but overall I just didn't get too into the features of this pack. I use some of the objects in it regularly, but not many of the actual features. And the celebrity system drives me up the wall. There is no reason a stay at home mom should have paparazzi and autograph hounds stalking her. It eventually got to the point any household I play regularly has the security fence to keep this irritating stalkers out of my yard and away from my poor sim family.

Into the future
Again, nothing wrong with this pack. I used to time travel on my main sim when she was younger (sometimes with her dad tagging along since I didn't want my teen sim running around unattended in the future). However once she moved out on her own and started having other adventures I just gradually used the time travel feature less. Plus now that I have the nraas traveler mod I have so many vacation destinations it's just less interesting to spend time in the future. The main reason I do so at all anymore is to check on my descendants. Even if I find them to be monstrosities I like seeing how they're doing, and if they're having a hard time I try and help them out by giving them a makeover or polishing up their houses if they're living in hovels.
That aside, I do love the collectibles and plumbots, I still have the plumbot my sim built when she was younger.

Showtime This is my least favorite expansion so far. The only reason I got this pack was for the singer profession and karaoke machine, and the price at the time was dirt cheap.
The online interactive features and achievement system were buggy and very unappealing to me, and I came into the series way too late in it's life span to have used it much anyway (most likely anyway). I also didn't utilize many features of it.

Well that's the end of this rambling post!

@Linamints I’ve enjoyed all packs modless. I love the mods I have now, but in no way do they improve the gameplay of those packs.

@JoAnne65 I think you misunderstood my post. I didn't mean the mods the OP mentioned changed the core game play features, but rather make the game run smoother because they fix so many issues that were never fixed by EA, this to me, does equal better game play because it's more stable. I was not trying to say the mods changed the core game play in any way aside from the traveler mod enabling Isla paradiso for vacation instead of strictly moving there.

"Linamints;c-16264498" wrote:
@JoAnne65 I think you misunderstood my post. I didn't mean the mods the OP mentioned changed the core game play features, but rather make the game run smoother because they fix so many issues that were never fixed by EA, this to me, does equal better game play because it's more stable. I was not trying to say the mods changed the core game play in any way aside from the traveler mod enabling Isla paradiso for vacation instead of strictly moving there.

Ah, ok, I think I did misunderstand. I agree mods can improve the experience in that respect. I love how much freedom and possibilities Mastercontroller gives me for instance.

From most to least :

Late Night
Ambitions
Generations
Seasons
Pets
World Adventures
Showtime
University Life
Supernatural
Island Paradise
Into the Future

If Island Paradise's world worked, I'd play more often with it's features, no other world has underwater lots to dive in and I'm too lazy to make them in existing worlds. But I often do make my sims windsurf and use the beach activities a lot.

@Sigzy05 - Okay, time to stop. I mean, there's lazy and then there's really lazy. :p

But on a more serious note, yes although the EP is fine, the Isla Paradiso world out of the box so to speak is an unplayable mess. Yes, it's shameful that it was released that way, sort of as a "serving suggestion" for players to see what is possible and to then create their own tropical worlds with dive lots and other IP content. But come on already it's been years now and that ship has long since sailed, pardon the pun.

A member here @ciane has cleaned everything up for you and offers her versions of the world as Saved Games all ready to play. Just pop the files into your saves and go, no mods (unless you want or were using them anyway), no custom worlds to install, no fancy tricks required unless you want to get really fancy with the more advanced enhancements, all of the extremely well documented things that need fixing and go on for pages have been done for you. If players use the NRaas Traveler mod, then they can connect the nhd file of that save to the rest of their ongoing game and use it as a vacation destination like any other or of course it can just be used as a regular homeworld.
http://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/811253/removing-ip-lag/p1

This wasn't all entirely new at the time, many of us were able to get Isla P to be playable for us by fixing a much smaller set of critical things before ciane came along, documented everything, and made a playable version so much easier to get to. The only thing ciane did "wrong" was wait until two years after the EP's release to spring her creations on us, all organized and in one place. ;)

I have to admit that IP isn't the first expansion I think of either if I really had to make a list of essential ones, but that the world that came with it is flawed is not among the reasons.