Is Pre-2012 CD the only way to play Sims w/o internet?

@LadyGreenEyes, I have only Late Night, Seasons, University Life, Island Paradise and Into the Future in disc form in terms of EPs so I’ve gotta lot of searching for EP discs to do and two copies of the pre-2012 base game disc. But I’m seriously thinking about going that route and getting off Origin. My fault is that I only started playing any version of Sims in Jan 2017 so didn’t even think about the game until I got seriously addicted to the game.

Yeah, that can be a lot to collect , to avoid the Origin issues. Ebay is a great place to look for those, and you can often find them pretty cheap. I even got all of The Sims 2 stuff that way, so no need to have Origin for that, either, and I think there is a lot to do even in that one, still. Lots of folks sells the discs, though, who prefer to go digital and eliminate stuff in their homes, so they can be found! I intentionally looked for the discs, myself, and only the store/online only stuff isn't on those, but I have the downloaded sim3pack files saved outside of the game, too - just copied all from the "downloads" folder into another file, and you can even put those on a disc, and just install them that way. I've done that when switching computers, rather than downloading it all again. You can select up to fifteen at a time, and, with the launcher already open, right-click and "open" them, and they should install. No internet needed then, and you have the security of knowing even if the store someday vanished, you'd still have those files.

I bought new disks and when I installed them it doesn't seem to make any difference if I use the registered codes from the digital downloads I originally bought from Origin or the codes that came with the disks. The first time I used the disks to install I had Origin on the laptop and was downloading from Origin. Then I decided to try out the disks and found it a lot quicker to install from disk than to download them. I never registered the new codes I bought with the disks. I just use the disks now to install with. Use either code. I think the last time I installed I used the codes that came with the disks. I already had the base game and a few of the early expansion and stuff packs on Disk. I think I started buying digital downloads about the time Pets was released. Just because it was easier back then and didn't really matter if it was disk or digital. Then when Sims 4 was released and so many Sims 3 disks were on sale in the games shops around where I live I decided to get them all on disk. I felt I might need them in future as I didn't really trust EA to leave the game as it was at the time it ended. I feel very lucky I did that. I do only have the one base game disk though so suspect the time will come when the disks will become corrupt and I'll probably move on from the game then and not play any more.

Hi @LadyGreenEyes

What frustrates me a little is the S2 ultimate version of the game plays fine on my non internet W7 hard drive and also on my always connected to the internet windows 10 OS hard drive without any issues whatsoever so i have not had to resort to using my safely tucked away S2 discs up to now although I have never updated S2 in origin and I don't launch the game through Origin either so might make the difference. S3 on the other hand for me will simply not play using the digital version of the game at all without continued bad sim graphics that I have not been able to resolve despite some very good techy help from players on these forums.

If any player wishes to use all their digital store content with their disc game including already purchased EA store worlds just load your pre 2102 base game disc onto a PC that hasn't got another version of the game and redownload all your content and worlds. I own the whole store and it plays fine on my disc game but it will not work for me if I try using digital downloads of store content with my disc version of the game.

@Nikkei_Simmer

I hear what you are saying about costs when I first started with 3 I bought discs to begin with when expansions came out and then later into the game I started buying digital instead so I had around half discs and half digital when I realised i had better get moving and purchase the rest of the series on disc if I wanted to continue playing my game and at that time for me here in the UK I bought 2 pre 2012 base game discs and 2 ITF discs (one for spares) for very reasonable prices new and used discs but when I first noticed this thread I went looking at Ebay and Amazon and could not believe the disc prices and how they had shot up and from looking at the US sites they appear to have even less choice which I actually thought was quite strange at the time as in all the years I have been using ebay the discs were always around even for the S2 series of the game constantly so I am not entirely sure what is going on with stock. In some way I am actually grateful i got my issues with the game when I did as if not I might not have been able to hop over to discs as easily as I did although I got a lot of help from Karritz and other players who had already made the leap so I will always be grateful for their knowledge and assistance when I transferred over to discs although as @Karritz has already pointed out in her post she never experienced issues when using digital store downloads with her disc game and yet my game would simply not allow me to do that lol and in that respect i am quite envious-) I am not a gamer in the strict sense of the word but I justify the spending with this game because I don't spend much money on other games but I hope you manage to find some further discs at the right price :)

@SPARKY1922 I think it is possible the reason I had no problem with my store downloads is I only ever had the one base game disk. So it is possible the store content is linked to the base game disk that is registered to the owner of the store content - but that is only my guess.

@Nikkei_Simmer You're a Japanese, right? Can you try Amazon Japan? I got my disc collection there second hand. I got them fairly cheaply and the previous owners didn't seem to care about the online site so I was lucky and got the limited edition freebies when I entered the codes, and I'm talking recent, like the last 2 years. The installation setup is in Japanese but I've set my game to English so I can play in English just fine.

Here is the link and I've filtered it so it only shows the disk and not digital codes. Edit: I'm on mobile and looks like the filter resets, digital code ver are still showing...be careful!

Right now, WA is only 800 yen (got it for 400 yen before), GEN is 700! Sometimes the prices fluctuate so you have to check back once in a while.

And to think all these years @Nikkei_Simmer has been typing with that outrageous accent and blathering on about hockey, maple syrup, something about moose (I might be making that part up) just so we would think he is Canadian. One just doesn't know whom to believe anymore. >:) :p

Born in Canada ??, currently live in Canada; never been to Japan. The only thing Japanese about me is that I have ethnic Japanese parents so I’m ethnically Japanese but 100% Canadian.

The only time pretending to be actually fresh off the boat from Japan is to get those confounded telemarketers off the telephone line. You should see how fast they hang up when you repeat “nani desu ka” a couple dozen times to every question a telemarketer asks. Great for gits and shiggles. :mrgreen: if I’m really in a foul mood I throw in some Kochi-ben learned courtesy of my dad who was from there. That really confuses the hell outta them.

So most of the game CDs that I’m gonna have to get will have to be found on Amazon Canada or Ebay.

@Nikkei_Simmer Sorry, I did not know about that, and just judged by your name. o:)