Cannot Play Sims 3 Games/Expansion Packs That I Bought

@GreyWolves6  Which packs aren't showing up in your account?  It would be helpful to know even if I can't do anything about it directly.

For live chat, try this link:

https://help.ea.com/en/help-contact-us/?product=the-sims-3&topic=missing-game&category=manage-my-account&subcategory=find-missing-game

The site had me signed in already (because I'm signed in here) and offered me the live chat option.  I do have my region set as U.S., so try that if you're elsewhere.  As long as your English is good enough to chat with support, it doesn't matter what country you're in.

For the packs that do work, what do you mean that they won't load or are unplayable.  Please list the packs and their issues.

Thank you for being willing to help, I appreciate it!

Regarding expansion packs, I actually had quite a few: World Adventures, Late Night, Generations, Pets, Supernatural, Seasons, University Life, Island Paradise, Into the Future. For some reason, only the base game, Island Paradise, and Into the Future show up. The glitch is hard to explain, but the graphics will just start flickering in bars and while I can hear sounds from clicking on the menu or anything else that has options, I can't see any changes because the image is stuck with whatever was on the screen before it started glitching. I don't have any custom content or something, so I'm not entirely sure what's happening.

This is also the first link where I've seen the chat function show up and I didn't see it before, so thank you!

@GreyWolves6  For the flickering, I'd like to see a dxdiag from your computer.  You can attach one to a reply here.

https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/pc/how-to-gather-dxdiag-information/

For the missing packs, let me know how it went with EA support.

In strange news, EA gave me one of the expansion packs because it showed on my account but the others don't (I'll have to address that later), and I can use it, but instead of glitching out, the whole game just quits if I do anything more than make a Sim. Still unplayable but a different problem. For the system diagnosis, I am a (reluctant) Mac user, but maybe this will help? It's macOS Sequoia v15.2.

Thanks!

@GreyWolves6  The flickering might be a hardware issue, but hopefully not, or at least not to the extent that you can't work around it.  First, please delete Options.ini, in Documents > Electronic Arts > The Sims 3, to reset your in-game options to the defaults.  With a couple of exceptions, graphics settings should always be changed at the Main Menu, and then you should quit to desktop before loading a save; doing otherwise can sometimes cause strange graphical glitches.

Please try the following changes:

• Toggle between fullscreen and windowed modes (this can be changed with a save loaded and without quitting)
• Toggle the Advanced Rendering setting (some users report they need to use one setting in CAS and the other in gameplay)
• Turn down lighting to the minimum
• Turn down tree detail to the minimum
• Enable object hiding

You don't necessarily need all of these changes; the point is to experiment to see what helps.  Many players with your graphics chip or similar find that only one or two settings matter, but not always the same ones.

If you see the same flickering again and can't change the graphics settings further, it's fine to delete Options.ini again and start over.  You can also edit it directly, but not all settings are named in a straightforward way.

After my latest talk with EA, I switched the lighting and tree detail with no effect—same shutdown. The last one I spoke to considered it a bug that they can't necessarily solve right now, and they said I can't migrate back to Origin. They were super kind and I appreciate their help, but it is frustrating on the company's end that things are designed where I have to migrate to an app that hasn't worked well the entire time and now I can't access stuff I paid for. I also have no issues with other games I play, though those aren't from EA and don't use that app, so I'm hoping it isn't a hardware issue.

I'll try the rest of that today, although I'm not sure about deleting something out of the folders. Whatever the EA app shows is not matched by what's in my folders, which I assume is partially because I have a Mac now but had a PC when I got the games? But my folders, for example, show all of the expansion packs I had while the EA app does not. With that in mind, is it going to lead to any serious issues if I delete Options.ini?

Thanks!

Something you suggested seems to have worked, and I haven't had any issues with glitching or crashing since I tried it out today, so thank you very much for working through this with me! If things start acting up again, I'll definitely try to options.ini thing and see how that works. Thank you so much again for your help!