I have a few questions about sims.

@BeachMagnolia64, I agree that Sims 1 and Sims 2 were great fun! 🥳 (Sims 3 was only fun if your computer could handle it 😞, which most people's computers couldn't at the time 😢, though now the computers we have today are better able to run it. ) 

I've played all versions of the Sims and TS2 is by far my favorite!!! ❤️🙌🥳 For me the order goes TS2, TS4, TS1, and TS3.  (TS1 is different in that it is a static game where your Sims don't age! So it is hard to compare it to the others.  I could have put TS1 in my number two ranking, but the lack of sims being able to age (not to mention no toddlers, teens, or true elders) makes it a close third in my ranking, though the game had a lot of charm! ❤️ ).  I had so much trouble with TS3 that I even to this day become stressed out watching a Let's Play of it because it brings back all those bad memories of the game stalling constantly, sometimes for more than 20 minutes!!! 😢 And that is when the game didn't crash! 😬 It was really a shame because it had a lot of good concepts.  If your computer can handle it, you should have a lot of fun with it. 😃  But I don't know how to get it to work on Origin, so perhaps someone else can help you there. 😉

Furthermore, any "commercials" you have seen of The Sims 5 are fake!!!! 🤨  There is no official announcement of The Sims 5.  While I believe them to be working on it, that is not a guarantee that they actually are. About a year and a half ago the TS4 Developers stated that we had at least 3 years of TS4 left! So that would mean at the earliest a TS5 could be would be at the very end of 2021, but there is usually a 6 month gap from the last pack in a version of the Sims till the next version, so that would be in the Summer of 2022 at the earliest. 🤨  There is also the chance that it won't be made, but I think they will or already are making it. 🤞

Now, with regards to TS1 and TS2 being on Origin, that is unlikely because especially in the case of TS1, it can't work on today's computers! A few people can still get TS1 to work but it is unstable. The same goes for TS2 but to a lesser degree.  A few years ago they were still offering it on Origin, but they had a "last call" before they pulled it. That was the last chance to get it.! 😢  But it , by far , has the best gameplay! 🥳 I became seriously addicted to it, more than any other Sims game before or since! 😳 

For EA to release TS1 and TS2 on Origin, they would probably have to reconfigure the games to work on today's computers, which would mean that it would take a lot of work , and they would have to pay the people who worked to get it to run on today's computers, so it would be very unlikely that it would be free! 🤨  

I understand that it can be expensive to have all the packs to all the Sims games available (and more so it they were to bring back TS1 & TS2), but TS4 packs are often on sale, some of them are really good sales.  I bought most of the Stuff Packs on sale, and a few Game Packs on sale, as well as one Expansion Pack.  The rest of the packs I got for either my birthday or Christmas.  So I would ask the people you know to give you Sims 4 packs for any holiday that you would normally receive gifts , including your birthday! 🥳  Or if you get any money for your birthday, combine that with some money you set aside for the Sims!   

As for the old cheats, if you are talking about cheats like the pregnancy cheats, then no, they can't add those back because they weren't supposed to be made available to us in the first place! 🤭  Those were just for the developers to use as a tool to set up the game.  They were very unstable for regular players 😞 so they had to be pulled! 🤨

Anyway, I hope I cleared up some issues for you! :😉 And while I don't expect them to ever reformat and release TS1 and TS2 again, I still hope that they do so!!!! 🤞❤️🥳

One of your questions was about the timeline of the 4 games.  Now, I never played the previous releases, but from what I've read, I get the impression that with TS4, they've given up on an actual timeline or story.  It seems like now they've just chosen various familiar faces and names, put them in the world, and any story is up to you.  The best example, is trying to make sense of the Goth family in context of what they were like in previous releases.  She's back now?  And younger than her husband?  Starts on Day 1 of Young Adult, but has a Teen daughter and Child son?  It's more like they just decided what old characters to bring back, because players liked them:  Everyone loves Bella, the Calientes were really popular too, the BFF household was pretty interesting, bring back the Landgraabs but name the son after his uncle and confuse everyone, etc.

@PugLove888 Did you ever try using any of the Nraas mods for Sims 3? The ones I would recommend are called ErrorTrap and Overwatch, and they can potentially help with performance issues. One problem with that game is that there are too many instances where the game doesn't clean up after itself, and when you have an open world with lots of sims it can really add up. For example sims leaving TVs or radios on, sims leaving objects sitting around, various interactions or situations that get broken and don't properly reset, vehicles lingering around on the map, sims getting stuck, and so many other things.

I'm not sure if you would want to bother giving the game another chance and seeing what these mods would do, but I'll copy and paste the description of each mod so that you and others can see what they do because otherwise I would do a horrible job explaining lol.

Overwatch: The primary purpose of this mod is to act as a periodic clean up system for correcting errors and eliminating junk that accumulates over a regular play-session.

ErrorTrap: This is a core-mod intended to catch and correct data corruption errors that can render a save-game unloadable. Any corruption errors that can not be corrected will be trapped and logged, allowing the save-game to load regardless.

@snow_dog04   thank you for bringing up @BeachMagnolia64  's question about the time line! 🙂  You are pretty much right, in that it has been stated by Maxis that TS4 is on its own timeline , pretty much a parallel universe.  As for Bella Goths age being too young to have a child that's a teen, I always assumed that it was implied that she drank the Potion of Youth from the Aspiration Points Rewards Store! 😉

@valohim666, thank you but I have a very negative response even watching the game or listening to it.😢  It is like a Pavlovian response , even to the incidental music (that plays when something eventful happens) !  I hear that music now and expect pain and frustration! 😞 If it was the only Sims game that I could play would be the only way I would consider it.  
However, thank you for mentioning those mods 😇 because I'm sure other people will find that very helpful! 🥳


@BeachMagnolia64, turns out I was wrong about TS2 🤭 in that there are some workarounds to get it to work, so it wouldn't be as difficult for EA to re-release it  🙌(but I still doubt they have plans for it.). ☹️
I had heard from several sources that it wouldn't work on a lot of computers or that those computers that it would work on , it would be difficult to set up. But either those sources were wrong or else some people have come up with better workarounds! 😎  
So, TS2 can run in Windows with some easy workarounds, and is fully compatible with current versions of macOS. It’s always been compatible on Mac because of Aspyr. 
Also, EA plans on releasing  the 64-bit, Metal supported version of Sims 3 for Mac at some point. 
I hope all of that is helpful to you! 🤞
Here are the links to the Sims 3 info you might find useful: https://answers.ea.com/t5/Technical-Issues-Mac/An-announcement-for-The-Sims-3-players-on-Mac/td-p/8271641
and
https://answers.ea.com/t5/Technical-Issues-Mac/the-sims-3-64-bit-amp-metal-release/m-p/9342891#M7874

@PugLove888 Yeah I don't blame you. There have been some games I've had issues with in the past where I really wanted to play them and give them a chance, but the issues I had just kept me away. Even when it comes to Sims 3, I used to be more tolerant to the technical issues but last time I tried it I quickly turned it off lol. Even Sims 2 I can't play anymore, and that was always my favorite game in the series. While I did manage to get it working on my computer, it still runs pretty poorly at times so I just can't play it anymore. I don't know if it's my own fault and I did something wrong, or if the game just doesn't like my hardware. The workarounds are pretty simple though, and there are sites that give a good rundown of what you have to do. From what I remember, most of it is editing some configuration files for your GPU and potentially setting the game to only use a single CPU core.

I was going to add in my own idea for the Bella Goth theory, though I'm not sure if it would work. I was going to mention the trait Long Lived, but from what I notice it seems to only help elders to survive longer. For example the previous sim I created ended up marrying Cassandra Goth and I had her do the Bodybuilder aspiration, and even though he was younger Alexander just died while Cassandra is still going. So we can go with the Potion of Youth theory, that works for me lol.

@PugLove888Ohhh...I've been looking forward to the metal version of the sims 3. :D I still love and play TS3. 🙂

I've read somewhere that Sims do not age while they are pregnant. Is this true? If so, with standard aging it seems like it might be possible for a Sim to still be a young adult when their oldest child ages up to teen. Maybe Bella got too close to a Cow Plant <gulp> xD

@aodoherty @valohim666 Me too on Sims 3 :D With NRAAS Overwatch and fixed lots to prevent too may stuck Sims (I'm looking at you Isla Paradiso) Sims 3 runs just fine even on my old laptop. My saves do not load very fast but once I'm in the game there are no travel loading screens like there are in Sims 4 so during a regular playing session I probably do not spend any more time on loading screens for Sims 3 than I would in Sims 4. To me the waiting time is worth it to be able to live on a houseboat in the middle of the ocean and spend my days scuba diving :D

You guys are making me want to give Sims 3 another chance lol. I do miss that open world and some of the gameplay features. Plus the customization options were awesome in that game. In Sims 4 I find it hard sometimes to really match furniture (just having the base game probably doesn't help lol), but in Sims 3 you can almost perfectly match anything with the create a style option. Seeing as how Sims 4 has been pretty buggy lately, I may just start a fresh game of Sims 3 and see how it goes.

@aodoherty I agree that NPC families living on houseboats was a major cause of lag issues on Island Paradise, but from what I've seen even some of the regular residential lots had problems. One of them didn't even have a front door! Many of the others had minor routing problems that would cause Sims to get stuck. But yeah, I did move all of the NPC families off of houseboats and into regular houses and I fixed all of the residential lots that had routing problems and now my Isla Paradiso works great. I too have no lag issues at all. Mine does not load nearly that fast but some of my save files are massive & I use a large amount of CC. The Isla Paradiso lag topic has been discussed quite often over on the Sims 3 forum. Here is a link to a "fixed" version of Isla Paradiso. It's basically a Day Zero save with all of the fixes built-in so all you have to do is create a Sim and start playing. I've tried it and it works great :D

https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/811253/removing-ip-lag

The world itself was beautifully designed and I do love playing it. My most recent Sim lives in a houseboat, though she also owns a regular home on the main island. She spends about half of her time in port and the other half out on the open ocean. She did work in the Lifeguard career in between terms at Sims University. She had a few times where there were too many drowning Sims to rescue and she could not get to all of them in time. From what I've seen none of them ever actually drowned, the worse thing that ever happened was they eventually just swam back to the beach and yelled at my Lifeguard, just like you already posted. She eventually quit that career after finishing University. Now she just does various diving jobs for the restaurants & she earns enough from doing this that she does not need a regular career.

Lol that's so funny about teaching teens to drive on Isla Paradiso xD I've never tried it there but I've had various Sims teach many teens to drive on Aurora Skies and Monte Vista. My Isla Paradiso Sim doesn't even own a car, just a motorboat and a bicycle.

@valohim666 Sims 3 is still an awesome game so there is no reason not to keep playing it. I personally do not have a preference between Sims 3 and Sims 4, I enjoy playing them both. Of course there are some parts I love more about one than the other but they are very different games in many ways. I have mostly been playing Sims 4 recently because I'm still adding more content and the game feels very new to me.