Let me start by saying I have never properly experienced story progression. I have played TS3 quite a little and experimented with MCCC for about a month. TS3 I haven't played enough to get a proper grasp of how things work. I didn't really like MCCC story progression, could be because of my setting, but it felt too aggressive. I play vanilla these days, so haven't tried again.
I'm still feeling optimistic about neighbourhood stories. I love the eco lifestyle baby call! Once I was playing university and my sims mother (soon to be elder) called to ask if they should try for another baby. I didn't encourage her, but it became a funny paragraph in my story where my sim's friend wondered if the mother was asking from my sim because she wanted him to look after the child when she's gone. I love that the EL and GT features are getting improved and added to the base game. Love that they keep expanding the sentiments system too.
What I really hope is that the future updates would allow me to have my played sims - not autonomously changing - and then I could populate the rest of the world with unplayed sims that the game would manage. I have a big rotation, but ideally I would like to downscale a bit, while still having the sims outside my rotation live their lives. It might not work like I hope, but just have to wait and see.
