Now that we have made our feelings known in this forum, perhaps we need to branch out and comment on this expansion and EA's shortcomings elewhere as well. What EA has been doing since releasing Sims4 was responsible for my decision to sell my EA stock holdings. Sims4 is the ONLY EA title I currently play. I refused to be a part of what EA was doing, yet I am enabling them to continue doing business as usual by continuing to purchase DLC for Sims4.
Back during Sims2 days, EA quietly slipped SecuROM into one of the expansions without any warning. Many of us were unaware of what we had installed on our personal computers because they had hidden the fact in the EULA, and few of us thought to read the entire EULA because it almost never changed. There was no warning at all that we could expect our privacy to be compromised once SecuROM was installed. What happened afterward shows what can happen when people band together to take on a corporation. My entire concept of EA changed after that incident. Let's not forget the fact EA is a huge corporation. It is not our friend. Our only contact with EA is done through the gurus, employed by EA, and they signed a non-disclosure agreement as part of their hiring process.
Island Living is not an expansion pack. It might be labeled as an expansion but it has all the characteristics of a game pack. Most of us have an entirely different idea of what an expansion looks and plays like than the one EA currently has. Yes, they rushed to get this pack released. Probably a full six months before it should have been. Or it was supposed to be a game pack and they threw in mermaids at the last possible moment just to make it seem like an expansion. If mermaids had been the focus of a game pack they would have been done a lot better. Mermaids might have had their own underwater world if they had come in a game pack rather than just a piece of this expansion. The reason why EA decided to go this route is very clear. Without mermaids, Island Living was just a game pack. Without Island Living, mermaids were a concept meant to be in a game pack. But EA wanted a finished expansion to release before the end of the quarter, just as summer vacations began for the younger audience EA seems to cater to all too often. The simplicity of this 'expansion' clearly shows EA is heavily relying on the younger fans to overlook Island Living's shortcomings. I wonder if they'd be surprised to learn many of the younger fans are as disappointed as the rest of us. I know my granddaughters are because they told me not to buy Island Living for them. Once they found out how many new bugs Island Living has, along with the sad fact there doesn't seem to be much in the way of new gameplay, they both passed on it. And the younger granddaughter is only eleven! My granddaughters did their own research after the pack was released then decided it isn't for them. I had nothing to do with their decision. Let's just say they were a lot smarter about their decision making than I was.
I have to side with the others here that say there is only one way to force EA into making better content. We must stop enabling this behavior and withhold our financial support. That is a tough line to hold because we are all here because we love the Sims franchise. But if we feel we are being taken advantage of, and not being given a good product that is worthy of the cost then we have no choice but to say we have had enough. I can't help but wonder if EA is listening to their own Game Changers because a lot of them are clearly unhappy with Island Living. If Ea has any common sense left at all, the fact they have another uproar on their hands should be a matter of some concern. The disappointed fans seem to outnumber the fans that are happy with Island Living. It is not enough to be happy with one or two parts of this expansion. We have been waiting for this kind of expansion for four years. After so long, we expected more than what we actually got.
