(photo’s are from SimTimes en Sims Exchange)
Sims 3 World Adventures – Köln 21st of August
Friday the 21st of August was the day to see the first gameplay of The Sims 3: World Adventures. I was so excited about it that I felt butterflies in my stomach, days before the event. At first there were some difficulties with my transport, everything got sorted out by itself though. I do want to take a moment here to thank Anita from the Dutch EA Community for her help. Without you I’d probably gave up on going to the event.
Okay, on to the presentation! I was very surprised to see a few people at the presentation. I expected a room full with fansites, like with The Sims 3 presentation a while back. That wasn’t the case though. I did see the German fansite SimTimes and the boss of the German Sims 3 magazine (click here for more info about the magazine). For the rest the place was a bit empty. At the beginning I was told not to make pictures of the screen where you could see the game on, or the cover of the expansion which was placed on a large wall. I thought that was a bit of a shame because I did see SimTimes taking a picture quickly, without anyone telling them they should’t have done that. I always get caught when I do things I shouldn’t do, so I didn’t try taking one as well. Especially because I was the only foreign person at that presentation, so they had their eyes on me. There was one guy who was leading the presentation for the fansites and he was really sweet. He tried to help me out with translating German language into English if someone tried to tell something in German, that was really great of him!
When the producer Azure Abowie wanted to start the game there were some problems acting up. It seemed as if she had some kind hacked version where she had to put some certain files in some certain maps before she could play. It seemed complicated and it made the computer crash, so we had to wait a little while before the presentation could really start. When the computer and game were working again Azure started up the game. It starts with the general Sims 3 loading screen, but instead of the screen being blue it was bright yellow. Around the Sims 3 icon on the screen there was a tiny plane flying around it, which looks very cute. And underneath the loading tab you could read the logical lines we all know from the game. Azure already had a family staying in Egypt, called McDanger. With this comes a question that many people have and that I can answer right here, right now: you can’t create a family in 1 of the 3 lands and you can’t live there permanently either. You will always need Sunset Valley or Riverview to create a family and send them on vacation. It’s up to your Visa level how long the Sims are able to stay. You can build up your Visa level by taking on adventures you can find on the job board, or to take the opportunities to help out local neighbors. For example, a local neighbor could ask you to find a lost family member in 1 of the tombs. If you succeed your reputation/Visa level will rise. Extra information: before your Sims go on holiday it’s possible you might leave some opportunities you got from work, from a general phone call, etc. You don’t have to click that away and you don’t need to finish it before you go on vacation. The game will save it all until your Sims come back again.