Beware Before Buying

Customer support is name only and no-reply email "acknowledgements." I purchased the game when it first came out and tried to reinstall the game on my laptop. Their anal process won't accept my key or my original registration data. They just sit behind their walls and ripping off people's money. I'm sure some religious game fanatic will have this post deleted, but keep in mind that you'll be an accomplice of grand thievery.

It's truly become a risible nightmare dealing with their outsourced "customer service." So far, five different individuals, none of them seemingly having any coordination with the others and none of them displaying any grasp of the English language and the possession of even rudimentary reading comprehension. If the reader thinks this is just hyperbole, I'll gladly PM him/her with the actual exchanges. You'll think I just made it all up just to get some laughs.

[QUOTE="Ares626"]

did you re-install the game on another computer by any chance? because i did, which is probaly the reason.

[/QUOTE]

Yes, I was having problems with my other PC, mainly from my ignorance of installing the SP3 for XP. It blew out my RAID. I was able to reconfigure and save everything, but that's when the parade of problems started.

The outsourced "service" for EA was like out of the Twilight Zone. I have yet to receive what I paid for. It took over a month and I finally was able to use other towns. I also pointed out how outrageously racist the game was with my difficulty of creating black people because of the lack of hairdos. The game is aimed at preteen and teen-age white girls. Eventually, I was able to create sims who looked genuinely African. It's much more challenging to make Americanized blacks. Finally I was able to have a reasonable array of hairdos for white males the way most would look like. I'm pretty good at making Asians and, of course, outfits et al for Indian sims are available.

[QUOTE="Phenogeek"]The Sims is EA's best work, or at least high up among them. They would be stupid not to take advantage of that fact and the number of consumers willing to do anything to expand and better their gaming experience. But it's true they do tend to take it over the top. This is one of the reasons why I'm so excited for The Sims 4. They announced that it was going to be an offline experience, which will hopefully eliminate some of the pointless spending.[/QUOTE]

Well, I wouldn't necessarily argue with as far the Sims being EA's best work. Spore had possibilities, but became repetitive and had unsolved glitches. Someone can give you a Mazerati, but if there's no one who can service it, it eventually becomes worthless to you. A principle of business is to never urinate in the stew. That has become EA's specialty. Look what happened to AOL, when they got cocky about their customers.