Starting out in the Sims 3
stargrace 
That’s right, I happen to be one of THOSE gamers. I’m not a huge fan of blood and guts, shooting and killing. While there have been some comments in the past that say this is because I’m (gasp) a female gamer, I prefer to think it’s because I’m just not into those sorts of things. I don’t believe that they’re the sort of game that appeals only to men or only to women. I enjoy pvp (though I rarely delve into it these days) and I’d rather do something I personally find more creative and constructive with my time then just grind it away battling creatures. I typically do this via: crafting, decorating, and other creative outlets, especially those involving design. I can’t exactly be too creative when I’m doing nothing but smacking mobs – though that is a wonderful pass time too, it’s just not the end all be all of my gaming persona. Anyhow!
I’ve been a long time sim fan. I played sim city, and all of the regular sims growing up. I loved building homes, creating lives. I loved designing my own clothing, creating textures and building elaborate yards – or even simple ones. When Sims 2 came out it was amazing, but I barely got a chance to play it because my youngest brother ‘borrowed’ the cd and that was the last I ever saw of it. I even spent some time playing The Sims Online when that came out, I used to DJ on a radio station going by the name “April Love” – four hours every day. It was a great experience even if the game wasn’t all it could have been. I played just before I started with EQ, and just after I had gotten more then my fill of MUDS. I used to take requests and played a lot of songs for people while they wandered around the Sim world.
Sims 3 is beautiful. They’ve made some changes and so far I’ve had a very enjoyable experience. I started out with a fully furnished home (my choice) for $15,000 or so. You start out with $16,000 so you don’t get a lot left over. Character creation was great, I loved the fact that I didn’t have to be some super skinny woman if I didn’t want to. Ages start as young as babies and go up to elderly. You pick five traits that can be negative or positive and as far as simple creativity goes, I adore it.
Sure, I’m just playing a virtual life, and I’ve already got a real life (hah) so you may wonder why this would even be appealing, but it’s great to pretend, and fantastic to invent and create.
One addition to Sims 3 is the RMT factor, they have an online store where you can purchase more styles of hair, clothing, furniture and other goodies. I checked out the furniture. It reminds me of SOE’s station cash, where it’s $20 for a full house set, and cheaper for bits and pieces. For pre-ordering the game on direct2drive I snagged $10 (1,000) worth of points to put towards future purchases – if I want. I didn’t see anything that interested me quite yet, but we’ll see. My only issue with this is the same issue I have in EQ2, that there’s less of a push to release really awesome looking content for free because you can just charge for all of the neat looking things. Aside from that one small little blip, I’m having a great time taking a break from Norrath and Telon (and whatever other virtual worlds I happen to wander through this week) to spend some quiet time playing the game. So far I’ve enjoyed the little quests they’ve sent me on. My sim (named Stargrace, go figure) is a young adult, working her way for $28/h as a podium polisher, mon-fri 9-3. The first weekend that came around she took some writing and art classes, and cooked some fantastic hot dogs for some fine gentleman that she may (or may not) have her eyes on. The life of a sim is less complicated then real life and I think that’s part of the charm – plus if I remove all the doors to the house in a moment of pure frustration it’s fun to see what happens next. Not, that I would do that. *grins*
This week and next week make up the crunch time before my next articles are due for Beckett MOG, so I didn’t spend very much time in EQ2 last night. I did get some nice time in Wizard 101, and once Wpus and Kasul returned from work (we can’t all play video games for a living!) we headed off to knock out a few instances before it was time for bed. We started out with Obelisk of Ahkzul – still aiming for that legendary healer shield that has yet to drop. How many months have we been doing this instance for now with no sign of the shield? I’m not sure, but it’s been a LOT. The instance is fast and it rewards a void shard so I can’t complain that much, but I’d still love to see that shield drop.