Well this is my opinion, and I have been playing the Sims since Sims 1.  I have bought or acquired every expansion and stuff pack for all 3 over the years.  I also enjoyed playing World of Warcraft for a bit, so I like quests and opportunities.

If you take out your CC, the game on a decent computer runs great.  My computer is not top of the line but it is pretty good.  I play with my settings on max.  I do have some jaggy moments if I am spinning my camera in a very decorated, 8 sim house (this is with CC installed).  Bouncing back and forth from Map view to Sim can also cause jerky lag.  But to me it is not anymore than it used to be.  With all of my CC in (I have over 500 files currently) the jagginess is increased. Time for some deleting.

As for the game play.  I LOVE the scenery.  I have no idea if it stereotypical landscaping for these regions, I just know that I love to look at the buildings, the landscaping and the overall scenery.  The new objects look great.  I love all of the relics they can gather.  We just need some shelving and invisible slots for tables and coffee tables.  I have not been able to make a Mummy yet.  I keep looking for one..so not sure how they are.

Since I am playing without Awesome mod I can't really comment on the Sims actions, because regular EA Sims are annoying as hell.  Constantly doing retarded things and getting in each others way.  I did notice we can now mass fertilize and I love the shower in a can.  I find taking more than 2 sims on a vacation is rather annoying.  Going through a tomb with 2 sims is usually all you need.  I would have liked it more if it was a little more Bon Voyage.  Swimming in the ocean is needed!

Overall since I haven't totally dissected it, all I can say is I like it, I am glad I got it, and I look forward to playing it with Awesome Mod installed.  It does add new places to visit and they are very beautiful.

This is my opinion and I tend to be a glass is half full kind of person.

I have to really go now but my findings so far are files that start with lemonc_Indoorplants (It looks like all of them) are broken and causes blue pools.  I did not get very far to see if any of them are safe.  Broken for sure lemonc_IndoorPlants_VaseWhiteTulip.package.

The best way for you to test yourself is go on a lot place your CC objects on this lot then save as.  Go to main menu select a different save, load it, then go to main menu, reload your CC object testing save.  Blue pools?  Something in there is borked.  No blue pools? Looks like the objects are safe.

From now on it looks like we may have to test our objects before using them in our favorite hood since once you get blue pools the hood is ruined.  So always make back ups!!!  Test objects in another hood!

This is ONLY for the blue pools glitch.  God only knows what is glitching anything else up.  I haven't gotten that far.

I am embarrassed about how much CC I have but so far Lemon Candy's clutter is the only thing when in my Mods folder to create blue lots.  I am also a huge fan of their stuff.  Some of the things from LC that I have were also extracted from the Sims 3, maybe something in that screws it up?  I have to go for a while so I can't test to find out yet.

I will have to contact LC to see if it messes up their game too.

UPDATE!!!!!

Lemon Candy's file group called Buyable WORKS
Lemon Candy's file group called Clutter WORKS

Lemon Candy's Indoor Plants BROKEN

I still have clutter and random objects to test.  Then I will go through the Indoor Plants and see what one or all are broken.

I am wondering if anyone else uses any clutter made by Lemon Candy from MTS and if they are getting blue pools for houses.  I took these files out and I can now save properly.  With them when I save and reload all of my lots are blue pools.  The files start with lemonc_

Well after HOURS of going through my CC I have narrowed it down to Lemoncandy's various clutter/plants etc.  I still need to now go through these items to see what one.  I have 76 Lemoncandy items to check.

What I did was took everything out of my Mods folder.  Created a new town, moved in my people from the library into a newbie house and then edited town, added my premade house onto a lot, and then reentered my new people, had them "move" with the phone to this new house.  Before I ALWAYS got blue lots.  With no mods I can save with no blue lots.  With all my mods, blue lots.  So I started section by section removing them.  FINALLY it appears to be a file from Lemoncandy.  Without those items but everything else I can save with no blue lots.

Of course this means CC you may have but I don't, can be the cause too.  So try to go through the CC and see.

It's late and time for bed, so I will have to go through Lemoncandy's files tomorrow.  But some of them are extracted items, so maybe they are conflicting.

My files all start with lemonc_

I really do hope this is the cause, since it can be fixed!

So this is frustrating but I will add what I just did so maybe someone can solve the problem.

I removed my Mods folder and the framework.  I kept my sims content installed through the launcher.  I followed the same steps as my above post and NO blue lots.

My sims look ridiculous but at least they kept their premade house.

So what the hell does that mean?  I had followed the steps to placing the framework and mods folder in the new WA folder and everything was working and showing up.  Something borked in the framework or the custom content or how the game saves this?  Anyone using CC and Mods and NOT having this issue?  Any word about needing updated framework or anything?

I am going to slowly add back CC and see if it is CC.  I know when things go wrong it is usually the CC.  I just love my pretties though.

Okay this is what I did so far.  I deleted ALL saves in my folder.  Made a new Town (used Sunset Valley).  Made 2 new sims and moved them into one of the newbie lots.  They went on an adventure and came home.  This entire time I did not save once.  When they came home I did save as and quit the game.  Loaded it again and everything looked intact.  Did a few more save as and quit, played around in edit town, changed their appearance, decorated etc.  Save as each time no backup folder created.

Then I decided to throw in a curve ball and I planted down a prebuilt house from the library (one I had made yesterday). I moved my Sims with the phone to this house.  I did Save AS and quit.  Came back and all blue lots.  Those few lots that are for newbies are all that is left.  And they had happened to have lived in one of those in the beginning.

So does the game autosave when you move, get married, move in, etc?

UGH...so save as is not working.

Blue lots are showing up for me now all the time.  The game looks good as I am playing then I save and then quit, and when I reload it the town is blue pools.

I am still deleting things and reinstalling things to see if anything helps.  At least it gives me something to do until Awesome Mod is upgraded...ugh I hate The Sims bugginess.


EDITED TO ADD:
Something I just noticed.  The saves that are fucked up ALL created backup saves.  The ones that work did not make backup saves.  I don't know if that means anything, but just something I noticed.  Anyone else see that happening?

Another EDIT:
I think we have to chose SAVE AS and rename the file totally different from now on until they fix saving.  Doing SAVE or even SAVE AS and writing over the previous save corrupts the save and creates a backup file.

So I am going to try SAVE AS - new name each time and see what happens.  So far so good.

All of my CC works (at least I haven't noticed something missing)  I have a ton of hair and furniture and I see it all.  All of the Sims Store items too.

As for Mods I use the Super Computer and Twallan's story progression. 
Super Computer works
Story Progression...not sure.  I CTD with the Story Progression in so I took it out, but it shows up and looks like it was working.

I just stuck in 2xeating.package and that appears to be working.  I can't tell really.  But they are eating and talking like they should with the mod in and not crashing.

I started to get this today after I made a new house (I made it have a basement too).  I exited out after saving and everything was working great.  I downloaded some curtains and added them to my CC folder and out of habit I deleted those cache files that you delete when you update your hacks.

When I loaded back up, my neighborhood is swimming in blue pools.  I tried all the suggestions and nothing fixes it.  When I create a new town everything is perfect.

So I went snooping around in another older save of another neighborhood and in that I found the Art Museum being the only building turned into a pool.  This building had the riddler tiles before the XPack.  I also noticed my pattern favorites is missing (obviously connected to the caches we delete all the time)

So maybe it has to do with patterns and cache files?  I don't know...another stupid frustration. 

I also found I crash when I tried to make a basement in a house that had a foundation and a pool right up against the foundation. I didn't see it written anywhere that you can't make a basement in a house with a foundation that but apparently you can't.

Oh well...starting another neighborhood AGAIN.

I think the eating of food is borked somewhere because my sim had a birthday and proceeded to eat the entire cake!  She started at 120 lbs and ended up 250. 

I don't have any mods/hacks in my game atm either.

My sim successfully used the camera, no crashes.  Of course the picture is of her thumb!  Sorry I can't help you fix yours, but mine worked.

I bought WA and updated with the patcher after taking out my mods and hack etc and backing up everything.  I don't really want to play my main hood until Awesome Mod is updated so I just made a new town and new Sim.  So far everything is working correctly.  I'm not laggy or swimming in blue pools anywhere.

I'm enjoying it so far.  I can see a whole lot of things to be squished by Awesome Mod so I can't wait for that.

If you are having problems make sure all of your hacks are totally removed and delete your caches.  Don't forget that there were a ton of fixes in Awesome Mod (added traits, not losing inventory items, sims moving out of the town) and without it you will lose it all.

I like the expansion so far.

I posted in this thread before too and I am finding I get error 12s when my resident population reaches somewhere in the high 70s.  If I keep the population lower than 75 I can play for hours and save every 15 minutes and not error once.  I have a ton of CC and use a few hacks (Awesome, Twallan's computer and story progression).

I don't know what you guys have for populations, but this is what I am finding at the moment.  However my current neighborhood has not had anyone die yet, and I know ghosts can get errors.  It's really frustrating not knowing what causes the errors.  I just want to enjoy my neighborhood and watch it grow and evolve.  Every time it gets going I get errors.  So this time I am keep watch of the population.

I have not seen a whole lot of talk about the scenarios that pop up when you move a sim into a house from the Sim Bin.  I have found a few things about them over my time of playing and thought I would share.

There are 5 (maybe 6 not 100% sure of the 6th) possible scenarios.  

To get the scenario to pop up:
You need to be at Edit Town menu, have No active families selected, Choose Move In, pick a Sim/family from the Sim Bin, select a house they can afford and choose move in.  You can pick furnished or unfurnished.  The chance of the scenario to pop up is slim.  You may have to repeat the process over and over again.  Be sure to always deactivate any active families so you get the proper move in dialog box.  You can have any house on this lot.

Scenarios are:

Indian Burial Ground - 3 tombs, weeds and some gems or meteors laying around.  A ghost buster comes to rid you of the ghosts.  I found some really nice gems.  Known lot is 55 Water Lily Lane, Sunset Valley. (Do not stick the tombs in your inventory and then ask the ghost buster to help you...bugs out the tombs.)

Bug Infestation - Lots of roaches, beetles, moths and butterflies.  The science geek comes to collect specimens to help you clean up.  Known lot is 2450 Pinochle Point, Sunset Valley. Also 36 Sim Lane aka Mosquito Cove.

Meteor - Lots of meteors and rocks scattered also burnt areas.  Some rocks and meteors can sell very nicely.  A Fireman comes to help clean it up.  Known Lot is 72 Water Lily Lane, Sunset Valley.

Squatters - Garbage everywhere.  Rats are inside the garbage and you can shoo them away.  Also lots of nice quality fruits and veggies all over tables and counters.  The maid comes to help you clean up.  Known lot 306 Skyborough Blvd, Sunset Valley.

Water main break - All the sinks, tubs and showers are broken.  Water puddles everywhere.  The handy person comes and helps you fix everything. Known lot 58 Water Lily Lane, Sunset Valley.

The other possible scenario is weeds, but I have been unable to find it, might have been one of the above.  I was new to the game and have not seen it since.

Those are my learnings so far.  I am sure other lots can have the scenarios, but since it can take 30 tries just to get it to pop, these are the only lots I know for sure.

Edited to add: Hand Of God will remove the garbage the rats are hiding in.  So if you want to see the rats, you need to turn that off first.  Also to fix info.  Thanks Tangie.

I don't have the tutorial running and this was my 68th person in the neighborhood.  You do however need to have no active households selected, choose Move In and select a family from the sim bin and pick a lot they can afford.  I have been doing a lot of testing and I found the scenarios are lot specific, but they are totally random when they will show up.  This lot was 306 Skyborough Blvd.  There are also, insect infestation, meteor, water main break, ghosts, weeds, and squatters.

I should clarify, it is not house specific, it is lot specific.  You can buy the lot furnished or unfurnished.

Edited to add that you can not have Hand Of God on or it will clear the trash before the rats come.

I finally found the lot that has the squatter opportunity when you first buy the house.  And inside were RATS!

Oh I should have been more clear.  The 2 new files will generate, well for me they did, in Documents/Electronic Arts/The Sims 3/WorldCaches.  I run Vista.

Nothing generates in the folder where you deleted the first file.

Hmm that sucks it does not help you.  Maybe it doesn't help at all anyway and I was just lucky.  I don't know what else to say to help.


Added:
You know my SimCompositorCache is the same size, and time stamp as the newly generated Sunset Valley_sims package.  So maybe it does get saved in there too.

And yes I still get error 12s.  But for some reason I get very few compared to the other file.  Maybe it is corrupt sims and they just happen to have behaved while I played.  I'm not much help.  I was going to start a new neighborhood and see what happens.

Diana, I just out right deleted the file Sunset Valley.objectCache in the main folder.  This spawned the other 2 cache files in the World Cache folder.  Back this file up first since we might need it if there is a patch.

I still get error 12s but it seems way better than with the other file.  I'm not a coder so I have no idea what is really happening, just going by how things work.  These cache files are being updated because the time stamp and sizes change...not sure what it all means.

Well I had at first created a blank Sunset Valley.objectCache.  This spawned just the Sunset Valley_objects.package not the sims.  So I deleted the blank objectcache and the objects package and just loaded the game that way.  After I loaded the game I now have Sunset Valley_objects.package and Sunset Valley_sims.package in the World Caches folder.  I found I had less error 12s (I do not get error 13s currently)

Then out of curiosity I added back the original Sunset Valley.objectCache that came with the game.  I error 12ed left and right.  So I redeleted it and I am back to just a few.  And by a few I mean I had the Sims on for 4 hours and error 12 came only twice, while the other way it was almost every save.

I decided to try to get those 2 other cache files to load since I was only spawning the objects and through some deleting I got both files to spawn, and removed any cache in the main directory (The sunsetvalley.objectcache thing).

Now I do still get a few error 12s but not nearly as much as I did when I had the ObjectCache file in the main directory.

I am still erroring at Birthdays, and my save files are still going from 47 mb to erroring at 57+ mb.  It's become beyond frustrating. I'm really tired of playing the same damn 15 minutes over and over again.  I just hate to have to start a new neighborhood when I just got started and like this one.

I am running Vista Home Prem 64bit, 4 gigs of ram, and 2 GeForce 9800 GT.  I have tried the turning down the graphics to crap level and I still get the error.

One thing that I noticed is whenever my Sims "break up" with a Sim and I go to save within a couple minutes of that, I get the error 12.  I was wondering if this has anything to do with it, since with Awesome Mod the sims in the neighborhood are constantly in and out of relationships with the awesome story driver.  Maybe one of them broke up before my save activated.  I also error a ton at birthday parties after the Sim aged.  My neighborhood currently is played Legacy style and they are on their 3rd generation set on Epic aging.  There are 111 sims in the hood.  I do have a ton of custom houses and have edited several community lots.  My Legacy house is 30/40 lot and has a ton of shit in it.

I don't know the first thing about coding so I have no way to find out anything, but I hope this may help someone.

I did the replacing the cache file, and my game only created the objects file not the sims file.  I tried going into CAS and making people, it never appeared.  I am still getting error 12s, a few CTDs, and once a totally frozen game.  I have never played Riverview, so I can't say if I would get error 12s there.  I should try that out.

Each time I noticed my file was saving at 47 mb, then when I would get error 12 I would check the bad file and it was 57+ mbs.  When I went back to my last save and played again doing exactly the same thing the file size saved at the regular 47 mb.  So I think there is an error somewhere and it is blowing the file size up.

My only solution has been to set my game to autosave every 15 minutes using 2 save file names.  When I get a good save I immediately go and copy the file to another folder.  This way I only lose 15 minutes and so far that has worked well for me.  What a sucky error.  Like groundhogs day!

I hear ya Nin.  I have been playing the same neighborhood for a month and my file size is 48 mb and I just started to get Error Code 12 and  CTD all the time.  I've gotten so used to the crashing that I save with Autosave every 15 minutes and if it is a good save I copy the file and move it to another folder.  This way I only lose 15 minutes, but it sucks!  I have been able to keep going and I really like my neighborhood, it is starting to really feel alive with all of the AwesomeStory things running.

Whenever the file does not save the file size is several MBs different (larger) than the last save.  I can't see any rhyme or reason for things that are going on in the neighborhood to make it not save.  I've tried making the houses just have beds, kitchens and bathrooms.  I've killed off anyone I disliked and the npcs regularly.  I run all the clean up codes for the town.  I turn everything off in the background of my computer.  I turned down the graphics...you name it I tried it.  Nothing works.

I got error 13 code today when I was saving.  What I was doing before the error was decorating a house while looking at HGTV Dream House web site's 360 view of a room.  My game did not crash after the error so I checked on the files and saw that a back up had been made just a few minutes earlier and the current game file was marked as bad.

So just out of curiosity I closed my browser and waited a second to let it all unload then I did save as "different name" and it worked.  I played a minute more and saved and it continued to work.  The new save is 42 MB in size, and the back up (which is just 10 mins earlier) is 48 MB in size.  I barely did anything in between the back up and the new save and it is smaller?

I had been playing for about 4 hours and I have Awesome mod, Pescado's FPS limit file, the new hairs, patterns and various other crap.  I am always paused when I save and I did a save not a save/exit.  I recently reinstalled the game, all patches installed and I have a decent computer (everything can run comfortably on high).  As far as I know my drivers are all up to date.  My house is hot, I live in the damn desert, but I never noticed it over heat.

I hope the file is still okay..I worked a long time on this dang house to make it look like the Dream House