This describes how I feel about Sims 1 so perfectly! I love so many aspects of it (superstars! magic! parties with celebrities!) but there's only so far you can go with your sims. Reach the top of your career track? Get automatically moved into another career. Adopt/have a baby? Play until they've been children for sim-decades and you get bored, then ship them off to military school. (Am I the only one that got sick of having them around?)

For me it's the life cycle. I like watching my sims grow and change as they age. It's always sad when they die, but at least I know they've lead full, (mostly) happy lives. I like watching their children grow up and see how they interact with their parents and grandparents. I like seeing what physical family traits are passed down. I love that there are so many mods to choose from to tune your game into your own playstyle.

I tried Sims 3 exactly once and then quit. I never connected with the characters and their lives the way I did with Sims 2. I've never had any desire to try Sims 4. My sister, on the other hand, hates Sims 2 and exclusively plays Sims 1. I don't understand it, but to each their own.

I also love the community here. Sure my family will humour me by listening to me gush on about my sims and what they're been up to (I'm sure I was absolutely horrible about it during Justpetro's building contest, it was all I talked about for weeks!), but it's nice to have people to talk to that share the same (fabulous!) interest.

Long story short, it makes me happy.

In Sims 2, I feel like I'm there, I'm part of it. I can talk to them, shout obscenities at them when they do silly things, and help them out of trouble. I laugh and cry with them and I can really care about them.

This is the true essence of the game. You go into a household, and you know their names, their personalities, their lives. You know how they're going to react (most of the time..)and you are actually shocked when they do exactly what you did not expect them to...("was it really necessary for you to bed your old boyfriend when you're married and your husband is at work...?") and then knowing when you close the game they'll be there, frozen exactly at the instant you left them.

You worry (as I do) when there might be an accidental death-one you did not see coming. It kicks you in the teeth but somehow you and they get on with it, and live to play another day.

Yeah, I do care about those damn pixels and I will swear at them when they do naughty things and laugh when they do stupid things. But they make me care about them and that's the biggest plus of all.

It keeps me coming back and playing one more day. Today I'm waiting for Gerald Thomason to finally reach the top of the law career he's been so desperately striving for. It makes him happy and me too. He won the race. The rest of the law employees will just have to live with it. He's earned it!

(Note...I just played his household and he did not get promoted. He came home tired and worn out...it appears that Patricia Lum will be the winner of this particular race. I'm sorry, Gerald! I know you worked so hard for this!)

I recently installed the legacy edition on my new computer and am getting into the game in ways I haven't before. Honestly, Sims 2 was a oft-played game, but not my favorite of the series. My heart belongs to Sims 1 and always will. Unlike some of you here, I am emotionally invested in my Sims. I care about their lives, their relationships, their little Sim dreams. I work to make sure they have good relationships within their families and friends groups. But then, I also do this with Sims 2. Especially now. It probably didn't help that I did not understand corruption back in the beginning and had to start my game over so many times. But then, I really love playing beginnings.

I think when I started playing Sims 2, it just felt a little bare bones (it was, before all the extra content, especially the mods). I got caught up in the whole genetics thing. Now, while I still enjoy planning genetics and passing on skills and hobby interests, I'm focused more in the present of each family's life and am enjoying it a great deal. I'm finding more goals and more for my Sims to do, well into old age. In fact, death often comes too soon, but I know if I slow it down too much, the game will lose some of its appeal. To that end, I've built both a large graveyard and a retirement home.

What I love about both games is the option to create your own goals. I feel these games have more of me than I ever felt for Sims 3 and Sims 4. Don't get me wrong - there are things I like about both of those games, too. But my heart belongs to the first two. It's odd how all four games share the same legacy, but are significantly different.

I started with TS1, but only had a small collection pack with the first 1-2 EPs (I think?), and only played it for I'd think less than a year, so never really got into it with CC and mods (didn't know there was CC - probably didn't know what CC and mods were at the time).

Someone I know introduced me to TS2 not too long after it was released, and I was hooked even before I owned the game. It seemed so much more immersive than TS1, and the sims seemed so much more alive. I especially liked being able to play with the younger ages (TS1 only had the "baby blob" and "forever kids"). I played for a few months until I discovered CC. Then things really took off - especially after I started learning to make CC about a year or so later... and 19+ years later I'm still making CC

Never got into the CC-making business with TS3 (didn't partiularly like the tools, only used them to extract stuff). Did do a bit of CC-making for TS4, but it's like trying to learn SimPE from scratch again (I like the main interface of the S4Studio, not the rest...), but it has pushed me a bit to learn Blender, so that's probably good - and I've been complaining (to myself) for several weeks over Blender 4.x (2 couldn't open some files I'd downloaded), but briefly went back to Blender 2.x (to open/edit some older files) and oh boy, I don't even know what I was complaining about, because I've forgotten everything and might as well use 4 from now on (everything is rearranged, even the shortcuts)

Sims 1 intrigued me. It was fun. I had households with Hobbits and households with Farscape characters and I caught the CC and building bug.

Sims 2 was even more fun. It was intriguing to see the characters age and the building was better. I moved on to Sims 3 when that came out, and I enjoyed that. I didn't play Sims 4 for a while, but I finally tried it. It has the best build mode to be honest, but I find the lack of buildable real estate disappointing and the way the Sims 4 Sims are always on the brink of an existential crisis is exhausting. Not to mention that EA's constant cash grab is annoying as heck.

I put all four games back on this computer after I wiped and reinstalled everything on this machine due to issues. Sims 1 is Legacy, it took a while to reload my save games because they moved that folder. Sims 2 is the Ultimate Edition that finally reappeared in my game library. Ultimate runs perfectly fine on my machine after running Graphic Rules Maker. I have opened 3 and 4 once.

I've been playing Sims 2 almost exclusively for the last year, and I like it. There are things I can't do in build mode. There are things that are missing from later games, but they are more than balanced out by the things in Sims 2 that never made it to those games. On the whole I find Sims 2 to be enjoyable and the Sims 2 community is welcoming, lively, and persistent.

Sims 2 feels safe and stable. The Sims 4's negatives outweigh its positives. I love the extra customization and diversity in Sims 4, but the fact that it breaks every update is a turnoff. Sims 2 therefore, has only gotten better with the new mods.

Sims 2 did use to "break" every EP and every update, with new problems arising from both the EPs and patches, but not to the same degree (it seems) as TS4. Probably also helped that TS2 only has a tiny portion of the expansions TS4 has (and TS4 doesn't seem to want to stop with those yet), so fewer things to patch up. And we've had modders patching up various remaining holes since EA mostly abandoned TS2.

The CD games and (for the most part) UC are "stable" in that sense. Not that they don't have their own set of issues (old unpatched problems, install issues, memory trouble, pink-flashing, etc.), but in most cases it's manageable with a bit of frustration thrown in.

I still remember the "good old days" of having to wait for patches and mod updates, so we've been through that round with TS2, too. It's just a long time ago.

When EA re-released TS2 this time (Legacy), it brought with it a heap of new trouble, and as far as I know they haven't patched everything yet.

With Sims 2, it was always the piano skilling that they broke. Then they'd fix it in a patch, and break it next EP...

Reminds me of a good old joke (roughly translated)
Man delivers his car to a mechanic for a full checkup. Mechanic has a new apprentice. Mechanic asks the apprentice to stand behind the car to check if the various lights are working, then turns on the turn signals. He then hears from the back of the car:
"They work, no they don't. They work! No, they don't. They work! No, they don't... They work! Nope, they're gone again..."

I still play the Sims, 2 and 3. Since legacy came out, I play the Sims 1 more often now that I've discovered some mods thanks to YouTube algorithm. The Sims 1 was also my first Sims game, played it in 2002 and still giving me chills every time burglar comes and my sim catches a fire. The Sims 3 was second one. It was okay I guess, my sim can marry same sex partner and adopt a child without needing a mod, but the pudding face really turned me off and it was rather too easy for my taste. The Sims 2 was my third, and I love it better than The Sims 3. I got the ultimate collection in 2016 and I have reached eight generation in my Sims' family ever since. And the freedom to create mega hood to better suit your play style, I could go on and on what I love about the Sims 2. The Sims 4 was my last one, I stopped playing it and giving Maxis my money since all my old saves went fubar and Maxis refused to fix it. The Sims legacy was my last purchase from EA.

tldr: The Sims and The Sims 2 still hold my heart dearly to this day

If you have Ultimate Collection then why did you buy Legacy?

As I understand it they bought the Legacy version of Sims 1 (which I believe works quite well) but are using the Ultimate Collection for Sims 2. So both games are playing quite well.

Am I right @legacyoffailures ?

Oh yes, you're correct! I only purchased The Sims 1 legacy since I've lost all my original discs

The longevity of this game should be studied. Personally I keep playing because I haven't gotten bored of it - there's always something to be done or improved or to tell/share.

Combination of childhood nostalgia and the ability to write creative storylines with it.

At thirteen, I made a new sim to try out the new Freetime expansion, and that household grew into a large family which then grew into multiple generations. I got very attached to these sims and that's why I kept coming back to the game for years, and took it with me when I moved to my own place. For the most part, they were the only reason I was playing, and I was fully prepared to drop the game entirely if/when the file stopped working.

Through, I think, a combination of finding and playing around with new mods, and being around more discussions and content surrounding the game online, like here and on Youtube, I eventually started getting interested in the game itself (and to a lesser extent the franchise as a whole) again. Then I wanted to play a little in Veronaville since I'd never really given that neighbourhood the time of day, and ended up really invested in the families and overall story of the neighbourhood.
And recently I've been playing a lot in Desiderata Valley since I used that neighbourhood to try a variation of the apocalypse challenge, which I've been curious about for a while, and once again ended up invested in the sims and the story, so I continued to play after the challenge was done while trying to come up with new things to try like mods and stuff.

So, basically, I start out trying out something new, and then stay for the attachment to the characters and story that develop along the way. As for why it's this title and not any of the others, I guess it's a combination of this one coming along at the right time for me, the fact that I've spent the most time with it at this point meaning I can still get into it easily and get it to play how I like it, and it in some way gelling with me the most (I've tried to get into The Sims 3 several times but never quite could, briefly trying out The Sims 4 didn't catch my interest, and The Sims 1 feels a bit too lacking in terms of sims aging and so on to hook me long-term).
I think it strikes a good balance between having a lot of things to do and still leaving enough gaps for players to fill with their own imagination and interpretations of things on screen, it lends itself very well for emergent narratives.