Hello there!

I recently received UNL and it's not what I really expected. Ok I have to admit that they have done an amazing job at the clothes and the furniture, but when I play in the UNL world the game often crashes, and I'm going to share something with you "I never actually played a Sim that long that he/she graduates" ! What is your problem, comment, issue??

I see the University expansion as a great waste of potential. This would have been a fabulous time to add more skills, hobbies, and careers.
I installed it on the 30th, so I’m still wadding my way through it, but I do have few nitpicks:

1. Social groups suck, and they infest all the new activities that University did bother to provide.

I am already sick to death of being told that I have lost status in a social group when I never wanted to be involved in a social group in the first place.

2. Co-ed Dorms: I was so happy when a modder for The Sims 2 came out with a system to choose what genders we wanted our dorms to house. Why EA couldn’t do that is beyond my comprehension.

3. Do you know why the art easel has so many different paintings that your sims can paint in styles related to their traits? Because EA knew that since the Sims 1 people have loved having their sims create things themselves, instead of just purchasing it out of Buy Mode.

University gives us the ability to create street art. I have been playing on and off with a few of these talented sims, and I am already running into duplicate results. ‘Tis very disappointing.

4. Why can’t you choose a new residence after moving to the university!? You better like what you choose, or else you’re stuck until it’s time to go home.

5. The way to make money is mostly through the haphazard/annoying opportunity system. Why my sims can’t go take the place of an NPC running a coffee bar or cafeteria like in TS2 University is beyond me.

6. We have no fire sprinklers. We NEED fire sprinklers. Do you have any idea how many dorms I have seen catch fire because of some careless NPC roommates?

7. "Smart" phones. It's bad enough that we have always been stuck with having a cellphone forced upon us since TS3's beginning, but this just adds insult to injury.

I like University Life but I'm also frustrated by it. It's been very glitchy for me and I just barely was able to graduate one couple from University because of the glitches. The game glitched later in the home world so I'm having to start over again.

It seems more like a holiday camp than a place of education to me. There should be more things like libraries, assembly halls, buildings dedicated to the arts of science, history etc. but instead, we have bowling alleys and bizarre 'gangs' that the player is encouraged to join. I like bowling alleys but still. Maybe it's a cultural thing but it seems like most the EP is non-university related stuff, and it seems that most of us have not taken to the move-to-a-new-town idea. Little wonder.

I don't particularly care for the non-stop attempt for EA to force social media on us via the game, but I'm perfectly fine with the EP itself.

I like it and this surprised me, to be honest. I am not fond of the social media push but as the mother of two college students, it does seem realistic. I don't mind the move to another town and actually prefer it in some ways since I get to concentrate on the young people. I have had no problem graduating my sims from college, once I figured out that I have to take them to the stadium on Saturday after finals and click on the door over and over until it lets my sims inside. I did not get a pop-up notice. My only issue, and it is a small one, is the dormies never seem to leave town. They disappear from the dorms and exist in limbo land, still visiting venues and going to parties. I wish they would just leave town eventually!

I am very pleased with how University Life turned out. My expectations were high thanks to the similar expansion for TS2, and I must say, University Life lived up to them all. I've had no glitches, crashes or what so ever. Everything works fine for me!

I dislike that room mates can't be told what to do on home lots in real world. To earn your keep I want you to clean up your room. So I wish you could tell sim to clean their room. Oh heck. You should be able to tell a teen or child to do that. Generations UGH.
Sorry I'm tired so if this doesn't make sense. Turtle. (Sorry I'm on tumblr)

It's a bore.

It got old before my first Sim graduated. I pushed the second one through with the greatest difficulty. (Not because of any technical problems - the game is running fine for me.) I shudder to think about the third one, and I have got a ton of third ones.

This is the EP that definitely pushed me back to TS2. If I don't find student life amusing then all the hope is gone.

I am very disappointed for several reasons:
- Not being able to send non-household Sims to college, control other college Sims or create college Sims (if you try to use Create-a-Sim, they exist in the college world but aren't students)
- Sims just sticking around the college world once they graduatere m
- The science skill should either have been ditched for logic or the careers should have been changed to require the science skill
- Decaying academic performance when not in class
- The majors aren't that great and some of them make no sense with regards to the career
- No new careers except for the "hidden" social group ones
- Social groups in general are just really, really stupid IMO. And as others have said, they are incredibly difficult (pretty much impossible, I've found) to avoid.
- The food that college students can eat is really limited
- The WA setup of the university is just so laggy and my game feels stagnant while I'm there. I don't like that feeling.

I think that once my Sim has graduated I'm not going to send a Sim to university ever again. But I know that all of my Sims will have wishes to attend university, so that sucks.

I like the EP but it still needs some work.

- I hate the roommate system All my roommates don't take care of themselves.
- Ever since I got Uni my game has been crashing... I can barely get through a few sim days
- The academic decay was definitely a problem
- glitches when graduating
- I've been having so much lag when on campus
- Random invites from townies about parties were annoying me
- I don't get any tips while making street art murals

These are only a few of my problems since my game crashes most of the time now....

The reason I dislike the social groups, normal game activities for sims to get fun, skills, and socialize throw them in a social group and it doesn't go with the sim's trait. Like my couch potato like to play video games and may read comic books while sitting around. That is cool. If they do get up off the couch and do a little bowling or table tennis now they are being thrown in the jocks social group. There wishes get messed up because the sims shouldn't want to play more activities to get influence in that social group.

Or my athletic sim sit down and play video games and read a comic book, now they are being thrown in the nerd social group and they want more influence, although other jocks will make fun of them for being nerds and I am not able to stop that nerd influence unless I take out the video games and not let the sim have a computer. That's not right, jocks play video games. Would be better if the different video games would show that jock is not being nerdy, like playing sport or racing games.

I still wish there was a community college, something for trades or lesser degrees and if the sim wishes to have a higher degree then they can go to University. Otherwise I am happy with the objects, build mode, CAS items.

So many crashes! The glitches in this particular EP are way out of control, which really detracts from all the great stuff they put in.

The most important aspect of any game is being able to play it!

Well, my gripes with it are many, since the TS2 version was just perfect for my taste. So I thought, hey, cool now I get to do that in TS3 too. Cue 3-4 days of reinstalling TS3 over the stillborn abomination called Origin, and... ugh, it's... not really what I expected it to be.

1. The TS2 one was fun because you had a couple of hours of off-map courses in one chunk (sorta like the TS3 rabbitholes), and then a big chunk of time to dick around. And at that, you had enough time before the courses to eat, wash and generally be ready.

As soon as I started the TS3 one, it was exactly the other way around. My sim got queued to school before he could even make it from the <bleep>ing bed to the <bleep>ing fridge to have a snack. Never mind have time to pee and shower.

Then it got worse: he got dragged all around the campus for 10 hours in a row, until he was practically breaking down from hunger, lack of fun, bladder almost exploding, and let's not even talk about the hygiene bar.

Bear in mind that I had just reinstalled the game and had a new character, not someone already with Steel Bladder, Dirt Defiant, Hardly Hungry, Carefree and so on. That guy actually had to eat, pee and shower regularly, for crying out loud.

For a game centered around fulfilling such needs, that strikes me as utterly stupid and incompetent design. Oh, wait, never mind, it's EA. I don't know what got into me to make me expect anything else from them.

2. But then it strikes me, wait a damn minute. I wake up at 6, my first course is at 8, and I have some big stonking 2 hour breaks between courses. How come I get queued to class before even reaching the fridge? For that matter, how come I never have time between classes?

Well, because this idiocy of an EP queues me to the next class an hour and a half early, even if it's in the same building. Dunno why...

3. ... oh, wait, I do get a pretty good idea. Because my character follows those twisty and incompetently laid paths around the campus instead of just getting from point A to point B.

Also because pathfinding is even more broken than in SimCity. I get to watch my character -- and for that matter everyone else -- first run up one side of the building, then turn around and run around to the entrance on the other side. Every time.

Yeah, now I know why I have to be queued at 6:30 to go to a class that starts at 8:00.

4. Now the second time around I learned how to game it, but it still bothers me because it IS gaming an incompetently designed EP.

E.g., this time I know to pause at the end of each class and quickly queue my character to play chess or fish (whichever is closest) and then watch the time so I can cancel it juuust right to make it to the next class in time. But it bothers me because I shouldn't have to bloody do that. A two hour break should be enough to get to that SimBurger or whatever and back to class... if the paths weren't laid by a sadistic moron.

Plus that doesn't change that I had to go through some pretty non-fun RL hours the first time around to learn to game the system.

Or by the third time, yeah, I can use the MultiTab, which fills up Fun AND Social faster than anything else fills one of them. Fits those breaks just perfectly. Yay for paying real money to work around EA's broken design. No, really.

5. Not that the second time was all fun and games, though. So I send my sim to uni, and... discover I can't go to my old dorm, since it turns out the game thinks it's still occupied by a household with 0 (zero) members. So, you know, I can't move in there. I figure I'll just drop the new sim somewhere else, edit town, kick them out, and then move there. Well, I boot the empty household out all right, but now there's no option to change dorm. I figure, screw it, I'll just drop and enroll again. Bad idea.

Dropping gave me an F, but it should be no problem, because I'M DOING IT AGAIN, I figure.

So I slog through two weeks again, I have a full performance bar for the whole second week, I'm on the dean's list, take all exams with flying colours, and graduate... with an F.

Yeah, literally. The F for dropping out just stayed there as the graduation grade the next time around. Whatever "geniuses" at EA were programming this thing, obviously couldn't figure out how to just write the NEW grade there. Assigning a new value must be rocket surgery or something

Worse yet, the realization sinks in that it'll stay that way for that discipline, no matter what. I mean, if I do it again they still won't know how to change the value there.

At any rate, that was a waste of some weeks of my sims' time, and a waste of several hours of my time.

6. So at least I get invited to some parties. Woo.

... except the layout of the EA-designed houses is some impractical idiocy that doesn't actually work for a party. Everyone is more or less just standing there complaining about being unable to route to the beer keg. I spend two sim hours just getting to the keg myself, and eventually taking a detour through another room just to get there, I want to do a keg-stand with the nearest guy... oh wait, they moved two steps and now they can't route to me.

I eventually go home after the saddest party I've ever witnessed. I mean, seriously, either RL or The Sims, take your pick.

7. What also starts to bother me the second, and especially third time around, is that I've got the same roommates all over again. So basically there is no real replay value. A fourth time I'll still be room-mates with Garrison Fort.

I mean, in the TS2 one, I had some randomized nutters each time around, and they did lots of stuff in any case. They actually used the items around the dorm, which especially in custom designed ones was a lot.

Here it's the same guys each time. And I've seen more complex personalities in a morgue.

8. So I buy me a big double bed, so my sim can at least rest well before next exam. I use the new "set bed ownership" option and... bummer, each evening someone else is already sleeping in the other half, and I can't get in. (Muahahaha, I do have a megaphone... )

Anyway, here's a trivial idea for whatever "genius" coded that: If I set half a bed as my bed, then check as if I were in it, when someone else tries to use the other half. The only people who can use the other half of a bed marked as mine, should be the people who can actually be in bed with me. Don't <bleep>ing exclude me from MY bed.

Anyway, another half-baked, dysfunctional mis-feature from EA. Who would have guessed?

9. For that matter, as I discovered later when trying apartments, room-mates also ignore the fact that a bed is marked as the butler's. Geeze, EA, how hard is it to check?

10. For that matter, ever tried to move your household out, once you rented an apartment and got room-mates? Like, let's say I want to move out of living with 7 random people and buy my own house.

Yeah, it moves out the household AND the room-mates. The next house better have 8 beds too, because those guys are coming with you.

For fork's sake, EA...

11. But, back to university, so I get an invitation to a professor's party. After the experience with the first party, I say, ugh... NO. I have to, erm, floss my cat.

The next day I still get the popup that the party is starting in one hour, and I should get there. Erm, wait, didn't I just say "NO"?

Next morning I get woken up by the phone ringing, with the professor being sorry I didn't make it to his party. Jebus Cripes, I REFUSED THE INVITATION.

How hard can it be to just remember that I didn't accept the invitation? And why give me an option to refuse, if it makes no difference what I click?

12. This repeats every couple of days, turning into a nagging. And an irritation. It's not just one glitched invitation, it's that by now I'm bombarded daily with messages about some parties I have no interest in. (I'll have my parties back in the normal town, where I designed the homes roomy enough to work for them, thank you very much.) It's either an invitation, or one of the two reminders for parties I refused in the first place.

13. It also doesn't help that by the second sim, who was a girl (I need one of those too to make a family ), this is starting to look to me uncannily like harassment. I have this male professor twice her age who acts more like the obsessive fanboy from Oblivion. He texts her twice a day, calls her every other day to invite her to some beer (err, sorry, "juice") keg party, she says "no", then he texts her to remind her the party is about to start (didn't she just say "no"?), then texts her the next day to say he's sorry she didn't come, then calls her in the afternoon with the next invitation. Repeat ad nauseam for the rest of the term.

I know it's just a side-effect of poorly programmed code that thinks that's being friendly, but... am I the only one to whom this looks a bit inapropriate?

Etc.

About the actual university part, I just find it repetitive, like in World Adventures. Went one time, had fun, but at the second time I was extremely bored and just let the game running and went to the store to buy some potatoes. The social thing is really cool though, and all the skills and the related objects too. At least in the WA worlds you can relax and appreciate the scenery, but in the uni you just watch them go around in bicycles (really?) from one building to another.

Pretty much sums it up for me as well!
Another thing that bother me that was mentioned above is the fact that during the week your Sim really has no time to do anything. I have to admit, that I kinda, sorta, enjoy Uni a little bit, and what I've started doing is just taking the minimum amount of credits and end up with few classes and have more fun just roaming the campus and seeing what there is to get into.

Another thing that's not just Uni but affects the Sims 3 in general is the 'party' scene. If I throw a party with my Party Animal Sim it usually turns out sorta 'partyish' but if I'm attending a party is more like somebody just invited a bunch of people over to just sit around. Like if there was a way to prevent Sims from doing certain actions while at a party, and increase the probability they'll do other actions. Example being, decrease or prevent, working out, sleeping, napping, etc and increase dancing, drinking juice(kegger), watching Bonfire(Bonfire) so on and so forth.

University to me is fine. I like it. But I had this one glitch where one sim burnt food and it caught on fire. After it was put out, the fire started up again. This happened for about ten times till i had to go to main menu without saving and starting it up again.

It looks like to me, techincally I do not own this expansion pack at all but I feel like I have played it already if that makes any sense. I have noticed something adout sims 3 when it is shown in trailers or in gameplay, it never has any glitches or bugs with it unlike most simmers who's copy of sims 3 from what I can gather either glitch like crazy, have strange things happen to them or both making the game crash well that what happens to mine. Their are not that many simmers who have a fully working copy of sims 3 without any problems.

I think that this verison feels more like a high school than university and I hate the new plant sim look and how come you can become one so easily from what I have gathered?

My main problems with this EP is how the NPC's do not take care of themselves when living in a dorm. They just go to class and stand around the dorm until they get smelly and MAYBE take a shower before they go to sleep. I had THREE roommates die from hunger within' two weeks, and my Sim stayed depressed because of roommates, whom he never interacted with, died. Now Henry Hall is haunted by three freaking ghost.
Another problem is that your Sim refuses to go to class when a fire starts on the dorm lot. It's like, the dorm mates will start cooking something and just stop and let the stove catch on fire. It happened several times, so I won't bother living in the dorms anymore. University was fun on The Sims 2, unlike this game. This EP makes playing through the university very frustrating.

Well, that's why I was saying I've seen more interesting room-mates in a morgue. Those guys don't do anything.

I even hired the modded live-in chef to at least keep them fed and away from the stove, and they still won't use the time to do anything.

But to their credit, actually I think it's another glitch. I've seen some of them and later the butler for example get stuck drinking coffee all night, if a coffee machine is available. And I don't mean as in "then go get another one, repeat" but the same cup. They'd just sit there and do that animation for hours, and be unavailable to do anything else, while green clouds of stench float around them. Who knows what other actions the AI gets stuck on?

Are you playing a household with co-ed sims? Because I'm pretty sure if your household only has sims of one gender you get the option to move into a fraternity or sorority.



It is pretty easy to become a plant sim, but it's not like spraying 15 plants with pesticide was the toughest thing on earth. But why can't we just make a plant sim (or a mummy, imaginary friend, unicorn, or alien, for that matter) in create-a-sim?

And one of my biggest complaints are about the dorm designs. I like the fact that they added the option of having a roommate, but whereas the dorms in Sims 2 looked like, er, dorms, my sims in Sims 3 are moving into these communal mansions! Why are they so nicely designed and look as if they've already been lived in?

hate it because of Social groups cant keep away from them no matter what i do

I totally agree with you guys! The social groups are awful, and there are so many glitches! And don't get me started with the PlantSims! Why we can't save during a "PlantSim Transformation"???

I'm disappointed in how many glitches/bugs this game has. The NPCs can't even take care of themselves. I usually find them passed out in the living room or super stinky.

I also am really irritated that I can barely get my Sim to class in the Student Union building due to over crowding. :/

I like University life, but I'm very bothered by the lag and poor routing. It should not take my Sim three hours to walk to class, and there should not be ten Sims milling in front of the door when she gets there. I also wish the roommates would take care of themselves. One up and died in the dorm lobby her first day there, and I had to deal with that obnoxious "just saw some random stranger starve" moodlet for the next few Sim days.