So, admittedly, the feature I am finding myself missing more than anything else is the open world. The first thing I did every time I started a new expansion for Sims 3 was spend like an hour exploring all of the new premade families and homes and I absolutely loved being able to go to map view and see everything. While the Sims 3 was frequently an exercise in frustration for me (just couldn't get that dang thing to run smoothly/without crashing) I really, really loved the open world feature.

The point of my post, though, is just a comment about the store worlds that had become so popular in the last couple of years. I am embarrassed to say that I did purchase more than my fair share of them despite their exorbitant prices because again, having new worlds was one of my favorite features of the Sims 3. However, due to the frequency that the store team was pumping those worlds out towards the end, I can only assume that I was far from the only one who was dropping hard earned cash on those things. I think that they must have been hugely successful and must have generated a lot of money for EA or else they wouldn't have spend so much time and effort producing new ones. I mean, everyone has talked about the ridiculous prices they were charging for those things, but clearly, people (me included) were buying them at those prices!

I say all this because I am really shocked that EA was so willing to let this seemingly large revenue stream fall by the wayside in Sims 4. To say nothing of the feeling of hte game stepping back in time, it just seems like a waste of a huge amount of money! Clearly the store worlds were successful -- I am absolutely shocked that some higher-up did not make open worlds a requirement for that reason alone.

Anyone else have any thoughts or additional info about this topic?

Well I know one thing since Sims 4 worlds are so much smaller when they start cranking those out they either better be bigger than what we currently have in game or they better be less expensive.

I don't think we will have to worry about them not making new worlds. In fact because the neighborhoods in The Sims 4 are so tiny we will mostly likely have to download a lot of new neighborhoods! The biggest advantage that this game has is that sims can travel to any neighborhood it gives us more incentive to download new neighborhoods, because they are all connected now.

This would be a great opportunity to have a great multicultural "universe". It would be fantastic to be able to have breakfast in a French cafe, spend the afternoon fishing in Japan, picking up a curry for dinner in India and then finishing off the night in a Polynesian bar. They obviously put a great deal of effort into making ethnic Sim actually look ethnic. It would be a great way to make use of that feature.

Perhaps they are hoping for a direct conversion to console, hence the reduced world size/interactivity.

I'm a huge fan of the Sims 3's open world gameplay, but expansion after expansion could make the neighborhoods difficult to play, as I couldn't always find enough lots to add community spots. Even when there was room, I'd still spend hours building a spot from scratch or modify a lot heavily just to keep the feel of the neighborhood. The older the neighborhood the harder it seemed to be to fit everything in. (Especially Bridgeport... and I loved Bridgeport.)

I've lost track of the new terminology, but hopefully the following is understandable. In Sims 4, each city is broken up into zones. If they've done it right this time, cities should be expandable, just by adding a new zone or zones to accommodate for the new lot types added in future expansions/DLC. If that is the case, then the only reasons I'd buy additional DLC cities, would be if the style of a city appealed to me (but the strength of city style loses out a bit without open world) or (and this is the more likely culprit) if the city came with specific additional activities that I couldn't get without the city purchase. ...Which usually was the reason I ended up with as many Sims 3 worlds as I did. I didn't want a fantasy world, but I wanted all those things that came with it so I could have a little Renaissance Fair in the corner of a modern neighborhood!