I have been active on and off since 2006 in the community and while I highly enjoyed my teenage phase between 2006 and I guess somewhere around 2010 where forums and websites had daily or weekly updates with new CC, I think my favourite era of CC is the current one. People really know the game by now and yet every few months people come up with the most insane stuff I never thought possible simply because they do know the ins and out of it so well and how to manipulate things to get them to work the way they want to (e.g. the creativity it took to turn big dogs into the tiny animals from the Sims 4 pack via collars and fur modification that just became available). Also I'm happy we have Sims File Share now. Gosh, how much I hate box, dropbox, mediafire, etc.
I do however miss All About Style. Their historical clothes are still in my game and I love them to death. I wish there was more historical CC that isn't regency related and/or Western European/American.

Damn. This makes me wish I would've continued effort on BAST (Better Audio and Sound Tool). It was not only a tool that would let you modify every audio/music/sfx aspect of the game in a user-friendly way, but I was in WIP to add distance-based audio and fix the lag on user-added music. (distance as in music gets louder closer to the radios, etc, etc.) With it was planned to include HQ versions of the music and over 130 new simlish-style songs and 17 new radio stations genres with functional community lot speakers, but I never got past the early alpha stage, not even enough to release it.

Farthest I got on it was the widget which allowed you to skip music songs while on the cas/buy/build/nhood menus, two of the community speakers, and 4 new genres. The distance-based audio was very buggy, as was the widget and it often crashed the game. I couldn't figure a way to fix it. 

In retrospect I'm sure someone else with come up with something better than me though.

Link rot.

Oh yes, I see what you mean now, I think that more research and methods and tools have helped here. An accumulation of knowledge and methods! Also, I notice that lot of skinners/ meshers are artists also, so that really shows in the aesthetic of a piece. I remember lots of skins based on the naked mannequin mesh; some were really nice, as they usually deployed bumpmapping to make them interesting.

Yeah, I still find it impressive how they draw on eyebrows, lipstick, eyes, hair strands etc. It's more than obvious that those people have talent. At first I was more drawn to East Asian CC because of that, they were drawing CC while western creators were using photos and photoshop. Thank god westerners later on started drawing too. I have no problem them charging for CC or putting ads cause that takes time.

Yess, I also love SimFileShare and maybe Mediafire. I wish we had our Mod Manager cause Sims 2 Pack Clean Installer still can't view everything and sometimes can't show textures at all. Sims 2 taught me everything about organizing files. I remember 10 yrs ago how I would dump everything in the Downloads folder.

If I can be greedy on the CC front, my favourite era is NOW! Because there is (almost) all the old, awesome stuff - and if it was good enough, someone has reuploaded it even if it was gone, AND we have awesome new creators making new mods etc which is always fun. No game version changes to mess things up, everything is basically stable and some things are starting to be changed that people always said was impossible.

I think my favourite time in the community was probably early TS3 era, TS2 was still so busy and there were loads of threads constantly where people shared things they had learned about the game. It was a riot. I love that the TS2 community still exists and is active, and I like the cosy feel now where you know everyone. So this is probably my second best time It reminds me a little of an old forum I used to be on in around 2006/2007 for a little-known band, there were probably only about 20 regular posters on the forum and you could log on a couple of times a week and basically everyone would respond to every post, so you really got to know people. I went to a meet up once too, I think there were about 5 of us there and just had the absolute best time meeting internet strangers that I had a shared interest with. We all went to a gig together. Unfortunately I lost touch with them and the forum isn't online any more, and I don't know any of their real names.

I've found a lot of the newer stuff is a bit.... cleaner, for lack of a better word. Like it's made with the idea that you're going to be using different mods with different creators, so they actually list what BHAVs get changed and it's just less conflictly overall.

I think that MTS upgraded their requirements for uploads. Some of the old stuff didn't even have pictures.

And when they did, it was often horribly tiny grainy things that you need Magnifier to see on modern resolutions.

The whole time has been awesome for me..as creators got more and more creative, more mods came out, and CC just exploded in some areas, such as the medieval time spawned an entire site dedicated to it-SFS was created which really makes sharing CC so easy-there's not really a special time for me as a whole.

It's all good-especially when TSR lost their monopoly on CC. That alone was a great thing.

CC-wise I think there is a lot to be said for the last 7 years or so, which yes is a big span of time, but it's when we started getting clever and doing things like top only dresses and pantless shoes. The inability to change shoes has always been something that bothered me, since different people will wear different shoes with the same outfit. I have knee problems, I adore heels but I can't wear them so however fancy the dress I'm going to be in flats, why can't some of my Sims have the same choice? And aside from the realism aspect, as earlier points have pointed out, sometimes shoes are not made well and you wish you could swap to something better and now finally with top only dresses I can pick whatever shoes I actually like I'm waiting for the point where we take the top only dress trend to "top only full outfit without shoes" and then make bottoms that are just the feet, so we can have the magic for everything I've seen one such outfit so far, by Kurimas, but here's hoping we get more in future.

Fortunately I don't mind 4t2 conversions, I think a lot of them are nice, but I can imagine it's a bummer time for those that don't. The downside is crazy high poly depending on the creator, some seem better than others at reducing it, or perhaps they just pick better source material. But I've been testing with some (in my opinion crazy high) stuff and my PC seems able to handle it, so yay modern hardware coping better. Especially nice that people like Dee (no crazy poly there <3) keep adding things for teens and elders, my elder females have gotten so much more variety now thanks to her. Also find there's far more available for male Sims, that isn't all goth-vibes.

Community wise, my favorite was whatever time it was that Mootilda was with us. I miss her so much, I wish she could have gotten to be around for all the things that have been discovered and broken ground on now, both because I think she would enjoy it and also because she was extremely talented and could have used the discoveries to do even more cool stuff. She was truly a special person and did so much for the community, I am glad I got to be around for a little bit before she passed. I didn't discover CC until rather late, blast from the past seeing Kligma talk about the Swedish EA-run Sims site, I was on there too That was the one forum I was on until 2011 when I found MTS and joined here. I was a bit sad when I returned to the community back in 2022, because when I got sick and disappeared it was still very active, and when I came back it felt very dead by comparison. It has livened up a bit again, though. Feels like Bulbizarre returning kicked things in to gear, being chatty drew out the chatty in others it seems

I wish I could get a time-travel machine and use it to send back April Black's video just to see her thoughts on it.

I like this era! I think 2017 was a renaissance and it's only gotten better with cc and mods IMO. 2022 was a second renaissance. I could list all the amazing things that have happened that bolstered the communtiy and game but it's so long. The community is everywhere in all corners of the internet ,from major social media platforms, to forums (which have less activity than they did in their heydeys), to many many discords. With the rise of twitch and youtube live, many people are now watching the game being played in real time or on VODS to familiarize themselves with it if they are new to it. The facebook group for sims 2 gets mny new members a week consistently since 2018 and has grown to over 15K. Old cc can still be found via wayback machine and archival efforts from members of the community, we've lost some greats but they are never forgotten.

The era of low resolution in-game filmed TS2 machinimas of x-men and what not recreated shows or music videos

... of incredibly heavy subjects, but made so poorly, it's made it's way around the emotion wheel and is actually absurd.

Indeed. Like for me, I don't mind CC for TS4 converted to TS2, some of it is really great. I do mind the Maxis "vanilla" TS4 objects converted to TS2 though. Mainly because vanilla TS4 objects suck. Texture quality is poor and what's with the low poly-ness? One doesn't spend 1,200 USD on a beefy computer to use CC that has quality which belongs in a 2006 Nintendo Wii game.

For me it's more that there's often a slight mismatch between the default TS2 and TS4 style in both the textures and meshes. Some meshes/recolors kind of work, while others just look off - either the sizing/shaping of the meshes, the shading/textures, or just *something*. It's a bit difficult to explain exactly what it is (the cartoony shading on the textures isn't helping, though). Even TS4 CC sometimes have this issue, especially when made to blend with TS4. The items can look quite good, be lowish-poly (not any lower than what would be considered fine for TS2) and textured quite nicely, and they look good in a TS4 environment. But converted and put into TS2 it just looks slightly off. It's not all TS4 items, or all TS4 CC items, though. Some look fine in TS2.

If the TS4 CC items fall somewhere in between a TS2/TS4 style, they usually look alright converted.

Some creators have a tendency to make their items way too high-poly, or go too harsh on shadows (using ambient occlusion overlays and similar on the actual textures), and that tends to look bad in TS2.

I don't mind at all TS4 items being converted to TS2, though (I end up downloading a lot of it, but usually need to test it out to check if it will work with my preferences). If other people want their game to look like it's come straight from TS4, then that's up to them.

This makes for a great mornings reading. I only ever visited Insim occasionally and distantly heard something of Walt.

As for what this thread was about I would say 2008-9 was the best time for forums, but CC was more 2010 on. Mods would be the past few years.

Well of course I came very late to the party, only getting the game late in 2012! I was only just in time to see the closing down of the official Sims 2 site. And it was no longer possible to register, so I couldn't download anything there. Maybe with hindsight that was just as well. Though I do wish I had read some of the stories there. I understand they'd all be illustrated with pictures from the in-game Storytelling feature. I wonder if I could still see them through the Wayback Machine. . .

When it comes to CC and mods, I download what I like, regardless of how old it is. And a lot of the stuff I like is actually quite old. I didn't even know about the emo scene when it was a thing (in Sims terms I was an aging adult going on becoming an elder), but I'm glad it was a thing, because it has provided lots of lovely hairstyles for the numerous gay boys in my game. Sometimes I wish I had been around in the early days of TS2. Some of the CC clothes I have downloaded seem, when I read their makers' comments, to have been made by really wacky teenage Simmers, if anything even wackier than the wacky teenage Sims in my game. It probably was a scene that was a bit too young for me, but still I wish I'd been there to see it. And I wish I'd been able to go to the GaySimsClub! It sounds the ideal home both for me and my Sims! (I do have one or two straight Sims in my game! )

There certainly were some excellent modders in the early game -- the likes of MogHughson, Jenflower and christianlov come to mind. Many of these had dropped out, or were dropping out of the community by the time I joined. I quite often find myself using older mods and CC in preference to newer ones, because a lot of the new stuff requires all EPs/SPs. I know it's my own choice to restrict myself to the early EPs, but my game as it is, is running so well, and giving me and my Sims so much fun! Occasionally, when I see a lot I really like, but made with the later EPs/SPs, I re-make it in my own game (or as close to it as I can get). A lot of my Sims are actually quite poor (poor but happy ), and many of the lots that people share are totally beyond their financial reach anyway.

In terms of community and storytelling, nothing really beat the old TS2 site and Sim Exchange--and that's saying something because the interface and the actual reading part wasn't all that great. When it comes to communicating, I kinda get the same BBS vibes from here and other forums, but idk if anything was/is really as active as the BBS forum was back in the day. That's what I miss/missed with TS3 and TS4, the bustle of forum activity. I remember the forum games we used to play, like The Simmer Below Me, and the fun you could have speculating on the next thing coming out or sharing a wish list of what you hoped to see.

You just had a real sense of community on the old sims site, whereas nowadays it's more disjointed. There's so many different sites for fandoms now, and while that's ok for the most part, I feel like the writing and storytelling side of the sims hasn't been the same since. The old sims forum was great for writing and storytelling because you could find your people, you know? And you could discover new simmers and stories much easier. Nowadays, I do still see some simmers posting their stories/gameplay but imo, that's more difficult to find. Not only do you have to weed out all the non-sims stuff (let alone the stuff from other generations), but I don't think the format really works (should probably be more of a slide show) and it's hard to follow a series or even get started if the simmer isn't into proper documentation. I mean when there's no table of contents or master post/page and just a bunch of tags. That makes it hard to get into someone's legacy or whatever, you know? And it's not really Tumblr's fault cause it wasn't really built for that, but still. And then it's been really hard for me to find more story-driven sims writing. I really see mostly observational style writing. Like 'I'm playing this family and this happened.' It reads mostly like a report or, well, status update. And that can be fine, even great, but I miss more story and plot driven legacies. And sometimes there were great stories that weren't gameplay related at all. Maybe I'm not looking hard enough for those type of things, but back in the day, you had writers on the exchange who used sims to just tell a super good story. I'm a bit sad that more of those weren't saved. Seems like most of the exchange stories that got saved were legacies and challenges, which are great, but again, there's whole other genres of stuff. I can't even remember the names of some of them but I Woke Up LA comes to mind, as I know I followed that story for a while. I rarely see stuff like that anymore, though I guess there's one or two out there.

But as to favorite era of cc? Well it's #NeverGoingBack for me. I don't think I can properly convey this to simmers who weren't really around during the game's initial release and a bit later, during TS3's reign, but the TS2 CC community has truly exploded, evolved, and is just magnitudes better than it was back in the day. Yes, there are some gems and old favorites that were created years ago and maybe lost to time, but again, what we have today just kinda outclasses it. And that's because the majority of the time, someone today can just recreate it. Seriously. I can't tell you how many times I've seen a post on tumblr where someone is either in the midst of, or has already, recreated an older mod that exists. Or they're updating it. Now, I'm not saying that it's great that people are reinventing the wheel, but I am saying it's a true sign of progress that people can reinvent the wheel. Back in the day, if you couldn't find that obscure mod, you just lived without. Today, you could probably get someone to make it for you. The available information we have, the tutorials and living knowledge from simmers, plus the available tools and programs we now have, just makes things great right now. I mean, the Outfit Organizer alone is a marvel. The fact that we have that and the Object Relocator is a miracle. If you haven't ever tried out either of those, please check them out. Truly a step above some of the older tools and plugins we had. And speaking of miracles! First born syndrome and broken randomizers are fixed--just like that, a thing of the past.

There are so many things out today that I never thought I'd see, things that were thought to be impossible. But we have them. I mean, Custom LTWs! That was kinda impossible ten years ago. Separates for categories other than Everyday! Not exactly impossible, but definitely improbable years ago. Even if we are on the tail end of it, the TS2 Community has truly experienced a modding renaissance. There are so many great creators and modders out there who have made awesome stuff, big and small. I mean, just thinking of some of the recent greats--there's Simler90, Lazy Duchess, Midgethetree, JellyMeduza, Lamare, Nopke, William from Pick'N'Mix Sims, Sunni and Fractured Moonlight, and Chris Hatch, and on and on and on. I'm sure I'm forgetting several someones. But that's just me talking about the modding.

There are so many, many, many creators who are creating and converting and building and recoloring. It's truly amazing. I mean, if anyone has any doubt about which time period is better for cc, well, just consider the amount of male cc today. Years ago, even in TS2's initial release period, you just didn't get that much male clothes and hair. Didn't exist. Today, I can go into CAS and scroll for paaages because we've got so many options now. That wouldn't exist without TS3 and TS4 and creators' willingness to convert stuff. And the quality is better, too. The base standard for clothes and hair is way higher than it was years ago. Maybe it's because so many simmers have decent computers, but I think on the whole simmers can trust that when you download something, it's reasonably well made.

And honestly some of the greats and old favorites are still around. HugeLunatic, Shastakiss, Digital Angels, Michelle, The Ninth Wave Kestrellyn, and I still see RentedSpace, MistyFluff, Io--there's always old names popping up or in and out. I mean, Hat and CuriousB came back! Trapping, too for a while. And while Pescado doesn't make anything, his presence is definitely still felt--MATY and the booty are still running, and the Graveyard always comes back. Which yeah, how could I forget--MTS and Garden of Shadows are still here! Except now we have Simfileshare. Which is free. And just for simmers.

Now, there are some simmers and creators I miss. Ones that I would love to see around again. But this really isn't a big question for me at least. This is my favorite TS2 cc era. We are in the best timeline. So yeah, fellow simmers, give yourself a pat on the back--we're keeping this community going strong!

...Maybe we should stop waiting for EA and pool our money together. The TS2 community would make the best TS2 remaster.

^ I miss the old forums. SimsCommunity, SimOasis, Insim (when it was very active), and there's probably several I'm forgetting, too. I used to love the contest, story and picture areas, but also hung out a bit in the "game" sections from time to time. Now there's much less of these, and stories are a lot harder to follow (especially the ones over at Tumblr and such - those I've more or less given up because it's so hard to read/follow along with them due to the format, and the rest are hard to find, if they're even updated).

I've rarely had too much interest in the more observational "let's play" kind of storytelling, especially if there's little to no story/humor/drama/etc., but that's often what people post these days. (Personally I tend to prefer more structured storytelling. Maybe legacies if they're done good and have a hint of story in them)

*disintegrates into ancient dust* :')

Seriously though, glad to hear I'm one of someone's favorites. I just suddenly feel hundreds of years older, this is like reliving that part of teenage where some child calls you "aunt" for the first time.

Lol. I still remember there being this site for TS2 music videos. I remember "Losing My Religion" by R.E.M. being on there. I barely remember much of it, other then I think it was depicting a sim being hit by a car and another sim losing their mind over that or something. IDK. That must have been back in 2005 that i last saw that. o.O

I enjoyed the early times when I was downloading Naruto sims and making them jump on the sofa

Then, there's the emo and Machinima by... golly I forgot their name, but the Helena machinima altered my brain chemistry a lot. It made me explore camera angles and how ingame animations can be paused or looped to look a certain way. AND THEN I LEARNED ABOUT POSEBOXES and props. Oh joy, OH JOY!

It certainly opened a new way and new love of storytelling that I was on CC craze for things that will help me better dress my stages/sets for story shots. And that lead me to being very particular about lots/builds. Which lead me to being a 90% build mode and 10% live mode gremlin. (a few weeks ago, my litter sister saw me stressing over routing/making objects accessible to sims, and she said "you're never gonna play that live mode, what are you crying about??")

and then there's the Maxis-Match era. and plasticbox's mini lots! and Criquette's hood decor! and-- *drinks water*

tho...the question hasn't been answered yet.
my fav era of all time has to be now. we're still discovering and making new things! I enjoyed all the "eras", but now it's more organized, especially with simfileshare, that I don't have to dread if things are safe.

I havent frequented other sites enough to interact and miss it but I'm glad and grateful that MTS is still up. It's like a home I can always come back to, to get great CC and talk about the game in general.