I picked up The Sims 3 a couple days after it came out; I blame telesilla and one of my RL friends who mentioned it. I completely skipped The Sims 2, so all I'd ever seen was the first couple of expansions from The Sims 1. 3 is like having this wild futuristic version of 1, where all the things that annoyed me are gone (introverted player is introverted; I so don't have the patience to socialize in-game, and now I don't have to cheat to avoid it!), and there are all kinds of new opportunities and career paths.

What I'm wondering about are things like challenges. I don't really know much about them, other than that telesilla mentioned them for Sims 2, but it sounds interesting -- anyone know what they are or how I'd go about doing one?

In the meantime, torachan linked to Alice and Kev yesterday, which is the adventures of "homeless" Sims and is pretty fascinating.