The system requirements are low, but not that low. People who have been playing the "unoficial previews," have all reported frame-rate drops during certain gameplay events. Nowadays, pretty much every gaming house has better rep among gamers then EA. I would say Valve and Blizzard stand at the top, in terms of reverence from gamers.
I like EA. They have been publishing a lot of interesting games. Sure, some of them are cash-cows, but then you get Dead Space. I preordered Sims 3 with a gift card I got. I've only played the first one, so this will seem like a huge upgrade for me. The weird part for me was seeing billboards for the game in the middle of S.F. I guess gaming has really arrived into the mainstream.
Well that's because the 'unofficial preview' was 17 builds behind the final product. Eighteen if you count the patch you get after you install the game. So.. There.
Valve is an EA partner and Blizzard makes like 3 games and sells them to the same group of people. I honestly don't know anyone who thinks EA is the worse of the big three. Although, their fear of Steam kind of pisses me off. Case in point, no sign of Sims 3 showing up there.
17 builds behind? That's pure EA spin. Both versions are fully functional, bug-free - although the second only after patching - and with all the content. Besides making 17 builds in two weeks is absolutely impossible for a game like this.
Just about everything I've heard about this one says that it's pretty bad. Mediocre at best. I'll try not to say "I told you so". But I did tell you so. Damn!
I'd say it's mediocre but that's compared to TS2 and its umpteen EPs and SPs. Overall TS3 isn't bad, the "new game play" is Ok. I just miss some of the features even the base TS2 game had that makes me scratch my head on why such changes were made. Most notably the ability to place your own empty lots and each household you play being a "seperate town."