More Awesome Than You!

I just stumbled onto how to fix the launcher.  The downside is you have to have an EA account for it to work. 

Short version:  You need to login to the EA Store site FROM INSIDE your game.  EA will put a .bin file with your login in your downloads folder, and your launcher will work almost just like it used to.  It still won't install EA stuff you didn't personally buy, but it will install other people's custom objects, CAS stuff, lots, sims, and I guess worlds (although I haven't tried the last yet).

Long version:  Like everybody else, I haven't been able to use the launcher for anything since the patch.  But then today I was having trouble with Riverview giving me file paths as names for sims and lots, so out of frustration I decided to try to download Riverview from within the game while it was running using the stupid "shop" button EA gave us.  I clicked on "download again" on the Riverview page, and it downloaded, but then the file just sat there, all grayed out in the launcher.  So I went to "My downloads dashboard" or whatever "shop-o-liscious" name EA gave the link, there was a list of all the stuff that I had downloaded from the EA Store with my free points.  So I clicked on Riverview in that list, and the launcher started up, asked for my EA login, and installed Riverview into my game.

After that my launcher worked again.

This information is not very useful, since it involves ALLOWING YOUR GAME TO PHONE HOME WITH ITS SPYWARE.

That's true, but its a way faster way to install sims3packs than unpacking them, running them through the blue lot fixer and procmon, and merging them in s3pe before putting them in your game.  And it allows for finding and deleting individual objects without having to search through the package files and hope that the filename matches the in-game name. 

Once you get the launcher working again you can always unplug from the internet while using the launcher or playing the game.  In the meantime I think working for better national and international internet privacy regulations and against the corporatization and copywriting of the universe is the only way to make a dent in the future EA would like us to have.  Don't get me wrong, MATY and the booty and related entities have a central place in the struggle, but it has to grow from here.

Or you could do this: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,17743.0.html

I tried your fix and it slowed everything down even though I was offline. 

Maybe taking the new .bin file out of the downloads folder would speed your game up again.  You still have to keep aaa'rghed EA stuff in the Mods folder and not the DCCache folder.

I just switched my current .exe with one from the cd for long enough to use the launcher to install the store items that I've run through the compressor, and then just switched it back to the patched.exe to play. The dcb files worked fine in Mods with no lag, although you can change your .cfg to read them in the DCCache file so that you don't have to move them.