I think from all the troubles the game has with the whole, evolving town and whatnot we can deduce that EA couldn't figure out how to fix it so they made it hard to play more that one household at a time.
It's not because EA are a dick, which they are, but because EA are failures at programming AI.

If you want to play the game without those pesky little "motives" do this:
1. ctrl-shift-c
2. testingcheatsenabled true
3. Enter
4. Shift-click on mailbox
5. Make All Happy
6a. Repeat 4-5 as needed, or;
6b. Shift-click on mailbox
7. Make Needs Static

Done, no more pesky "motives" to hinder you. Have fun.

Hey, just mentioning this again...
This is in response to Pes' comments about testingcheatsenabled:
While shift-clicking a sim only give two options, grow up and change traits, shift-clicking on the mailbox will give more options, including set career, force visitor, force npc, make friends, know everybody, etc. Also, Shift-Click on the ground and you can teleport anywhere in town. Shift-Clicking on sims from other Families allows you to add them to yours.  Just mentioning this again.
Also, anybody know how to get the UI into screen caps? I can't find the option and the Show UI option under video only does it for video... Please help.

Actually Pes, Shift-Click the mail box... More options.

Shift-Click the ground you can teleport.

I personally do not know, but, If you're really paranoid about it you could unplug/disconnect your connection while playing TS3. What are you using it for at that time anyway? But a more informed and knowledgeable person would be better suited to answer this.

 I just found a funny conflict between some programs.
If you have The Sims 3 and AnyGameStarter for TS2, they might conflict and change the user directory for TS3 to the AGS directory.
Just so you know, you can fix this by removing AGS and the TS3 directory will reset to your Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\
I don't think this has been mentioned, but if it has, sorry for the redundancy.

Oh, and Merlin, check the \Crack\ folder in the .iso or disk you burned, there is a KeyGen in there.

All I can really think to say now is that I won't be dropping The Sims 2 anytime soon, but I won't be dropping The Sims 3 either. It genuinely doesn't suck massive... well not as far as base games go.

No, not lazy, just an idiot. The problem is that the keyboard takes a moment to recognize that I've pressed SHIFT and when I type quickly it doesn't register the stroke as a capital letter. Other times I get the shift on the first few letters of an acronym but it'll conk out in the middle making my letters FUBAR and look like this FuBAr. I really hate that and I need to get a new keyboard, but that's really off topic now isn't it?

Actually yes, it is a little fitsy... sorry.

yes, in all likely hood this recent leak is mostly identical to the one for 2 June, of course barring any changes made when the booty was plundered.

if the arr'd version really is really real and not a pregold version yes, if not, IDK

Well utorrent and the like give you an estimate based on the current/recent down speed. It's either the actual down speed at the moment or the average of the last few seconds.

no, confuses me too, especially since i can't get Cornelia and Gunther to woohoo, they're friggen married for christsake...

if you downloaded the rld-sim3.iso file (the one from PB/ISOHUNT) that isn't .rar'd but is just the plain iso file, then it should be in the /crack directory with the keygen

available here http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4901100/The_Sims_3-RELOADED.iso

you could take some classes from the science center place that will give you some seeds to plant, they'll be in you're inventory, click on them and select plant, then plop em where you want to grow them, don't know where to buy seed though...
also, WTF 400simoleans to take a class? expensive...

sorry bout double post... didn't see this post when doing last one...

yeah, just open the disk after burning or mounting and open the skuversion.txt in the root directory, mine says

anybody else think that the torrent might not be the final build... or might be a developer/executive copy to show the big wigs at ea, i say this because it does seem awfully light on content and whatnot... and it load in less than a minute two when you include actually going into the neighborhood to play, compared with the sims 2 i get like 10 minute loads on boot when you include loading the hood.

also, anybody else remember hearing about a tool that allows custom hood making to be released shortly after the game goes on sale?

edit:
sorry about all the posts so quickly didn't mean to spam the same thing worded differently... again sorry

i downloaded from ISOHUNT in about 5 hours on DSL... had about 900-1000 peers, and about 100 seeds
there were about 10000 peers at that time.

EDIT:
anybody else notice the distinct lack of the creator camp stuff shown in the vids on thesims3.ea.com ... thought those houses and fams were supposed to be included... maybe they're like riverview, dl after authentication...

sorry if it's been mentioned before, but anybody know how to kill some sims....
pools don't work to drown they can climb the edge... lol, three games+24EP/SPs to get that
fires are hard if you have multiple sims... they all run into the room and scream like panzies and interactions with anything other than fire and walking are locked out
haven't tried starving yet... but suspect they will go to a restaurant or any public place with a grill or other...

also, any idea who the seamingly unrelated goth ghost is... the one in the goth graveyard... i can't find her on the family tree!

EDIT:
my computer
2.2GHz Core 2 Duo
GeForce 9800GTX+
3GB RAM
runs the game great at max settings 1920x1200, haven't checked FPS yet but the game isn't laggy yet