Tim LeTourneau is currently travelling through Europe to hold presentations about the first expansion for the Sims 2, University. He's shown it to members of the press, including webmasters of several fansites who attended the presentations, and some community members who were lucky enough to be invited by EA. A lot of pictures were taken during the presentations, and they've been posted on those fansites. But of course there was also some new info from these presentations. With thanks to SP Zone and SimsNetwork, which went to the presentation in Amsterdam last week, the following new information is now available (in pretty random order):

• Every neighborhood has a campus. You can choose to create a new one, or use one of the two pre-made areas.
• You can use buildings multiple times. After placing a building from the bin into an area, it will remain in the bin to be built again. It's unsure if this is for just university buildings or all buildings.
• There will be a new cheat, with which you can make buildings as tall as you want. This is done through a cheat as it doesn't make the game any faster.
• You can let up to 8 sims go to university. You can control these characters and they'll function more or less like a family. You can even choose to send townies (NPC sims) to college, so they can grow up and perhaps marry your own sims.
• There are four semesters (stages) during college time: Freshman, sophomore, junior and then senior. Each of these takes 2 or 3 days, and the clock starts ticking as soon as you select a Sim. In itself, the entire life stage takes about 20 days.
• Build-mode is disabled while you're playing on the university campus.
• Going to lectures etc. is similar to work in the original game: you won't follow your Sim.
• Sucking up to teachers or professors works. Woohoo-ing with them will guarantee good grades, according to Tim.
• There's a new "Influence" bar, indicating the influence on other Sims you have. It will be placed on the left of the aspiration bar, and the higher it is the more Sims will do what you tell them to do. It is filled by fulfilling new wants, which are marked with a blue border.
• There will now be 5 or even 6 wants instead of 4. You have to unlock those two though. You can now also lock 2 instead of 1 wants and/or fears.
• Sims can now watch sports on tv.
• Sport-Parties take a little longer than usual. During those parties Sims can watch the sports channel.
• There's a new "DIY Plastic Surgery Set" career object, which allows you to change the face of your Sim completely. This can be bought in the Show Business career track. It can go wrong too...
• The "Cow Plant" is given in the Ecology track. The Art track allows you to buy a Camera. The cow plant likes to eat, and if you don't feed it well enough it'll start eating Sims. After that it'll start producing special milk which other Sims can drink though. The result is the same as the Elixir of Life: the Sim gets younger.
• Sims can be revived or brought back as zombie by bribing the Grim Reaper using an object in the Paranormal track. Zombies can be controlled like any other Sim but they can't make babies. On the other hand, they do have eternal life without using cheats.
• You can have multiple families in one home, without marrying them or having them fall in love.
• Time continues when visitng a community area from university. Such a visit can influence the mood of your Sim.
• The computer has many more options, including entering a majors.
• There will be pranks.
• Some of the new objects include fitness-machines, common showers, the bubble blower from the Sims 1, a "juice-machine" which can do odd things to your Sim, a mini-fridge, a fire to roast marshmellows in, a fire sprinkler installation to extinguish fires without calling the fire department, cellphones, gameboys and MP3-players, the pool table and some objects in special themes like Classic, hip, and others.
• You can build a bar, or a Lounge-area where a band can play.
• There will be both two-floor and three-floor columns.
• There are 11 majors, including history, biology, political economy and (plastic) surgery.
• The Body Shop will be updated when you install University.
• The Sims won't go online as previously stated. This is because "other players will disturb the planning of your Sims' lives. This destroys the entire Sims idea" (from GameVillage).

Furthermore, SP Zone reveals that pets will definitely return to the Sims 2, as well as bunk beds and spiral stairs. However, these will not be in University but in future expansion packs. We can expect one expansion approximately every 6 months. The original game as well as things in earlier expansions will also be fixed and improved in the new expansions. Of course I want to thank SP Zone (specifically JVtje, read her entire report on SP Zone's forum) for all the info. In the Read More part you can find a ton of pictures during the presentation, from SP Zone, SimsNetwork, LeeRoyNR09 (forum member on official Dutch site), GameVillage, and Gry (which went to Warsaw for the presentation). They are in fairly low quality as they're taken with cameras and aren't direct screenshots.

Furthermore, Fragland has interviewed Tim LeTourneau about the first expansion pack. In that interview he reveals you can hack the "mainframe computer system" to get some good grades. You have to get into the secret society for that though. The interview also mentions that sports are hard to put in the game - it's all about adding a bit of gameplay, which isn't easily done. Read the entire interview for the details.

SP Zone:


SimsNetwork:


LeeRoyNR09:


GameVillage:


Gry: