Hey Howdy Hey Tappers!
Well, 2018 is a little more than halfway over…can you believe it?…and we’re just about at the end of the 3rd major event of 2018. Each year TSTO sees 6 major events, 3 in the first half of the year and 3 in the second half. Before 2018 is over we’ll see one more summer event, a Halloween event, and a Christmas event, while the first half of the year was packed with major events of varying themes.
I thought this year we’d do something a little different than we’ve done in the past. Instead of waiting until the year is over to review all 6 major events at once, we’d take a look at how EA has done with the events for the first half of the year. So let’s do a quick recap of the Major Events in 2018, so far, and then end things with a poll…because you know it’s important to see what y’all have to say. So here’s a quick recap of Bart Royale, Springfield Jobs and Itchy and Scratchy Land…
Bart Royale
Bart Royale, 2018
The very major first event of 2018. Bart Royale ran from January 23rd to March 6th. Your typical 6 week event.
Prize track prizes included: 5 skins (General Bart, Prepper Lindsey Naegle, Outlands Maggie, Emperor Moe & Water Baron Burns), 1 full Character (Pyro), a statue, outlands decorations (Simpson House, a gate and water tower) and ruined versions of Lard Lad Donuts and the Jeb Statue.
Crafting included: Trenches, Gates, House Frames, Playgrounds, Lookout Towers, Rubble, a Runined Version of the Springfield Courthouse, some playground equipment, the truck shack and a Horse-Drawn SUV.
Premium Characters Included: Wendell, Erik, Larry & Sam, Jeremy Jailbird , Mountain Man, Pita and Peta and the Ice Bishop of Beverlyhills
Notable Changes to the Game: First instance of Defensive Bonus added to the game. (the area around a building where you place items to increase the prize track payout) We’ve now seen this with all 3 2018 events, but Bart Royale was the first.
This was also where we saw the change of new land costing Land tokens instead of in-game cash. From this point on any new land added to TSTO was only obtainable via Land Tokens..
More Info: If you’d like to relive Bart Royale, check out the event page for it here.
Springfield Jobs
Springfield Jobs, 2018
The second major event of 2018. Springfield Jobs ran from March 21st to May 9th. At 7 weeks this was the longest event of 2018, so far. This is considered to be an Around the World part 2, with notable trips through Italy and England, among other places.
Prize track prizes included: 0 skins, 5 full characters (Primo, Nana Sophie, Nigel, Fernando & Fit Tony), Cathedrals, Leaning Towers, Museums, 2 casinos, an English Pub, a few royal decorations, an international court & the Tower of Springfield.
Crafting included: Houses, Canals Shops, Gondolas, a Da Vinci Aircraft, Cheese Truck, a nod to Dr. Who, authentic London Phone Booths, Guards and Beefeaters, roundabouts, cathedrals, another Pub, an island capitol and resort, a nod to the Classic Simpsons episode from “down under”, and 3 more land tokens.
Premium Characters Included: The Calabresi Boys, Wheels McGrath, the Pope, Jack the Ripper, Arthur Fortune, Guy Incognito, Raoul and a couple of dead writers.
Notable Changes to the Game: Nothing new was added. They did bring back the bonus area around the buildings (originally started in Bart Royale) and they brought back the video scenes (originally from the Wild West Event in 2016).
The biggest difference with this event was it’s length. At 7 weeks it was the longest event in TSTO since Clash of Clones way back in 2014…
More Info: If you’d like to relive Springfield Jobs, check out the event page for it here.
Itchy and Scratchy Land
The third major event of 2018, and most recent. Itchy and Scratchy Land ran from May 30th to July 11th. Another standard 6 week event.
Prize track prizes included: 3 Full Characters (Diane, Bort and Corporal Punishment), an amusement park ride for each act (Injury 500, Log Ride and Zoominator), statues, signs, parade starters and a child care center where everyone loves the ball pit. Oh and we got Itchy for Free when the event started.
Crafting included: Track pieces for the amusement park rides (straight track, curved track, looping track and drop track), parking lots, ticket booths, signs, a nurse’s station (which is forever closed) & some rollercoaster weirdos.
Premium Characters Included: Scratchy (for a whopping 300 donuts!), Jeremy, Ms. Mouse, June Bellamy, the classic Park Engineer and Tina Ballerina. (Squeaky Voiced Attendant was also premium…but a skin for SVT)
Notable Changes to the Game: Krustyland was forever destroyed, as we were forced to move everything to main Springfield. This was also the first event where we received a “heads up” on some spoilers from EA.
This event was also full of bugs, one of the buggiest events in recent memory. Lots of lag, lots of crashing and lots of frustration.
In addition to the I&S Land content, we also received updates for 4th of July and Pride. That’s not included in this rundown because they’re not directly part of I&S, just added because their dates coincided with this event.
More Info: If you’d like to relive Itchy and Scratchy Land, check out the event page for it here.
Now, having reviewed all 3 events in 2018 how would you rank them? (base your ranking on content and game play. Try (as best you can) to keep glitches/bugs out of your rankings….
If you’re having trouble viewing the poll form in this post you can view it directly here
Thoughts on the events of 2018 so far? Which was your favorite? Least favorite? Why? Sound off in the comments below, you know we love hearing from you!
Liked ’em all.
Loved Krustyland
1. Krustyland 2. Bart Royale. 3. Springfield Jobs
Id like to get a reboot of clash of clones.
I came to the game too late and missed clones and stonecutters.
Love the Halloween and Xmas events., but I hate wishing my while year away just for them.
Well, I&S Land wins worst event for me, since it seems to have ruined my game. I took a break just before it went live, while on vacation. Reinstalled and logged in just yesterday. The theme park nuke worked too well, apparently.
My Springfield has also been totally nuked — even the mountains are gone, only roads and characters not attached to buildings remain — and only a few buildings and decorations made it to storage. Most are just gone.
Just curious if this has happened to anyone else. It will certainly require a rollback, but having read many accounts of struggles with support from EA regarding the rollback glitch, I feel like getting it restored is not a sure thing.
Anyway, keep up the good work on this blog, I still really enjoy it and will check in from time to time even if my game is effectively over.
Follow up, EA support was actually very helpful! A couple of support tickets and screenshots later, my game was rolled back, and this time around the Krustyland nuke only affected Krustyland. 🙂
Perhaps EA is not the worst company after all. By as much. 🙂
I’ve really been disappointed in the last few events, but Itchy & Scratchy Land has, by far, been one of the worst events I’ve ever played since I started TSTO sometime around late 2012/early 2013. EA finally had a formula that worked well in 2017, but then it’s like they tried to reinvent the wheel, instead of keeping with what was working. There was very little story involved with Itchy & Scratchy Land, which was disappointing. Like others have said, a lot of mindless grinding that isn’t very engaging. I don’t mind the 3 Acts formula (though 2 would be better,) but without a strong story, it’s easy to lose interest. Bart Royale didn’t start out promising, but ended up being pretty good. I like the idea of having a “Bonus Area” as a way to get Event Currency more quickly, but it seems to come at the expense of having an object or something that clears all of whatever you’re supposed to tap (usually people) at once, which was nice for those of us that don’t have time to scroll around and try to find them all. Honestly, EA better step up their game with the last original Event of the year (Halloween and Christmas usually follow similar formulas from year to year and are almost always very good.) I’ve played this game for a very long time, and I’ve mostly more than enjoyed myself, but it’s getting a little old and stale…
Hmmmm…
1, Springfield jobs – good characters & beautiful buildings
2. Itchy & Scratchy Land – Kinda fun. Some nice characters
3. Bart Royale – Wasn’t a fan of this event
Very easy voting for me. 1.I&SL 2.SJ 3.BR (I wish I could vote BR even lower)
-I&SL had memorable characters from classic Simpsons episodes (and I’m an amusent park fan)
-I totally forgot that SJ had 5 characters on the prize track (which is awesome). I like the buildings, they just are not very “Simpsonsy”
-BR, seriously 5 skins and only 1 character. Wendel was by far the biggest highlight.
The events so far have been either lackluster or outright bad for various reasons. Same layout with different reskins. Endless 6-week, 4-hr grind fest, often with the same 10-15 characters in an ever-growing cast of about 300-400 characters. Too predictable.
My order from best to worst:
SJ > I&SL > BR
Bart Royale
Pros
– Wendall
Cons
– None of the freemium/premium characters & decorations were interesting (apart from Wendall)
– Skins instead of characters (only 1 character in prize track, Pyro)
– Crafting items were not interesting
– Too long, got bored by the 3rd act
Overall, my least favorite 2018 Event so far, and probably one of the worst events in Tapped Out history. I stored almost everything associated with this event after its conclusion.
Springfield Jobs
Pros
– Bunch of new characters (both freemium & premium) introduced
– Adds new global items (Buildings, characters) to the game (similar to the Airport event a few years ago)
– Other freemium characters (Ruth Powers, Carl, Lenny, Smithers, Fat Tony, Legs, & Louie) getting involved in the events for a change.
– Crafting items were overall better than Bart Royale event
Cons
– Too Long! (if it was 2-3 weeks shorter, it would have been better)
Overall, my favorite of the 3 events, although I wouldn’t put it my top 10 best Tapped Out events ever.
Itchy & Scratchy Land
Pros
– Merging Krustyland with the rest of Springfield
– Free land tokens
– Itchy as a free character
– Most of the prizes in the Mystery Boxes (Summer Vacation, Pride, & 4th of July)
Cons
– Too Many Lags/Bugs
– Connecting the roller coaster parts was confusing at first (red boxes)
– Scratchy costs too much donuts! (300 would be more reasonable if Itchy & Scratchy were paired together at 150 donuts each)
– Same old set of characters (Homer, Apu, Cletus, Ned, Willie, etc) in the events. Where’s Sideshow Mel since he was available via rebate?
– More tedious crafting
Overall, good concept with signs of promise, but poorly executed. I put all the crafted roller coaster pieces in my storage.
I started playing tapped out in 2013, stopped playing after a few months but then revisited again during the Bart Royale event back in Feb. I don’t know if it’s because I was so busy with squidport and Springfield heights (having missed these events during my hiatus) but Bart Royale imo kinda sucked. the storyline was kinda weird (adults playing in make shift fortresses) and hard / boring to follow and it just seemed over the top to focus a whole event on such a forgettable Simpsons episode (outlanders) and to include so many ugly skins and craftables (barbed wire fences anyone?). Springfield jobs was cool with the landmarks it offered, London stuff in particular, it wasn’t very ‘Simpson’s’ though, would have liked more iconic buildings / characters. Tapped out did this well though in the who shot me burns mini event and with bort and the itchy & scratchy robots from that classic early episode in i&s land. In fact I think i&s land has been great, I didn’t really care for kristyland as it was separate but now it’s in the main town it’s much better. My only disappointment is it takes WAY too long to grind at crafting meaning I didn’t have the chance to complete my design and I don’t know if these craftables will ever be available again. All in all it was a good event but please EA – reward your players more with free content and if your insisting on this new format, increase the loot you get from grinding because it makes the game boring and more people are likely to switch off, which none of us want
The beginning of the last event wasn’t bad, but as the weeks dragged on it was just more of the same (grinding) and I lost interest. The worst thing was that since Krustyland arrived in Springfield, joined by the I & S rides, the performance on my Android tablet dropped to the point where all actions take forever. Scrolling the screen is like moving through thick tar – it takes so long that the “Finding Maggie” game is almost impossible now. I am going to store all of the Krustyland and I&S stuff to see if that helps….
Just disconnect or store the tracks of the 3 new I&S Land rides and that should fix the lag.
Yep – stored the three new rides and scrolling is back to normal. I guess Krustyland can stay for now…