Hey Howdy Hey Tappers!
Here we are again. Yet another Thursday with no new update in TSTO released the previous two days.
It’s been 50 days since the last new content update in TSTO, Classless Reunion (March 13th), and 22 days since the last in-game update…or whatever the hell that thing was…Marge at the Bat (April 10th), and I have some thoughts. So let’s get to them…
-First off, let me get this out of the way right now…I do not think the game is ending. I don’t think it’s on life support. It doesn’t make sense to me that last year, after 5 years of blogging, EA would reach out to sites to share information about updates in the game, just to shut everything down a year later. (Although it would be nice if they utilized those Community connections to help communicate what’s going on… but I digress) I think a lot of folks are just reading to much into things because something is different and it’s easier to speculate than figure out just what’s going on.
Plus, there’s this…Twitter is a powerful thing guys….
-I think the server issues are simply that, server issues. This game has had issues with servers for 7+ years…no reason why they’d stop now right? The fact that they’re coinciding with the lack of updates, I think, is causing some folks to read to much into it.
-This is purely speculation, because (as I’ve said over and over) I know no more than you guys do but I think a lot of the delays in the game right now are a result of a few things. For starters, I think they’re having a reshuffling/restructuring of development teams. I also think they’re working on some bugs that have gone awry.
-The lack of communication about it is frustrating, to say the least, but I don’t think this is the end. EA is a big, publicly traded, company and they have to answer to Stock Holders. Which means they have a little more to worry about when it comes to their reputation (unlike TinyCo/JamCity). False moves might cause stocks to tumble. So I think if they were planning on shutting down TSTO they wouldn’t be silent about it. They also wouldn’t continue to sell donuts…
I wrote a post yesterday about places you can share your frustration about the lack of communication with EA. Check out those links here.
-We’re working every possible connection to EA/the Simpsons that we have to find out any information on what’s going on. (Pat even asked Matt Groening himself) As soon as we find anything out we’ll share it, provided we’re allowed to.
-I’ve said this many times, but I’ll say it again…since some of you refuse to believe this is a reality…Disney has NOTHING to do with this game. Literally NOTHING. EA has a contract with the rights to The Simpsons, that contract didn’t expire when Disney purchased FOX. Just like the contract for Universal Studios didn’t expire.
Disney didn’t buy EA, they don’t make decisions for EA. They have zero to do with this game. ZERO. I don’t know how many times I can say it, we even heard it from Matt Groening. The Disney purchase of FOX has nothing to do with TSTO. That acquisition is not causing this delay. (not to mention Disney had an existing gaming contract with EA that doesn’t expire until 2023, and Disney’s CEO recently expressed confidence in EA’s ability in gaming (Star Wars in particular). So they already had a relationship, even before the acquisition)
-I’m not going to lie, the downtime kind of sucks…but it’s also kind of nice. It sucks because I’ve spent just about every day of the last 7ish years griding out this game. Tapping, collecting, earning that next big prize. And that’s a really hard habit to break. Especially when you do a lot of absentminded tapping.
But it’s kind of nice for the same reasons. I’ve been blogging about this game every day, several times a day, for the last 6ish years. 3,775 posts in about 2,086 days, just from me. That’s a lot of writing. And I’m kind of enjoying the downtime of not rushing to post something, figuring something out, or staying up late to make sure I’ve got a post finished for the next morning. With the lack of updates, posting has been pretty easy, and dare I say more creative.
It’s been a while since I last wrote a Should I Buy post and it’s kind of nice not to be stuck in that routine.
-This one is really important, TSTO Addicts isn’t going anywhere. I’ve said this a lot over the last (almost) 6 years, as long as you guys keep coming here we’ll keep writing. There’s a reason we’re one of the last TSTO Blogs left standing. We enjoy what we do, and we love this community. That doesn’t go away just because the game isn’t updating.
We’ll all navigate this chaos together. Just like we’ve been doing since 2013…
-Of course, the site will look a little different without the updates to cover. Obviously, we won’t be writing walkthroughs, prize guides, Should I buys, or other event centered posts…but that doesn’t mean it won’t still be worth checking out the site regularly.
We’ve got a bunch of stuff planned from a new bracket battle to the Sounds of TSTO, and a lot more! Plus, we’ll still be running Simpsons Trivia regularly! You may have found the site because of TSTO, but we hope you stayed around because of the community and there are no plans to change anytime soon.
-And of course…as soon as an update hits the server (or if we get an info packet from EA) we’ll share that info with you guys immediately. In the meantime, try not to lose your minds over this. Be part Bliss Ninny and follow the ride wherever it takes you…
Thoughts? Care to share your own musings? Any thoughts on regular posts you’d like us to run during downtime? Did you contact EA to tell them you’re mad as heck? Sound off below, you know we love hearing from you!
Any body else get in on them tennis courts during Marge at bat 10 ocsar statue for a tennis court that gave you 2.25 xp got my 400 %up over a thousand in the event lots of free dounuts now
I love tapped out. Getting bored right now but never giving up.
Well, with EA’s track record, the game ending is still plausible
The most plausible reason for the long pause is what we don’t see, namely a major platform / software upgrade and migration. You don’t advertise this because it’s always played up in the financial markets as risk which chops market cap of a company. What does it mean for us? Well if you are playing on an older device, that’s most likely slower than molasses in winter, well you’re going to be chopped. The underlying technology has advanced and your device has not. Trust me, going from a Samsung S4 to a S10+ was a real wake up call.
In addition, with umpteen hours of collective development time with this game, there probably several aspects that needed some refactoring. That’s programmer speak for “well it was good way back when but now it’s creating a bottleneck.”
I’m hopeful that we will see a new minor event shortly that will be a final test of all the changes then a wow big event sometime this summer.
How do you think, EA would stop selling Donuts when they plan to shut down TSTO?
I have seen it myself with their long time top selling title FIFA. I’ve spent some money there in an older version, just to learn that they will shut down the game a month later. Even during that month, it was possible to spend money, which was not even transferable to a newer FIFA version.
I have an idea for a series of posts you could do, do lists of every item from … for example every item from cypress creek, it would be really usefull for building mini towns and to know where to put certain buildings.
Something’s different this morning! I played without getting kicked off once! I cannot remember the last time that happened. Maybe it’s a good sign!
🤟😆👍
I really think all the bugs are being looked at before they release the next update. I can barely stay in the game in some sessions. The mini events are nice, but maybe time for something different.
In my opinion the bugs recently aren’t the biggest problem. Sure, there’s still some “classics” like Kindle Zoom or Rollback Remnants which absolutely need fixing, but at the moment these server issues annoy me the most. Usually such problems were solved within a few days, sometimes even a few hours, now it’s going on for weeks…
Even if I TRY to have some fun tapping away without an event, the game just won’t LET me because it kicks me out every few minutes.
I was talking about the server issues. I really think they need to be figured out before the next update.
🤞fingers crossed EA finally finds a way to fix the roll back bug. I got tired of calling. My game is limping along. The biggest issues are that the top left character button doesn’t take you to the character, and my monorail/recycling nolonger works so I can’t make more pieces or earn donuts.
I feel your pain.
i have been tapping away for about 4 years or so. i just purchased some donuts last event to get a couple of things because i didnt want to farm. i have not tapped for about 3 weeks and it feels good. I feel free of the stress of tapping every 4 hours. i will be tapping again when we get something new but for right now im happy for the break.
Cannot agree with this enough. I’m a tapper since launch, and likewise am happy to have a break from stressful events where you have to check in every four hours. Enjoying tapping once a day to reap some rewards and work on the free donuts.
I’ve got a weird glitch as well. I sent my Springfielders on a daily task (4 hours) to “Check out the latest Krusty burger promotion”. When it was over, I tapped the Krusty Burger to “release” everyone, but only about a dozen of over 200 characters emerged, and then they immediately went back in. I received all the money from the task, but not the bonus donut. I logged out and back in and I was able to release them again, but with the same result, I got the money again (and it’s accumulating from the last time) but again the characters just go back into the Krusty Burger. I did this a dozen times and the money helped me to jump a few levels, but I obviously can’t go on like this. So I deleted the game and reinstalled it … but the same problem still exists. You say this is not the end, but after 7 years of tapping, level 632, over a $billion in cash, and 1000 donuts … it may be the end for me. As the Donald would say … Sad.
Just store the Krusty Burger, it should release everybody.😁
That did it. Thanks for the help.
Same thing happened to me a few days ago with the same daily task. I had a few Krusty burgers in my town. I stored one of them. When I did this, all of the remaining Springfielders showed up in one of my other Krusty burgers. It was weird. I panicked before I figured it out.
Store and replace Krusty Burger. It’s been going on for awhile, between K-Burger and KEM…
I love that glitch. It’s happened to me a few times. I’ve exploited it for several hundred donuts. I’ve learned a couple ways to stop it. One time I needed a character to finish the current event. So I stored what they were associated with and put it back out. That didn’t fix the glitch. I then needed another character and followed the same procedure. Poof. All characters now released. That means storing character associated items and replacing them will eventually free the glitch. The other is to store the Krusty Burger.
Don’t know if this is a sign of something happening in the game or a glitch but I just sent all my character on 24hr tasks & about a dozen characters didn’t get assigned their task.
This has happened previously when there’s daily challenges they can do but I don’t have anything outstanding.
Nothing has updated as far as i’m aware.
Has anybody had this happen too?
Any thoughts?
Happened to me also…had a daily task for all the pessimists and “X”ed it out for a new task that paid donuts. The pessimists lost the previously highlighted task in their jobs list, but now 6 of them don’t accept tasks through the employment bureau. Just another weird glitch.🤷♀️
Just 6 of them? What typically happens is that if you have a task for a category of players to do, and you “X” it out, they will no longer show yellow. However, they will still not be able to go through the Unemployment Office until you re-synchronize the game. Easiest way to this is to click on the Friends/Neighbours icon and then come straight back to your Springfield. Doing this, you should find all those characters from the “X”ed out category are now counted in the Unemployment Office.
Been synced everyday since it first happened (I do a hard close every night), but those few still seem to be hold-outs. Not a big issue, just kinda strange.🤔