NRaas.net recently had it's 2 year anniversary. In tandem with this, I thought it fitting for some reflection. First a thanks our organizers who help me tirelessly making sure we help as many users as possible and keep me focused on the things that need my attention.

Over the 2 years I have made numerous improvements to the site for both user experience and data restoration. Recently I finished up converting 98% of our pages for a total of over 5,000 pages of FAQ's, tips and documentation now accessible. We have new powerful search features that show you exactly what you're looking for and for the first time, module filters on our documentation pages. Work continues on getting XML back into our tutorial pages, new interfaces for various tasks and localization support. In addition forum upgrades are in the works that will add or improve numerous features.

We've managed to score nearly 100% uptime during our second year with an average page load time of under 1 second. Our second year saw us grow substantially more, with visits growing by nearly a half of million people compared to our first year, up to nearly 1.5 million people from almost every country in the world. The greatest growth came during the March-May period when our visits doubled and we served a half a million downloads alone. To put that in perspective, we were serving nearly half of the traffic that NRaas served when Sims 3 was still being patched which is significant for a now 11 year old game.

This graph shows our growth percentage over the past year. Note that for the Oct-Jan period, the negative growth is due to the traffic we lost from the Wikispaces redirect dropping off. Quite a bit of that was bot traffic which caused our perils with DDOS early on along with the general buzz of seeing what was new here upon relocation.



All told, we have officially served over 4 million downloads since our move here 2 years ago, proving Sims 3 is still quite a force. Our top downloads haven't changed since I last announced our 1 million milestone:

MasterController 476,000 downloads
Overwatch 263,000 downloads
Woohooer 259,000 downloads
StoryProgression 233,000 downloads
MasterController Cheats 170,000 downloads

It's hard to believe I've been at the helm of NRaas for 6 years now. I honestly never expected to still see so many of you caring about this project so many years later. I just want to say I am thankful for everyone who stops by, whether you just drop by to download or have signed up and post on the forum. I am sure it's noticeable that I don't have as much time for NRaas as I had when I took over. Truthfully that level of dedication came with many sleepless nights which was not very healthy for me. I imagine Twallan knows very well about that. I still struggle with finding a balance between the demands of my real life, work here and attempts to be healthy about it all. Sometimes I know it feels like it may be 12 years before I get to some things but I will get there.

In closing, I plan to continue my work on improving the site for the remainder of this year and next. In addition you may have noticed I have started dabbling in modding again this year. That will continue to expand as work on the site slows down with a plan to return to full time modding sometime next year. I hope you'll continue to drop by, either for the chemistry of the place or to see what's new.

As always, if you have any feedback on the site please let me know.

In addition I wanted to touch on the elephant in the room. I am well aware most of our growth is due to the current health crisis. I am beyond humbled that you guys chose to come back to NRaas and I hope our mods provided even a tiny bit of enjoyment and escape we've all needed. Watching the numbers grow has just given me a more of a drive and let's me know that this place is doing some good in a world that can be a mess. It's more important than ever to keep it going. I hope you all are healthy!

Congratulations!

Wow, just wow.

I admit I didn't expect to see NRaas thriving when I dropped by so long after the end of Sims 3's support cycle. I'm delighted this community still thrives, and I'm very grateful to you.

This is great news Chain_Reaction! Thank you so much for all your hard work!

Everyone working hard to keep this site up and running are awesome, and you're all very much appreciated, with a special mention to Chain of course! Thank you!

I found you guys right during the transition from Wikispace to here. This site is the best thing that has happened when my daughter gifted me with Sims3 for Christmas 2 years ago coming up on 3 years. I used to play WoW (World of Warcraft) but I'm a plucker at the best of times and WoW just got to difficult to play (I couldn't keep up) my reaction times for such a fast paced game was just to much to handle.
So my daughter introduced me to Sims 3. So that's what I do. I play almost everyday. I wouldn't know what to do without this place.

I'm just so thankful and grateful for everything I've learned here and how much this site makes playing Sims 3 so much fun.

Thanks to Chain, Igazor and the other Moderators and players that post solutions and help answers the thousands of questions that get asked. May God Bless You All and keep you all healthy and safe. May we all still be here at least another 10 years or until my old eyes give up on me.

Cheers,
Bowlady1955

And we can't thank you enough for what your and your crew-do! In the meantime to crank up our buff meters, feel free to create some totally non-disastrous, virtual you-know-what's-it's! Shout out to the ever adorable Vector mod! Happy open-apocalypse season, folks! Welp, someone had to.

(sorry I'm late to the game here...just saw this today) I think it is a testament to you Chain_Reaction as well as the moderators here, that this site is still so popular. (and of course Twallan for the amazing mods!) We come here to chat, to fix things and to be heard and helped. And we are! What also makes this site best is that it is devoid of the nastiness that we do not need in this world, but often seems far to prevalent everywhere else.

And it should also tell EA that they had the right idea with what they started in Sims 3, if only they'd held to the strengths of this version as well as paid attention to what mods have elevated the game to a more playable and fun version of their Sims. It seems like nearly anyone who's ever played prefer to use these mods. And this site is so very much appreciated!
If you ask me, EA owes you all a bundle for fixing their game into something even more enjoyable and over a decade after its creation we still see many people playing!
Just know that you all have our gratitude and I hope that is worth something.

I just wanted to echo what everyone has said and say how thankful I am for the active community here at NRAAS and all the work you all put into the site, the mods, and helping all of us out. TS3 has gotten me through a lot of hard times, and I thought that when game support ended, I wouldn't be able to go back and play like I did. I was so thrilled to see that was not the case at all. I hope this community sticks around for years to come, and I have to say, the idea of more mod development is super exciting!

Thank you so very much for what you've done for this game you've reignited my love for the game that saw me grow up !