Today marks 3 years since The Simpsons: Tapped Out first appeared in the Singapore, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland App Stores. Our first glimpse of the game was at our wiki article being created on February 19, 2012, pictures filtering through through different country’s App Stores and the game’s official Facebook page and a gameplay video uploaded to YouTube on February 22.

Hype quickly built up and the waiting paid off with millions, on March 1 around the world, the release date for the rest of the countries the game wasn’t available in, going into their App Stores and downloading the game – but it was so overwhelming that people had trouble trying to get into the game – and the worst part – all those glitches.

After the launch of the game, the official ”Tapped Out” forum was inundated with users reporting problems, calling one of them the “DC [disconnected] while loading friends city bug”, a major problem which encompassed when trying to visit a friend that is a lower level than you and being disconnected, your town is reset to look like theirs, losing buildings, characters, decorations, land expansions, cash and donuts in the process. This “DC while loading friends” bug was a massive problem during the early days of the game, the bugs and the “positively overwhelming” response to the game’s release leading EA to pull the game from all App Stores (although apparently it was still available in Canada for a few days after).

Throughout the following months EA tried desperately to fix the game, pulling it from the servers in mid-June to try and resolve problems, ending up with players receiving present towns based on their levels, plus an extra 60 Donuts.
60 FREE DONUTS?! Woo-hoo! It’s Donut Christmas! – Homer

But there was something EA missed out:

Yeah, I guess EA must’ve thought it was unfair, or the game was too glitchy or code wasn’t properly written to implement the Olmec Head, which eventually came round with the Friend Points update in February last year.

But anyway, as referenced in the title, “beta-testers” were what some incensed players called themselves during this incredibly glitchy period.

Throughout that summer, EA was hard at work trying to solve the game’s problems, bugs and glitches, and in late August through to September, the game was finally re-released into the App Store (the only reason I got my iPod Touch was to play this), but it wasn’t until the following January and February Android players got to experience Homer’s indignant cry of “Is this what enhanced interrogation is?!”.

It’s been suggested that the friend action of stealing a Lemon Tree was the main cause of the launch’s glitches, but nothing’s been confirmed to ever prove this. When the ability was removed to steal a friend’s Lemon Tree, it seemed to have been removed forever.

We’ve had a terribly glitchy period recently after Christmas and during, but nothing matches up to this. Go read the official EA forums from 2012. You’ll be amazed at what it was like.

Well, we’ve certainly digressed much haven’t we?! It’s Tapped Out‘s birthday, not a history lesson. But, again, it’s interesting to learn how Tapped Out was born and how EA were un-prescient deluded ******* not realizing how popular the game would have been. It was getting around 5m in the US ratings then, plus 6 million played 2012’s Halloween event! How could they not have predicted that reaction? (Well, the US Postal Service printed 1 billion of their Simpsons-themed stamps and only sold 318m, costing them $1.2m) Either that or they just plain didn’t any more server capacity available to dedicate to the game.

Well, Happy Birthday Tapped Out! We wish you well for the future and another 3 years! Depending on if the attention wanes or they run out of events. But I’m pretty sure we won’t be saying bye to you for a while yet. EA’s made hundreds of millions of dollars off you. You’re a gold mine, Tapped Out, and you shouldn’t let EA treat you like that, with this ever-exponentially-increasing influx of premium items.

But we’re forgetting something else as we digress further more. There’s one glitch from the launch that we see almost all the time, and will probably never be fixed:

Today we finally got our Valentine’s event, well, mini-event. It started today, two days prior to the big event, and ends on the 17th, 3 days after the big event.

The questline starts off with Lisa preparing to send Valentine’s cards to some humanist and environmentalist causes, and then – to Fallout Boy. Hmm…

Anyway, all the Valentine’s items are back – and this year, no dreaded Wheel of Friendship! – which means that all the items that were available JUST last year in the Wheel of Friendship have not been made available again. This event’s basically 2013 with 2014’s buildings and characters and this year’s new decorations and costume.

EA have also been kind and given us the long-awaited Fallout Boy costume, or “Sidekick” costume for Milhouse. And, we’ve got a cute teddy bear called Sir Love-A Lot unlocked to place in our town as a decoration – FREE on the day.

EA also have another V-Day surprise… the real Fallout Boy!

You can read all about the event here. That’s it for now! Happy early Valentine’s Day!

P.S. The fact that we’ve had mini-events like Stonecutters Black Market Sale and Valentine’s suggests EA might have a big ‘un up their sleeves…

That’s right, as you may have guessed from the title, it appears EA might not be bothering with Valentine’s Day this year and have treated us to the Stonecutters – back for one week only!

EA have given us a welcome return to many of the Numbers – including Number 36 – Krusty’s costume, which is free, but only has one quest if you don’t want to fork out 140 Donuts for the Stonecutter Lodge – which unlocks all of his other jobs.

Number 51 is also back, having a brief return from last Halloween also, for 100 Donuts. Number 12 and Number 14, that’s Lenny & Carl, cost 50 Donuts, with Arnie Pye’s Number 67 on for 60. Homer’s Number 908 is also back, free with the Stonecutter Lodge questline.

The Stonecutter Daycare Center costs a measly $250k for you players with millions of cash – but as it’s unlocked at Level 5 – those all the way down there will be heavily disappointed. The Abandoned Store is back for 30 Donuts, and so is the All Seeing Eye for 100, the Stonecutter Table for 150 and the… why not just pop over to the article itself to see what else has come back?!

However, this is only WAVE 1, with 13 items. Waves 2 and 3 are set to spring up over the weekend and into next week, so Homer will be happy to let you prize open your wallets and fork out for some jaunty goodness – if you happened to miss the event last June.

When you log on, you are greeted with a message from Homer, Lisa and Number 1, detailing how the Stonecutters rigged the Super Bowl.

And that it for now – see you this weekend when Wave Two is coming – hopefully the Sea Captain is ready and bracing!

The level 49 update for The Simpsons: Tapped Out also brought us another new thing… another strip of land! Many players have filled up their land and have been complaining about the lack of new land for a while now. The last land addition was back in the Clash of Clones event.

The new land pricing is expensive, totaling almost 10 million cash. Here is the pricing:

What will you do with your new land?

The Simpsons: Tapped Out Level 49 is now out, with two new characters added to the “Wise Guys” character collection, the original Fat Tony’s son and the current Fat Tony’s nephew, Michael D’Amico, and the don boss of the Springfield Mafia, Don Vittorio DiMaggio.

The quest line starts with Agnes Skinner complaining to Mayor Quimby about the amount of crime in the town. So, to sort this out, the mayor organizes the building of a summer house for the mafia to meet in so they can make a deal to sort out the crime with the mayor. Michael D’Amico is unlocked with the summer house and surprise, he just wants to be a chef rather than be in organized crime.

Meanwhile, Don Vittorio is unlocked with Rancho Relaxo. Which is certainly strange, as Don Vittorio has no known ties to Rancho Relaxo at all in the show. Don Vittorio’s quests involve him helping out the people of Springfield with their semi-illegal tasks.

Other new items include the Old Abandoned Warehouse which unlocks during “Baking Bread Pt. 6″. Two Chalk Outlines are also available for 5 donuts each, and the Suspicious Dirt Pile is also made available during the main quest, “Baking Bread Pt.10″.

For more information, including prices and the entire questline, see our article on Wikisimpsons!

And, here we go, our first tie-in post of this blog! An episode tie-in for Tapped Out for the episode “The Musk Who Fell To Earth“, set to air in the States on Sunday, has just been released about an hour and a half ago – and on a Wednesday! Usually tie-ins come out on a Thursday.

Now, down to brass tacks, and the questline opens with Homer thinking he’s watching some fat guy on the TV, but it turns out to be his own reflection, as the power’s been out. It then moves onto Lisa organizing a mob and a committee to try to change Mr. Burns’ mind – who’s set on a “VIP access” to his power.

Hey, Dad, come quick! Mr. Burns still has power! – Lisa
Literally or figuratively? – Homer
Don’t answer, just get me my angry mob pants. – Homer
You lost your angry mob pants during yesterday’s angry mob. – Lisa
Then get me my church pants. I’m usually pretty angry there too. – Homer

You then get a prompt to purchase the Manual Power Generator, only $2000, which allows you to unlock Slave Labor Willie, a new costume for Willie which opens up a whole new questline – but his first task is to power the Manual Power Generator for 24 hours. Ironic how his costume is called “Slave Labor Willie” yet he isn’t forced into it. Whatever.

There’s three new premium decorations as well, with the Red Electric Car, the Yellow Electric Car and the Blue Electric car, costing 35, 40 and 45 Donuts respectively.

Some new info as well – the Friends screen graphical glitch has been fixed and the Red Brick Wall is back to normal size but there’s no news on the others I reported!

All this is available until until January 28, 2015 at 8am (GMT)! For more information and to read (some of) the questline, check out our wiki page!

What is Queen Helvetica up to? Has she become the evil prince from Frozen or something?! It appears there’s a major issue in Tapped Out at the moment with characters, buildings and decorations disappearing. I haven’t personally experienced anything like this (apart from during Clash of Clones where I never received a Recycled Wall for a prize and EA said they’d put it in my Inventory and they hadn’t) so it appears to just be certain players.

Some of the issues include characters sent on tasks never appearing again, including in the Town Hall census and the Character Locator icon, buildings becoming available for purchase again in the Store, “$” signs appearing over non-existent buildings, buildings not earning rewards, tasks of certain lengths of time becoming locked, buildings becoming transparent after The Castle of Equalia was placed and graphical glitches appearing in the Friends menu. It also appears to be maybe something to do with corrupted downloads and game saves. EA have recently been overhauling folder structures within the DLC files (downloadable content) and compacting them, so maybe code has been messed up there. Another reported cause may be the changes in item sizes, like the Red Brick Wall.

There’s a big forum on EA Answers here if you wanna sound off to those in charge. If you want to make a complaint straight to EA, click here but login with your Origin account to get somewhere.

Researching this I found that TSTO Addicts recommend trying to clear the area where the glitches are occurring most frequently.

In the meantime, don’t fret. EA’s probably on it.

Well, this wasn’t something they promised in the poem during the Christmas takedown, was it?

And that’s it for this Glitch Patrol! Sorry it’s a bit succinct, but there’s really nothing else we can report about this major glitch, there’s no fix yet. See you next time something’s up in the world of Tapped Out!

(But we always like to credit our sources, so thanks to TSTOTopix, TSTO Forum and Reddit)

Hello, Springfield! It is I, Queen Helvetica, ruler of the Kingdom of Equalia! Equalia is a land of tolerance and equal rights for all!

Hi, I’m Phinbart, and I’m going to be one of the regular posters on here. And to start it off, let’s give a royal welcome… to Queen Helvetica.

Until Tuesday in The Simpsons: Tapped Out, The Castle of Equalia and a new costume for Lisa, Queen Helvetica will be available for 175 Donuts, based on the episode “Lisa the Drama Queen”, as Gil pops into our towns once again. But, also, much to the annoyance of premium players, we are gifted with all the three “Small Islands” from the Christmas event. Which means, for those who have already spent the dough circles on the islands, you’ve wasted 120 Donuts, and not to mention $10,000 cash!

Also available until Tuesday, is the Two-nicorn, from the Clash of Clones event for 70 Donuts, which, if you haven’t bought it already, contributes to completing the “Exotic Animals and Pets” character collection.

And so, if you want to spend 245 Donuts re-living the medieval period in your Springfield, do so, but it’s not necessary, as you can read the full six-part questline here!

That’s it for now!

Maybe I could sell you some two-nicorns? It’s a unicorn with two horns. – Queen Helvetica
So it’s a deer. – Mayor Quimby
Well, no. Sort of. – Queen Helvetica