I've not played the newer Sims games, but in the originals my strategy was pretty straight forward...find the most creative ways to kill or torture my sims. Yes, I'm mean!
I've never bought a game on release day. I tend to wait anywhere from a couple weeks to a couple months to buy something. With the WoW expansions I wait at least a month. I figure that all the bugs will be worked out via patches by then. I'd rather let the first buyers find all the bugs...
World of Warcraft here. I've tried to quit about 5 times and I always go back. I've been away for about a year and just went back last week. I can just never manage to stay away.