I know there was, and continues to be, a lot of player outrage over EA's online Sims 3 store.  The line of reasoning is that we already bought the dang game, and they have already put out a stuff pack, so it's excessively money grubbing of them to try and nickel and dime us to death on the store, too.  

This is coupled with a perception that The Sims 3 shipped with far fewer items in Buy Mode than its predecessors.  There are some high profile items missing (the piano and the hot tub being the most lamented missing items).  But a lot of the difference between Sims 3 and Sims 2's Buy Mode is covered by the Custom Palette tool.  

In Sims 2 you had a lot of different entries for the same item in different colors.  Sims 3 folded all the color options into the one item (so that if you click on one particular stove model, you then see all the color options for it).  And with the Custom Palette, you can turn things any color or texture that you want.

(Except for shag carpet.  But I digress.)

Way back when Sims 3 was released, I did some math on the sets in the Store and figured out that the prices were pretty fair.  You don't get as many items as you did with the Sims 2 stuff packs, but they also didn't cost as much.  The per-item cost for the Sims 3 sets were pretty fair.  

In the time since then, I have seen another benefit to EA offering these sets through their online store: turn-around time.  It seems like every week the developers are pushing new sets and items to the website.  Far more items, and far faster than if they were waiting to bundle everything into official Stuff Packs.  In fact, I suspect we are going to end up with at least ten times as many items and outfits with Sims 3 than we ever got with Sims 2.

(EA has another sneaky benefit in mind with all this, by the way.  If you want the latest coolest stuff, you have to have the latest patch installed.  Which not only encourages people to patch their games, it also helps encourage people to buy a legit copy of the game.)

After having almost a year of gameplay under my belt, what I have learned to love most about the online store method is that it lets you shop for specific items.  Let's face it, if you buy a Stuff Pack, you only ever use about a tenth of the content you buy.

With Sims 2, your best option was the shotgun method.  Buy as many outfits and hairstyles and items as you can find, then pick and choose when you want.  With Sims 3 you can take a more focused approach.  When the latest heir for my legacy is about to change into a young adult, I like to go shopping for their adult hairstyle and outfit.  

I browse the selection, choose one hair style and usually one top, and I'm only out about a dollar fifty.  Over time, I'm spending a LOT less this way than when I felt the need to buy every Stuff Pack that came down the pipe.