I played a ton of the original GameCube Animal Crossing, very little of the DS and a decent amount of City Folk.
Haven't played City Folk all summer… but I would be happy to start up again.
Our town is named "Tardis", my character is "Gregory" and my Friend Code is "3523-5570-9073".
CountryMouse, I didn't run into the grass problem. Probably because I would only run on the same patches everytime and walk everywhere else. It did get annoying to have to tread different circuits when travelling to odd sections to avoid creating a new path. I think the re-growth rates should have been higher.
(That and my wife would completely ignore my paths. We won't talk about what happened when my son's reading level got good enough that he was allowed to play).
We noticed the grass dramatically disappearing after Franklin appeared last autumn, because, seriously, you have to run around to find him. We didn't know about the running vs. walking at that time. And things never got better after that.
We also both had made our individual towns (in AC and AC:WW) "fruit factories" in the past (to reliably make lots of Bells), so that's what we did with New_Hope. It's impossible to put down pathways to each individual tree or anything close to that. And you need to harvest every...three? days I think it is to pile up the Bells. Also there was a lot of work involved laying down the acre and quarter-acre markers in order to make a perfect town, which we did achieve. After that, we did pathways for a while, but it was just so...ugly. I kept thinking how lush and beautiful my town of LarkRise was/is in the original game.
We thought not playing for 4 months, the grass might've returned somewhat. We didn't play from January until April (when what's-his-name-the-bunny showed up). Nothing, but nothing had changed, except for bugs, bedhead, and weeds. So we gave up. DH said also that it had gotten to the point that things in the game were "make-work", that it just wasn't fun anymore.
I haven't gone back to my DS towns because I'm afraid certain animals might leave! I don't want Cesar to leave Candlefd (Candleford) and I *definitely* don't want Dora (the adorable white mouse girl!) to leave Luisvill (Louisville).
I played "Magician's Quest: Mysterious Times" for a while this Spring--it's a type of AC game, but set at a magic school. But I gave up soon into it. I think I've reached my tolerance level of real-time "virtual pet" type things. I've been doing that sort of thing since 1997, when Tamagotchi first hit the States.
I've even let my garden go to pot in the iPod Touch/iPhone app "Flower Garden". But I am pretty sure that when I go back, all I'll have to do is water everything, and all the flowers will perk up again.
CountryMouse, who didn't mean to write a book!