I was looking for rural worlds - quiet small town, large farms - and came across Elmdale. It looks promising, but it's empty. I know there are several lots the world's creator made that can be downloaded for it, but they still need to be placed and as far as I can tell the creator never posted a guide for where those lots are supposed to go. Is there a finished version of the world available anywhere with all the lots where they belong?
Or, if not, is there a similar world that's got a finished version available?

This is the world.

anybody? anything?

I looked at the link, and I'm pretty sure that the creator is as finished with it as they're ever going to be, and nobody else has taken it up.

I've seen people talk about this world, recommend it, mention playing in it, so somebody out there had to have finished it. Unless everybody that has it is just content to just dropped a house down and called it a day with nowhere else for their sims to ever go.

I think the people who like to play with it probably like to drop down all the lots, or they wouldn'ty recommend it? I know my preference is to clear out most of the lots a world comes with and put in my own that I make from scratch, or sometimes, someone else's that I usually also heavily edit. That last sentence sounds like maybe you don't know you can add all the community lots and rabbitholes yourself also, not just residential ones? Youy can also add some things between lots, with the gamne right out of the box, you don't need CAW or any onbscure mods for it. It's fun, and to make it easier, Mod The Sims does have a pretty good selection of community lots that people have made for you to download. And there's a mod by velocitygrass that allows you to add lots of sizes other than the default ones (but not bigger than the biggest lot, alas), and other mods here that make editing your town more fun.

Probably what they like about it is that it's very amenable to that kind of play (I wouldn't know, because I haven't played in that world). That would mean that there's plenty of flat space to build on, areas that are large enough for different sizes of lots, little or no bad routing on the roads or the landscape, maybe some neat features on the ground.

My preference is to leave most of the world alone and focus all my attention on the household I made to play as. I'll build their house or heavily customize one I find on the exchange or TSR. I only mess with the World if I need to move a Lot to place mine there or add a location, like putting a School in Oasis Landing. Less chance of accidentally breaking or deleting something important. I also like exploring a World and experiencing whatever story an expansion adds at least once. I ordered Seasons around the beginning of the month and started work on the idea I had for an autumn house while I waited for it to arrive, so I could actually start playing Season's content right away. I finished that Lot a couple days ago. I can also end up spending hours just creating my household of Sims themselves.

No, I know how to Edit World and place Lots, but both like to be a pain in the tail half the time. There are alot of lot sizes that aren't even available in Edit World, even though Lots of those other sizes can be found in the world, which makes placing or relocating some Lots difficult/impossible. Even in EA Worlds getting the lots to snap to the roads can be an incredibly difficult task, and sometimes they just won't no matter what. Not all the pre-existing EA Lots appear in the list either, meaning that I would have to start a game in the World where those are, save a copy of them, leave and then go back to the World where I want to place them. I have both Lunar Lakes and Midnight Hollow but while I got the festival lot for Lunar Lakes in the list after installing Seasons the Midnight Hollow festival lot isn't in the list.
Some people certainly find building Worlds fun, but I am not one of them. I want a finished world that I can make minor changes to, not an empty one.

This might sound a bit weird considering where this conversation is happening, but I actually tend to avoid downloading Lots or Sims from here. Mods that change things about the game itself, like the one that removes the hidden Witch broom, I'll get from here but not Lots. I look at them and most have all the expansions and packs as requirements or use alot of CC that needs downloaded separately. I mostly go to the Exchange or TSR for Lots. Installing stuff from the Exchange fills in anything I'm missing or even just includes the CC. And TSR has a feature that allows one to download the CC that's been used along with the Lot itself.

It might be, but that's not really what I'm looking for in a World. I wanted a rural World with a small quiet town and alot of farmland for Autumn, to play Seasons. Elmdale fits that, but it isn't finished. If I can't find a finished version then I'm going to have to find a different world instead.

I love Riverview, have you ever played it? And I always can recommend the worlds from MySimsrealty. Winchester Farming Community is possibly what you might be looking for. There are different versions. I've played it a lot and it runs well. The one thing you might want to consider is replacing the rabbitholes in the basements with rabbithole rugs.
The worlds are well done, play well and the only thing you would need to do is populate them.
I get what you're saying but just to advertise modthesims lots (I get all my lots from here), you can filter for lots without CC. And if you put your expansions in your user profile, it will only show lots for those expansions.

I've played Riverview. It's where I've been pre-preparing on my house. But it's got all the issues I mentioned before. The lots just hate snapping to the roads.
I don't have a problem with lots having CC, just with having to go out and hunt that CC down. Search engines suck these days. You can't find anything with them anymore. And alot of places that had CC don't exist anymore, or they used adfly which doesn't exist anymore so even the Wayback can't get you to the download. It can easily turn into a major pain that takes hours and leads nowhere. So it's better just to stick to places that include everything already.