Yeah, the whole simcity saga has really taken a downturn. A lot of the negative press has been on the always on DRM and the conflicting reports of how "hard" it would be to turn it off when its already been disabled by a few users.

The focus should move towards this and actual gameplay problems. The traffic issues are really bad as well with sims making really retarded driving decisions. Not to mention that the population count isnt accurate, as well as the problems with "not enough workers" even after people have built entire cities with nothing but residential zoning. There are still endless bugs, like streetcars disappearing or casino towns not being viable thanks to tourist problems.

The whole DRM issue seems strange to me because its like arguing that a poorly designed game has DRM and not the other way around. The game does work well at times but it seems that the whole "agent" system they use that starts to make the game fun at the same time seems to cause problems and take away from the fun.

This won't be the first time EA has shafted its customers and it won't be the last. The only way they'll learn that they can't operate their business like this is if it no longer becomes profitable, and I don't see that happening. Evidently people will buy it on release regardless of the warnings or EA's history.

This is what frustrates me, because I know friends who will whine and bitch about EA after having a bad experience with one of their games, or they'll read an article on the way EA treats its employees or the well documented way they bribe reviewers or try and manipulate user reviews on metacritic etc and yet when Simcity comes around they have it on preorder. What a surprise, EA are laughing their way to the bank with your money and apparently customers tears don't register on their bottom line enough for them to care.

Don't buy their games. Support the developers/producers who are worth your money.

I hope EA learns from SimCity, and either comes up with better DRM, or learns not to use it at all because of this.

Companies that think they are in control of their community often learn the hard way, that the community is in charge.

The movie industry is still trying to recover from the lesson bittorrent is teaching them.

I should also mention this comment on the whole thing: "I think SimCity has reached that software event horizon where the shenanigans between the developer/publisher/hackers have become more entertaining than the game itself. "

And this is why it'll keep going this way...

They knew (just like most MMO or server based games do) that there was demand and completely failed to meet it, then dropped key features like cheetah speed to try and play catch up...

As for F2P with microtransactions, no, it's not worse. It's far superior depending on the transaction model. I get to play the game and if I enjoy it, I can plonk down as much dosh as I wish to. With Simcity, they just couldn't play the game they paid for. Yay...

Nevermind if you want to while away the hours on a flight playing a bit of Simcity, or if your internet drops out for the evening. Just because most people can be connected all the time doesn't mean they always are. If you want to play it single player and miss out the regional stuff, why shouldn't you be able to?

And let's not even get started on stuff like tiny city sizes, broken mechanics like miniscule employment rates in high population cities causing your retail sector to collapse, fire stations ignoring calls from places next door merrily burning away, no undo, lost cities due to the cloud save fucking up etc...

You want to bend over and let them take advantage of you sans lube, go nuts, but every time you do you let them know it's okay to try it on with everyone else.

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Isn't Steam an always online DRM too? I mean, I can only play most games on Steam if I'm online, even though there's an offline mode, I'm not sure it lets you be offline forever though, I think it requires checking with Steam servers once in a while (I'm guessing, haven't tried playing offline).

Steam has had many terrible problems in the first few years, but nowadays, the online requirement doesn't bother me at all.

What about Starcraft 2, you're required to be online, even to play the single player campaign. Does that qualify as always online DRM too? Seriously, I want to know.

I think ppl are complaining about the online DRM, but maybe they're just mad about SimCity's EA servers being short on capacity. Which is a huge problem if they're enforcing always online DRM, but it's not the DRM's fault. Does that make sense?

I spent five hours today playing Simcity 4.

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this is why i don't preorder

and this is why i wait until most games goes on sale before I get them, I don't buy beta tests, want me to support a game at full retail, I want the full, functional game at retail, that's the video game developer's fault not mine

i'm more than happy to wait to the end of a game's life cycle if I actually get a fully functioning game (and with Simcity, with online DRM, maybe even then I wouldn't be getting the game if the servers going down meant my ability to play was going to dissappear)

for an INDUSTRY soooo concerned about piracy... they sure do EVERYTHING in their power to ensure that piracy is the most appealing option

EA lost me as a fan of some of the brands they own when they forced Origin on me as well... that was the first blatant, you can't ignore it any longer, slap in the face EA did in my opinion in regards to their profitability being ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE more important than my enjoyment of their games, my bang for my dollar, and my value to them as a customer

I was really excited about a new SimCity coming out when they announced. But smart enough to wait and see whether or not they'd screw the pooch.

Yay for me!

The online component is a mess, beyond the problems that were caused by load. They didn't bother with a queuing system, instead the game just starts a 20 minute countdown and tries again. The only simulation being done on the EA servers is the regional interactions (which SimCity 4 was already doing), you can actually unplug and continue playing for about 10 minutes if you time it right... then the game will check for a connection and region data and finally boot you then.

Well, it's not really DRM that's causing the issues here. It's that SimCity is now cloud based. You're signing into their servers, saving your game data there, etc... It does make multiplayer pretty awesome, when it works.

I doubt you could decouple the game from that functionality.

If I didn't know better, it almost looks like the world is dreadfully underpopulated...

Or rather, the world is overpopulated by SimCity raised "master global planners" and underpopulated by sovereign farming families.

Check out Joel Salatin. He's been doing this stuff for generations. He cycles livestock grazing in much the same way. But not just cattle, he brings in chickens, rabbits, etc on the same land different days of the week.

Someone clearly hasn't spent enough time playing SimCity to know you can't build an airport that close to residential areas, especially not high-density.