I just spent my entire morning playing the game. It's working better now.

And it's awesome.

wait, I thought there was a beta. Wow, did they ever screw up.
Also, I think the lesson that EA learns about this will not be, "highly restrictive DRM is a bad idea," but rather, "we need more DRM'd servers."

Diablo 3 is the first and only drm i will ever buy terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible

(not saying diablo 3 is terrible, DRM is)

I think people need to calm down with the "EA is evil and ruins everything!!!11!" talk. Not that they're not, but this game will be perfectly playable in a week or two. Meanwhile, they could have easily made it free to play with microtransactions, which I think we can all agree would have been much, much, much worse.

Sunday morning nights are usually quiet. Try Sunday night.

Haven't the hackers fixed this? This is not a rhetorical question. I've often taken solace in the idea that they would...

Yeah, I take it all back. I can't get into the game now.

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.

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.

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!

It's a server side game. Hence, no offline single player. Think of Diablo 3.

Basically, play it during non-peak hours. It reminds me of WoW, Internet, etc. Avoid them during peak hours!

I never preorder. I always wait for reviews, ratings, etc. I hate being the first one too with bugs, problems, etc. I can wait.

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

Sure you could. You'd have to create third party servers, and connect to those. It's been done with WoW. Granted, you may need some source code or something. Maybe a disgruntled employee would be willing to grant access...

In theory. I have absolutely no idea how to hack. In case you couldn't tell!

Edit: Just found several reports of people playing on D3 clone servers. So...

OK, I haven't gamed seriously in about 6 years. I never buy games. I play free crap online that I can pick up and put down within seconds, not minutes or heaven forbid, hours. See Kongregate.

But if they ever hack this game, I will download it, and I will install it, and I will play it. For like 2-3 minutes, just to make sure it works.

My main gripe with the game is that the playable city size is so small. I was in the beta, and I thought the cities would be bigger when the game was released, but no. They need to be 5-10 times larger - seriously. It's almost impossible to get a population big enough to support industry because no matter what you try to do you always run out of space.

The compromise to serve both sides of this argument is dead simple -
Have the single player offline campaign require a connection to the server once a week rather than every single time.
At worse it will be cracked for a week or two while they roll out a new update, and the servers don't get hammered

I spent five hours today playing Simcity 4.

always online games limit what games i will purchase, i have to make the decision of only being able to play the game sometimes or get something that lets me play when i want without limitation, but because i dont always get internet support on travel i have to choose wisely. so i will choose something else to purchase over drm games.

diablo 3 was a single play through on the classes i wanted to play, could not play the game where there is no internet so it was uninstalled when i was done getting the classes to 60, diablo 2 was (and is still) years of fun. when they announced Simcity4 as a always online, i decided that i will never purchase a copy of that game. sucks for a company i have fully supported up until now.

i refuse to support companies that make bad decisions. If a game is good enough to purchase, people will purchase it. you dont see bethesda crying about loss of PC sales of skyrim...

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?

There has been much wailing and gnashing of teeth about Starcraft 2, Diablo III, Anno 2070, and other games that require an online connection.

The ones on Steam that require you to always be online are either multiplayer-only games (because you need to be online to actually play against people), and games that have their own online-only requirements (Ubisoft's UPlay, for instance).

Steam itself doesn't have any you-must-be-online reqs.

Can you imagine the nerd rage if you needed a top of the line PC to run Sim City? Or if the cities were even smaller? The servers run some of the simulation so that the game could run on most machines. This is why Maxis is taking responsibility. Polygon.com had answers from Maxis very quickly where they explain all this stuff. Something about each user needing 80% more processing than during the Beta because of some problem with databases and the crazy load from selling way more copies than the pre-orders had indicated. Whatever code runs on the servers now I am sure they could eventually run locally but they probably weren't planning on doing that work for years. If something doesn't work you will be able to get a refund if you push hard enough. That is what I would have done if I had bought the game and it didn't work.

I'll say it for you

Diablo 3 was terrible

They had the same problems with the last stress test just 3 weeks before the game's release. That would have been the time to delay the game as any honest assessment would conclude that the game wasn't nearly ready and couldn't be fixed in a few weeks.

Always on DRM usually refers to requiring a constant (or near constant) connection.

Steam checks in when you boot, and when you try to load a game. If it does anything in between I've *never* been booted from a non-multiplayer game due to my internet connection once I'm in (some companies will throw on more DRM on top of Steam when you buy their game, but I've avoided most draconian DRM's). With steam if your internet's down you can play offline, up to a month I believe..?

That's the big difference - with true always on you're far more at the mercy of the server's status(es). You're good (to as much extent as you can be) with games like WoW that had huge production budgets, and now take on huge profit.

Smaller houses, releasing a game with what they believe is the minimum hardware to get by with (because they always expect their user base to begin to wane after the initial purchasing rush)... you get this ^

EA's got a habit of retiring servers the moment the profit from sales seems depleted, so you have that looming somewhere in the future if this is a game you end up cherishing.

All I'm saying is it might still be worth buying if the hackers can fix it.

Irony anyone?

diablo 3 was pretty bad for launch date. I've never experienced that sort of downtown and bullshit for the first 2 days.


diablo 3 was a big let down. but I still played the shit out of it.

Rage? I'd have to buy an EA game first, and that ain't going to happen.

*promote for the summary.

Promoting this video back to the front page; last published Sunday, March 10th, 2013 5:10am PDT - promote requested by Fletch.

If you gave EA money for this abortion, you are part of the reason why some publishers (EA, Ubisoft, Activision...) want to treat PC games as $60 rentals, and you are most definitely part of the problem. There are an ABUNDANCE of better, cheaper PC games developed by companies who want your business and won't treat you as just an open wallet. Sim City was a great franchise once, but just like Diablo, Crysis, and anything from Bioware nowadays, it's been consolized, socialized, and/or monetized into crap that most PC gamers want nothing to do with.

This "real cities do not exist in a bubble" is just corporate blathering to justify the always-on DRM, as if fans of the series have forgotten it has always been, first and foremost, a single player game, and a very enjoyable one at that. It is ABSOLUTELY IDIOTIC to force such a drastic change in gameplay/genre into a game that has been so defined by it's gameplay/genre over the years. Same thing when EA remade Syndicate as a FPS. A FPS Syndicate ISN'T SYNDICATE! I don't want to play with anyone else. I don't want my fucking savegames on your shitty server, even if it was an awesome server. If I give you $60 for your game, it's now MY game, and you leave me the fuck alone!

AAARRG! It's like PC game developers are all being run by fucking console kiddies and greedy shitstain corporate types who never played NetQuake or DWANGO, or Heretic, or System Shock, or X-Com, or any of the Black Isle or pre-Dragon Age 2 Bioware stuff, or any Diablo without a "III" behind it, or Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, or the Ultimas, or the Roberta Williams adventure games, or Wing Commander, or Tie Fighter, or MechWarrior. Deus Ex! A full fucking Deus EX play-through would be required before I'd even THINK about hiring your ass to develop a new PC game! On second thought, play it three times, once for each ending!

uuuuugh... so... anyway... yeah, fuck EA.

Ok, fine. Rage.

White people problems.

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.