Cities XL is NOT an MMO

[His Divine Hand 244]

Originally posted by: Aurelis

Its actually puzzling that no one defended cities xl>< or rather completely disagreed with whole idea of the thread. Id expect atleast some hardcore fanbase. . .quote>

Maybe that's because they are having fun playing the game too much to waste their time with complainers 

[USA_Pride 49]

Originally posted by: His Divine Hand

Originally posted by: Aurelis

Its actually puzzling that no one defended cities xl>< or rather completely disagreed with whole idea of the thread. Id expect atleast some hardcore fanbase. . .quote>

Maybe that's because they are having fun playing the game too much to waste their time with complainers 

quote>

Nope, it's probably because many people just paid for an incomplete, unpolished game and are now expected to rent future improvements to the game that disappear as soon as you stop paying rent, along with all of your creations.  

[ddhboy 2]

Originally posted by: 0wn3d

So... let me get this straight.

Your claiming that a persistent world in which many players have the ability to interact with each other and trade with each other while online is not an MMO. I basically just defined an MMO.quote>

If this is an MMO then its not a good one. The only real elements of the MMO is that there's a persistant world and players work together. The problem though is that 1. the players aren't actually there with you, rather your just setting up contracts for oil deals or whatever, and two, you don't have shared goals, and the MMO portion of this game could have easily been moded into say Sim City 4. Additionally there is NO reason why this should be a subscription MMO. Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2 have NO subscriptions and certainly have higher production costs than Cities XL. Rather Guild Wars make their money by selling copies of the game and expansions. Proper subscription MMOs like WoW and EVE release a constant stream of updates and events that insure that the game doesn't die.

This doesn't work for Cities XL because city builder fans will not tolerate not be able to have these additional transportation options offline, and they wouldn't get the concept of paying subscriptions and  being able to put stuff down like a trolley down the line because they would have felt that it should have been included in the original game, or part of an expansion pack. On the flip side, MMO players won't play because there is NO teams in Cities XL or shared tasks, and even so what's the point in playing the game forever like a proper MMO is meant for? Eventually you'll max out your city limits, and be able to build up as much as possible, then what? Build another city?

The fact that much of the opinion surrounding Cities XL on this site is negative means that the game is going to bomb overall, and it doesn't help matters that in North America the game is more or less download only.

[wondergreat 0]

Agree with ddhboy. There's no "team work" in PO, trading is just... trading, chatting is simply... chatting. So where's the team work in PO? Blueprint? Still it requires no conventional "team work" to archieve that goal.

I was expecting a truly MMOCBG with a realistic (intercity and rapid) transportation feature, but I demand something more than what PO is offering now, it's far from enough.

[Shakkara 0]

CitiesXL is no more an MMO than Diablo II on battle.net is.

CitiesXL stores your city on a central server

Diablo II stores your character on a central server

CitiesXL allows you to chat with other players

Diablo II allows you to chat with other players

CitiesXL lets you trade resources with other players

Diablo II lets you trade items with other players

In CitiesXL, your city does not progress when not logged in

In Diablo II, your character does not progress when nog logged in

Diablo II lets you play cooperatively or competetively with other players

Diablo II published many free updates during its lifetime including new items, monsters, and game mechanics

Diablo II does not charge a monthly fee

Cities XL uhhhhhh....

You know, there is one game that did everything Cities XL does here and more!

Comparison 2: Cities XL vs Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom

CitiesXL stores your city on a central server

E:RMK stores your online multiplayer city on a central server

CitiesXL allows players to build and manage a city

E:RMK allows players to build and manage a city

CitiesXL allows players to trade resources with other players

E:RMK allows players to trade resources with other players

CitiesXL will hopefully allow players to build megastructures at some point in the future

E:RMK allows players to build megastructures, this often requires them to collaborate with others to obtain all the resources

In CitiesXL, your city does not progress when not logged in

In E:RMK, your city does not progress when nog logged in

CitiesXL has a broken excuse for solo play in addition to multiplayer features

E:RMK has several full solo campaigns, solo sandbox play, and several multiplayer options including online play

CitiesXL does not have a map editor

E:RMK has a map and scenario editor

CitiesXL requires you to pay for extra content and has a monthly fee

E:RMK released several full content packs for free, and requires no monthly fee

CitiesXL allows players to pay a visit to other players cities, but not to interact with it in any meaningful way

E:RMK allows players to send armies to another player's city and burn it to the ground

CitiesXL was released in 2009

E:RMK was released in 2003

[ifurkend 0]

Shakkara, While the 2 games share this similarity, Diablo is not an MMO, its online play aspect is defined as multiplayer game like Halo and Warcraft (RTS) presicely. In which each online game room only shared by few online players rather than what is considered "massive". Although each "room" are running in the same server, the host player may fine-tune some rule which is different than other rooms. The concept is close to the "instance" in MMORPG, but multiplayer game generally lacks an "open / public world" that allows every online players to come in contact at will.

Thankfully (ironically) your theory only strengthens our POV that CXL isn't an MMO.

[Shakkara 0]

The whole point was to show that CitiesXL is NOT an MMO.

[ifurkend 0]

Sorry Shakkara, I misread your post. And then I think the biggest weakess is that PO doesn't satisfies players (not the term definition) in terms of either MMO or multiplayer aspects.

[Myself.or.? 5]

I agree that second life, strictly speaking, isn't a game, but XL so far isn't a game either. It's a (costly) work in progress, nothing else. Anyway, did anyone actually notice the trailor about the ski station? Can't seem to find it right now, but saw it some 10 days back.

It said something along these lines:

Possibility to run businesses (like ski stations, hotels, whatever) in a 'type of tycoon mode' to make your city more attractive (to live in? for who???) and to increase tourism (by other builders?).

I keep having the funny feeling that XL isn't just one game but, to me it seems that it could turn out to be at least 2 games and 1 social network in one. That way they may even be able to resolve the problem about the missing interaction and teamwork.

Otherwise we'll just have to live with the fact that xl is a useless hybrid that promised many things, but in the end can't do any of them.

[City Planner 121]

My honest opinion is that in this title (which many agree is NOT an mmo, but rather an offering where you are paying for content and hope that you get some every week, couple weeks, month, etc) is that the gamer that pays to use the planet offer should NOT be renting the content, they should be allowed to keep it and play with that extra content as long as they own the game. This sillyness of only renting the content as long as you pay for the planet offer is a bit ridiculous.

It's quite apparent that MC decided to name this an MMO so that they could try to charge a monthly fee for it, and then take back all the content that we've gotten in the PO once the gamer stops paying for the PO.

In my opinion, they should have the PO for free, and all major content should be in the form of GEMS that they sell. If they put out quality GEMS then people would have bought them, but perhaps they realized that GEMS are going to be extremely limited? I honestly can't imagine (after playing beta from beginning to end) and then the demo for another week, why in the world I would want a ski resort or a golf course in my city. Not only do I think that a ski resort would look out of place, it's just not something that would interest me in the slightest. Especially more so if it's anything like that which they had in SimCity Societies, where you might end up with this odd looking mountain placed in the map that was a ski resort. Blech!

Let's face it, MC got greedy, and wanted a continued revenue stream, that's why they created the PO and made it a paying system. I'll conclude by saying that to me (To Me!) the game is far too repetitious because the game is static. Sure residents come and go, but the buildings stay the same, they never evolve like in SC4 (like how they change over time, and grow) so no matter how many cities I create in CXL, they all feel the same. They have different layouts of roads, but they're all the same, why would I want to pay a monthly fee to play something like that? The special curvey roads would be a good idea if they could actually make buildings of different footprint sizes, but having them all one size and always square means they don't alighn to the roads so you get those awful looking gaps everywhere and the fill in tools (that was iM sure designed to alleviate this ugliness) only works sporadically. Often times Im simply told that it can't be used because there isn't a border to use it in. Blech!

And no matter what, it boils down to the same thing that City Life boiled down to... Constantly matching residential inhabitants to the jobs in the city (or matching jobs to the residential inhabitants of the city), which I'm sorry to say, is not in the least bit interesting to em.

Now had they actually made this title (Im not even going to call it a game anymore, not unless they really improve it because a game is supposed to be fun, and to me this is not fun), really an MMO, it might have stood a chance for paying subscriber base, things like cities that really interact between themeselves, (example, perhaps influxes of residents based on whether your city is more attractive to live in compared to a neighboring city for one. Building cities together with other players for two. So many possiblities, none of which will ever be realized as long as MC is on the job (in my opinion), co-op building of citys or regions, etc. There were so many suggestions made, many of which when put into the context of an MMO for the CB genre would have gone a long way to make this a real mmo, none of which as far as I can tell were implemented.

Anyway, Cities XL is Not an MMO, by any stretch of the imagination, it's Not an MMO (My opinion, yours will surely differ).

[Myself.or.? 5]

the game is far too repetitious because the game is static. Sure residents come and go, but the buildings stay the same

it might have stood a chance for paying subscriber base, things like cities that really interact between themeselves, (example, perhaps influxes of residents based on whether your city is more attractive to live in compared to a neighboring city for one. Building cities together with other players for two.

Seems that your starting to get the idea.

I couldn't care less about having a ski station or not, and sure don't care about setting prices for renting boots or using the skilift. But surely there are a lot of people around who just love playing tycoon games. So why don't hav'em run a couple of hotels, airlines, beach resort ... in your city. If they go bust the place turns back to you just like now, if they do a good job they can expand their empire by renting hotels, connecting another airport,... in another city.

Then, you just need subscribers that only want to chat and meet other avatars. They could chose where to live based exactly on the fact that your city is more attractive than mine. And for the weekend they might just go and hang out with a bunch of friends in one of the beach resorts run by a tycoon.

Don't know what type of game that would be (MMO or whatever) but it could turn out to be fairly interesting and fun. And if they haven't planned anything like this, why would they've included all these little options.?.

Being it one way or another, the fact that neither space nor time seem to exist is something MC ought to address a.s.a.p.

For having curves and square buildings, well I may give them too much credit about having thought the game out...

[Rikaelus 0]

Sorry folks, but CitiesXL is an MMO based on the core criteria:

• The world you connect to is persistent
• The world can support hundreds or thousands of other players connected to it at the same time
• You can interact with other players through chat and through more meaningful, game-related aspects

You can argue about the quantity and quality of each of those components, but they do exist.

True, you don't interact heavily with other players. That can lend itself to the feeling that it's not a "true" MMO, but its categorization as an MMO isn't contingent upon a certain level of interactions - just that interaction is possible.

When I played EVE Online I never interacted with other people. Space was huge and rarely did you ever see someone else. And you could get pretty far in the game without talking to other people. For me it was effectively a single-player game. Does that mean it's not an MMO? Of course not. Interaction just wasn't a requirement. But the capacity for interaction was still there.

More than anything I see CitiesXL as a revolutionary engine in its infancy. Think about it. You can go from a satellite view to walking around the city as a pedestrian in seconds, and the graphics look excellent all the while. GEMs could very well just be the start.

As someone suggested, who's to say you won't eventually be able to choose a building to live in?

Maybe someday a GEM will allow you to build and manage your own buildings ala SimTower. Your own farms ala SimFarm. Maybe there will be an upgrade that adds collision detection and you can race cars, or boats. Maybe you can fly planes. And all of this within the cities you and other people create.

Before you know it maybe Avatar mode will be improved to the point of the Sims.

You can all squabble over what you think it feels like, but I feel like this could be the beginning of a game with a capacity for growth of the likes I've never seen. And that is why a lot of people fork up money every month for MMOs: Not just for what they are, but what they're destined to become.

[lucifon 0]

Originally posted by: USA_Pride

Originally posted by: His Divine Hand

Originally posted by: Aurelis

Its actually puzzling that no one defended cities xl>< or rather completely disagreed with whole idea of the thread. Id expect atleast some hardcore fanbase. . .quote>

Maybe that's because they are having fun playing the game too much to waste their time with complainers 

quote>

Nope, it's probably because many people just paid for an incomplete, unpolished game and are now expected to rent future improvements to the game that disappear as soon as you stop paying rent, along with all of your creations.  
quote>

In-Game chat is full of helpful people playing constantly, and is always extremely active. Most people seem to be enjoying the game that I've spoken too, including myself. If you dont want to pay monthly then dont, singleplayer mode is perfectly playable. Planet Mode is still extremely young, before people pull out their pitchforks they should see how it pans out in the near future.

[Tuscan 20]

I was going to buy CitiesXL (for its single player mode) but after having heard an overwhelmingly majority of negative viewpoints, iv decided to spend my money donating to simtropolis and getting those volume 2 nd 3 DVDs for simcity4.

[Rikaelus 0]

Originally posted by: niloluiz

Imagine if LEGO released a "City builder kit" but decided that the rail pieces, bus, and other cool pieces would be only for RENT....

It's no different here. They can put under subscription features that only make sense in a multiplayer enviorement, that is, genuine MMO-gameplay elements. This is fine. However use this scheme to turn core-elements of the game into a rental-only scheme is an attempt at insulting the public intelligence. It won't stick...

The reasonable model to adopt would be the release as DLC any content that fit single-player, and work hard to expand the on-line gameplay so the monthly fee is justifiable.

It's simple as that.quote>

Uhm.

Having to pay subscription fees for exclusive content is actually pretty normal in the world. A lot of websites have such models for purely information purposes, and don't have any multi-person component what-so-ever.

Now, if they tried to use the fact it's an MMO as a means to justify monthly fees, that would be flawed. But honestly I don't see much of that. There are more free MMOs now than there are ones you have to pay for so using "MMO" as a justification for payment doesn't even make sense. And there's really nothing wrong with them calling it an MMO since, by definition of "MMO", it is one.

So "MMO" and monthly fees are rather exclusive concepts, as near as I can tell.

[Rikaelus 0]

Originally posted by: Tuscan

I was going to buy CitiesXL (for its single player mode) but after having heard an overwhelmingly majority of negative viewpoints, iv decided to spend my money donating to simtropolis and getting those volume 2 nd 3 DVDs for simcity4.quote>

Meh, don't let these nay-sayers change your mind. Sure the game has a few weaknesses and bugs. Every city-building game I've ever seen has its share of weaknesses and most every newly released game has its share of bugs. Even if you only do the single-player thing, it's still enjoyable.

Heck, the graphics alone were worth the price, in my opinion - and I do -not- pay for games very often. Being able to see your creation in such graphical quality is a wonderful thing that SimCity can't even approach.

[moaku 74]

@Rika: I'd be curious to see your opinions in 2 or 3 months of playing PO... I'm sure you'll have a radically different POV... Even if I enjoy the game since the beginning of the beta, i'm disapointed about many things, but the game still has potential and that's why I still play it... however it's still far from reaching simcity4 in mid-term and long-term enjoyemenet... yeah, graphics are very nice... yes there are good points, but you'll see that after playing for awhile, you'll get easyly bored with it quickly on its current state... Well, I won't argue about it, but don't forget to come back in a few months please

btw I will argue about persistentness of the world...

My opinion is that it's not persistent at all because persistent worlds shall be "real time"... and PO is not realtime... your savegames are just uploaded to the server every 1 hour or so... so if you visit a city someone is playing and editing, you will download the last save game his game uploaded to the server, which is not necessarely up to date...and so you won't see the same city as him if he made huge modifications during this "unsynched period", however i'm fine about calling it "MMO" even if it's playing with words...

I also fairly doubt that avatar mode will ever approach a "The sims" level of interactions... a such gem / feature would require a quite huge patch, since building are yet not designed to be seen from inside... they're only designed to be externally viewed atm...

About gems, especially the ski one is the thing i'm the more anticipating... There already was a few trailers and official infos about them, and don't worry, it won't "plop a mountain"... when you'll be in your city you'll have an added button "Gem Ski" or whatever in your menu (where you switch from city to avatar mode), when you'll enter this mode and it will freeze your city simulation just like if you leave the city, then will focus entirely on the ski ressort... The gui will switch to something allowing you to build ski-related buildings wherever you want on your city map, and YOU design the ski tracks / telesieges (french word, dunno the english match) all over the mountains of your map... It will just be great ! I just hope the economic sim will be less "color-bubbley" than city mode

As you may have noted, i'm a bit "neutral" about this game... I hate some parts of it, but enjoys much some others. So I'll stay with my "Solo game" and focus on custom content, since it's the best hope of future enhancements for solo mode, with gems (or at least some of them) of course... Anyway, I still have hope that MC will rethink their "exclusive online content for subscribers" thing for a better solution.... Not necessarely "free for everyone" but at least giving SP players the possibility of getting them in another way.. even if that means paying a few bucks... especially things like mass transit networks (I added "network" since it seems now obvious to me that mass transit options will be given to online players 1 by 1 (type of transports heh, not player by player )

[Tuscan 20]

lol, well thats the issue I have, and thats why im not even going to buy it (atleast yet). How can a modern city building game call itself a modern city building game when it doesnt even have a mass transit system? Its like having a railway typhoon game which doesnt include passenger train stations..  its incomplete:-s

[John-SJ 13]

Originally posted by: Tuscan

I was going to buy CitiesXL (for its single player mode) but after having heard an overwhelmingly majority of negative viewpoints, iv decided to spend my money donating to simtropolis and getting those volume 2 nd 3 DVDs for simcity4.quote>

As it is currently configured, I don't think you can call CXL a single player game at all.  Rather, the limited, (dare I say crippled?) single player content serves only as a teaser for the PO.

It is only by paying a recurring fee that you are able to play CXL as it is meant to be played.

[Spinmaster 75]

Funny, isn't it? This thread is primarily about whether or not it's an MMO ... but we're not even sure it's single-player, either!

I don't know if it is or isn't an MMO. Seems to be a lot of arguing about whether or not it is technically an MMO. Well ok, let's go ahead and accept that technically it is an MMO.

And?

There's nothing interesting about it MMO-wise. I for one couldn't care less whether it's called one or not... technically.

[DazzaDazza 29]

yes cites Xl is like that uncle you have that is very handy at fixing thing, he is a jack of all trades, but he is a master or none,

[John-SJ 13]

Here's another way of looking at CXL, I just thought of it this way a little while ago.

Solo mode is the demo mode for PO.  The nice thing is, once you have paid for PO you don't have to download the full game, you just unlock it with your subscription. 

[Myself.or.? 5]

I'ld say let's just wait and see what MC are up to at the moment. The retail launch date for Italy (don't know about other countries) has just been delayed by 2 weeks. Was meant to be the 15th and now they are saying it will be the 30th of Oct.. So I guess that they are either busy fixing up a few things we don't like or they just decided to go home.

[HeroIV 0]

That delay could be because they are still sorting payment methods. In the Netherlands they have a payment option called "iDeal" but I can't use it yet (It is listed as "not availlable yet" .

They have to have contracts with the "iDeal" organisation first.

The same goes for Austrian players. They have a payment option only for them.

Does Italy have some sort of auto-debet banking system?? If so, they could need time to set it up and be the cause of the delay.

I can't subscribe yet because I live in The Netherlands and don't have a CC. The game isn't out here, I bought it via Steam.

[JakeMD 107]

read

~JY wuz hear

twice!

[Myself.or.? 5]

Well, as far as online buying or subscriptions go you may well be right. It's just that I was actually talking about buying in a shop. And the guy who works there (actually the owner) can't get his hands onto CXL. Normally that should be part of business as usual, since he doesn't pay MC cash, but is billed by whoever distributes the game.

[gyzzzmo 0]

I dont know what all the fuz is about.

But its obvious that all the ranters are comparing this type of MMO with MMORPG's wich are very different, but that does not mean Cities XL is not an MMO.

MMO(g) simply means Massive Multiplayer Online game, and since people are massivly playing this game online and have interaction, this can be concidered to be an MMO.

Ofcourse the amount of interaction between players is limited to chatting and trading at this moment, but there will be more interaction later by building projects and contests. This will still be less interaction than in an MMORPG but what the hell can you expect from a citybuilder MMO?

[ddhboy 2]

Originally posted by: gyzzzmo

I dont know what all the fuz is about.

But its obvious that all the ranters are comparing this type of MMO with MMORPG's wich are very different, but that does not mean Cities XL is not an MMO.

MMO(g) simply means Massive Multiplayer Online game, and since people are massivly playing this game online and have interaction, this can be concidered to be an MMO.

Ofcourse the amount of interaction between players is limited to chatting and trading at this moment, but there will be more interaction later by building projects and contests. This will still be less interaction than in an MMORPG but what the hell can you expect from a citybuilder MMO?quote>

The genre doesn't excuse the lacking nature of the MMO portion of CitiesXL. There are tons of other MMOs releasing now that are not MMORPGs, perhaps the most notable comming down the pipeline is APB, which is apparently not going to charge a subscription fee despite its high production costs. CitiesXL is a poor MMO barely deserving of the title, and there could have been some rather simple solutions to fix Cities XL. First off, the game mechanics of CitiesXL means that online play is NOT about building your city, rather its about macro-economics. That said, why can I not create trade organizations with other players in order to protect our economic stability and growth. It seems almost obvious that if I'm an oil producing city, then I'd want to join Cities XL OPEC and protect my trade.

Perhaps the perfect model for this type of economic gameplay is EVE Online, and its soon to be released counterpart Dust 514. Allow cities to form trade groups or nations, however the developers want to phrase it, let these groups try to sabatoge the economic growth of their rivals by out producing them, sabatoging them, depriving them of vital resources, or lowering their products prices to the point where they can't compete. Then scrap the coin system and replace it with commodities markets (again, like EVE Online) the value of these commodities will fluxuate depending on how much the world is producing, on who is selling and how much they are.

Allow trade groups to impose tarrifs and let them sell to one another at lower costs. Lastly tie trade to infastructure, If you open an airport you can get goods, but not to the same degree that making an industrial railroad or a highway would, and then allow any usage taxes imposed on foreign services to be reflected in the final sales prices for commodities. Additionally, cities with tons of extra money could give loans to other cities in deficit, and set a certain amount of time for the borrowing player to repay their debt. If the debt is not payed in time, then the borrowing player will be forced to take out another debt from a different player, or renegotiate the terms of their original debt. Like real financial companies, cities would be able to sell another player's debt to other cities, sort of like collection agencies. If a player is good enough at debt trading, it could count for a sizable portion of their GDP.

All of this would be reflected back in the city building portion of the game as builders would be forced to mantain and grow their cities despite the actions of the other cities playing the game. It would also serve a far more rewarding experience than blueprints, and the challenges of dealing with a world economy where everyone wants to be king would warrant paying a subscription for.

Also, we could also put back in the disasters from Sim City games but make the more realistic. Say there was a weather system imposed onto Planet Offer. You could have hurricaines, tornados, earthquakes, volcanos, blizzards, etc, which on the city building side of the game could reck parts parts or all of your city depending on how well you're prepared, or at the very least hamper travel and trade. Say there's a city in Cities XL that is a major shipping port, prefered by most major of the surrounding cities due to its low shipping tarrifs. Now a hurricaine comes and knocks out most of the ports the player had established in his city. Now trade from surrounding cities is also hurt because they no longer have this major hub that they could use to sell to the world market. Much like real weather, certain events can only happen in different parts of the world at a certain time of the year, like a far northern city could have its ships docked because the water surrounding the docks is iced up certain times in the winter.

For an example, lets just say that one day I'm looking for new contracts to sell my oil to, and I notice that the oil prices are quite low. I go to my OPEC group and after some discussion we decide to limit the amount of oil that we produce for the next 30 days. Our plan works well and oil prices jump and we all prosper in the additional revenue. Other cities see this and are deeply affected by the lack of oil comming in. In retaliation these cities impose export tarrifs against me, which really hurts because I needed material to help build that transcontinental railroad that the neighboring cities and I were discussing. Additionally a new competitor arrises and undercuts my oil prices, which floods him with new contracts.

[Androv 6]

I don't know, having the rest of the world adversely impact your city would kind of suck. There's enough potential there at the moment - what if someone just makes a city to produce water at a much lower rate than my city does? Everyone will stop buying my water and my city will go bankrupt. If it was possible for some disaster to come along and wipe out half your city, you'd be completely crippled and unable to recover.

Using WoW as an example:

- if you die, you can res with a minimal money loss - so there's no real permanent 'loss'

- other players *can* kill you but there is no permanent damage really, just pisses you off, and only if you're on a PvP server (maybe they could have a PvP planet where you could wreck stuff?)

- WoW involves working together in a team to accomplish a goal, much like the megastructures / blueprints will require you to do.

- WoW has an auction house where the prices of goods are determined by the player, much like the prices of commodities are determined by players in Cities XL

I don't think you'd have many players signing up for a game where, at a moments notice, you could lose half of your city to some freak disaster.

[ddhboy 2]

Originally posted by: Androv

I don't know, having the rest of the world adversely impact your city would kind of suck. There's enough potential there at the moment - what if someone just makes a city to produce water at a much lower rate than my city does? Everyone will stop buying my water and my city will go bankrupt. If it was possible for some disaster to come along and wipe out half your city, you'd be completely crippled and unable to recover.

Using WoW as an example:

- if you die, you can res with a minimal money loss - so there's no real permanent 'loss'

- other players *can* kill you but there is no permanent damage really, just pisses you off, and only if you're on a PvP server (maybe they could have a PvP planet where you could wreck stuff?)

- WoW involves working together in a team to accomplish a goal, much like the megastructures / blueprints will require you to do.

- WoW has an auction house where the prices of goods are determined by the player, much like the prices of commodities are determined by players in Cities XL

I don't think you'd have many players signing up for a game where, at a moments notice, you could lose half of your city to some freak disaster.quote>

Well it wouldn't be a freak disaster. You'd have a global weather system that functions in real time (relative to the game world ofcourse) so if there's a hurricane comming your way you'd know about it ahead of time, and if you know that your ports will ice over in the winter then you plan ahead of time to either de-ice it, or come up with some sort of alternative. If you build up your manufacturing, perhaps with enough R&D, you could create stations to try and change the weather, starting from the most basic devices (cloud seeding) or for cities of a higher level, more impressive technology lie using microwaves to remove storm threats. Ofcouse you'd want to balance it, if your economy revolvles around exporting water or you're a farm town you would want to have it rain more. Ofcourse as you move up your technology becomes more accurate, but you're never 100% able to remove any threats, in fact, the microwave thing could backfire and actually increase the intensity of the storm.