Game plays itself when offline?

[stevengmcleod 0]

I first built a city on PO during my 7 day free trial - an extremely experimental, getting used to the features of the game on day 1 type city.  I havent logged into PO since (cant stand the idea, and frankly cant even bring myself to play the game in its current state) but have been checking back on the Cities XL website from time to time to see if there is any light that MC might fix this game and turn it into something useful.  Ive noticed that my city has been at zero population, unemployment, etc in the stats this entire time. This morning when I logged in, I noticed that the city now has a population of a few hundred, (not surprisingly) a negative cash flow, huge unemployment, etc.  Im wondering if the city plays in the background, or if someone comes to visit it does the game continue? This would seem to be a dangerous feature for people who are in the middle of doing something in their city that invokes negative cash flow, have to walk away from the game for a few days, and come back only to realize that the city has crashed and burned in the meantime! 

[Psycho_Teddy 25]

No, there have been some problems with city stats being updated to the server on occasion. So, your city will show 0 pop, etc, until you get a successful save to the server to correct it. It may take several tries. What happened is, while you logged out, some of your contracts expired and you lost income. In this respect, yes, the game does go on after you logout, but the city doesn't continue as a unit, just the trade system. If they stopped all trade with you when you logged out, it would be pointless to make the game an MMO [there will be no discussion from me on this topic, different thread, different complaint, you don't like me calling it an MMO, PM me]