The Unofficial Official Petition to Reinstate MMO

[Prof. Scientist 0]

 The Unofficial Official Petition to Reinstate MMO

This petition is to get the greatness of the MMO features that once was on this game back. I know that everyone that will sign it probably was paying for it before, but I ask for you to invite your friends. You get as many people as virtually possible to buy this game, and willing to pay a monthly fee for this epic game.

The reason for this is because I was dreaming of something like this since Simcity came out. A game where you could connect with other players to trade, connect cities, and work together to make a perfect virtual planet made directly from the players and customers of just a mere video game. Something so huge, and ruthless made so compact.

This petition might not work, though I want my efforts to not go unwasted. Please people, get as many people you know to sign this petition off.

And to the developers, please look over this and take this petition into consideration.

[buidingbig 3]

i support the petition. Bring back the MMO part of CitiesXL !

With Regards,

Detopia

Mayor of Optima Cities

[soltangris 42]

Hm, I would also support it, (I liked it and I was paying for it), if not for the little sustainability problem. It was already proven that MC has financial problems sustaining the PO, so much so that the further development of the game was in danger. I prefer having a viable SP city builder that is being constantly enhanced, than a struggling MMO that has hitches and lags on development because MC can't afford to hire more people to develop the game while also maintaining the servers.

Now, if it was EA that's done this I would support such a petition, no doubt. Because I would know that it's not a question of physical possibility, but a question of will.

[Xyloxadoria 1,098]

While this petiton might be a good idea it will probably not work. Petitions have been tried before, alot of times. The most prominent expample on this site is Sim City 5. In fact there are fficial&client=firefox-a">over 47,500 webpages for such a petion. Given that some of the hits are repeats there would still be thousands of petitons that are unique none of which worked. Clearly if petitons worked something would have happened by now.

You can try making a petion for this but it was CLEARLY said on the website that they were abandoning Planet offer. There simply werent enough people to support it so they are most likley not going to listen.

[His Divine Hand 244]

Well, as I have been informed by reading the multiple of threads on CXL, the problem with city building mmo's is that no one who is a fan of city builders wants to play them as mmo's; perhaps not the most social bunch, I guess. Also, based on this knowledge, I can safely know that this petition, and everyone who, err, "signs" it do not exist, since no city building fan would want a city building mmo, so by Post Proper Ad Hoc and such all of this is imaginary. . .

As an added note, if this petition was real, this would be a poor way to do one, as it doesn't have that "we care enough to make the effort to make it official looking" feel to it. I don't believe a poll and thread on a fansite a petition makes. . .

[johnb10000 0]

I started playing this game the week they shut down the online version so unfortunately I didn't get to experience the online version of the game.

They could try the model where the game is free but charge extra for special buildings or additional cities. This seems to work for Facebook games.

[Livin in Sim 83]

Well...slap my granny...

[pete1061 0]

The only reason I paid for the PO was because there was content restricted to the PO only. I honestly had no interest in trading with other players, and I was too busy working on my city to even remember the chat window was there. And I'll bet I am not alone in that. A significant number of people we're bogging down the servers who really we're not in it for the MMO features, but only the PO restricted content.

Anyhow petitioning for something only really works when dealing with public services. MC is a private business, if you want to convince them to do something, go to them with investment dollars(or euros). The other option is to get together with people who feel the same as you and develop your own MMO city builder.

[rismisner 0]

There was never any MMO to "bring back". Tacking a deficient trading interface onto a single player game, and blocking many features for those who don't pay for a subscription, is not enough to call it an MMO.

I also paid for the PO only because it had content that was unavailable in SP, and also because the game balance in SP was broken (IMO) and I had serious economic problems in all my cities, unable to grow beyond a relatively small size when limited to trading with the unfair NPC trader at a 5:1 ratio, where I could never produce 5x enough export goods to pay for all the imports I needed... and trying to build a self-sufficient city always results in pollution killing your farms... the game was designed around building specialized cities which would trade resources, which required getting onto the PO to have fun with it. Since this inter-city trading is still not in the SP game, it's lucky that they nerfed the trade ratio down to 3:1, and inverted the diminishing returns into the proper game balance of rewarding returns, so the SP at least seems playable now, but lacking the ability to trade between my cities really feels like it's missing something now, and I still can't get to the 300k income rate I had in my first online city, based on selling water which was so widely needed.

I also paid for the PO because I was willing to fund the ongoing efforts of the developers, and I recognize that they need revenue from somewhere to pay those developers. The $50 I paid for the game to begin with is only a drop in the bucket towards repaying the initial investment to get the game basically up and running to begin with (just barely, as it seems to have been rushed to shelves with many things unfinished) and I see so much potential in this game that I'd really like to see it finished.

Now instead of the PO and a subscription fee model, and a new patch adding a little content or bug fixes or a new feature every month or so... we get a broken game that will not be fixed, and we'll have to buy the next version for another $50... which I expect to also be another broken game with many problems and no support, but hey we can buy CXL 2012 for another $50 a year later which will be slightly better, and maybe CXL 2013 the next year which will also be slightly better... and look if that's how it's gonna be, I'd be open to paying a monthly fee for the ongoing support and patches to just build on CXL 1 and fix the bugs and add features within the existing engine, rather than reinvent the game every year and never get it right...

Just don't sell it to me as multiplayer when there's nothing multiplayer about it. Sell it to me as what it is: a subscription for content and new features and bug fixes and support.

Base your business model more on an anti-virus company than on WoW... I mean unless you come up with some truly multiplayer features that justify calling it an MMO, such as various ideas for "region play" like if I'm playing my city in a truly MMO world where I can scroll my map far enough to see the neighboring city (instead of falling off the cliff into the nothingness around my fundamentally single player city) ... you gotta make it feel like it's multiplayer to call it an MMO. The trading game never felt like an MMO to me, and wasn't even multiplayer at all since I only traded with myself.

[mentarman 14]

People already had the chance to vote with their pocketbooks and there wasn't the support there to make it work for MC. This is just going to be another back-and-forth about the the merits of the PO, the same conversation we've had numerous times. It wasn't too productive before and I see it being even less productive now that the PO is gone.

It's too bad it didn't work out but I think MC should move on.

[City Planner 121]

Maybe they can just sell off the "MMO" portion of the game to another company like they did with that other game, then somebody else can foot the bills and see if they can make a go of it. I'm not signing here as I don't think there was ever enough content in the MMO to pay a monthly fee for it, and to only get to chat with others seemed less than worth the monthly fee, but maybe they can do that, maybe they can't.

[sthudig 0]

Originally posted by: mentarman

People already had the chance to vote with their pocketbooks and there wasn't the support there to make it work for MC. This is just going to be another back-and-forth about the the merits of the PO, the same conversation we've had numerous times. It wasn't too productive before and I see it being even less productive now that the PO is gone.

It's too bad it didn't work out but I think MC should move on.quote>

For once....we are in full accord on something!

[Bountytaker 0]

Originally posted by: mentarman

People already had the chance to vote with their pocketbooks and there wasn't the support there to make it work for MC. This is just going to be another back-and-forth about the the merits of the PO, the same conversation we've had numerous times. It wasn't too productive before and I see it being even less productive now that the PO is gone.

It's too bad it didn't work out but I think MC should move on.quote>

/agree

[mr-tom 2]

DItto.

They didn't stop it because they're mean.

They stopped it because they went all out to get the whole world signed up and despite those efforts, they couldn't get enough interest (and therefore money) to keep the servers running.

Oh. And because it wasn't a very good idea to begin with. Yes, I liked the idea of browsing other cities and a market economy, but in all honesty, those two features did not make it an MMO worth paying for. I paid until the end, but the reason I did was that I wanted the extra content like buses, blueprints and the Shakespearian village. None of which really needed to be on line.

[JakeMD 107]

I don't see this happening, not unless the online petition can come up with the amount of cash that is needed to run the MMO servers, staff, and maintenance.

[Ephemeron 17]

An overwhelming majority of people seemed to hate the Planet Offer when it was up. A small number of people liked it and, judging by the number of people who have voted, tis hasn't changed. Everything else I have to say has already been said before.

Meanwhile, I think this image is what best sums up the state of the Planet Offer right now: