Introducing: the Cities XL archive

Ephemeron · September 3, 2010

It's been just over a year since they closed the forums at the official site, and now seems the right time to reflect on the history of CXL. Included here are some of the ideas threads (the concept articles, etc - some of these date back to Cities Unlimited), and the complaining ones (including some old favourites such as "Single players neglected" and "It will be a flop"). Blog comments are included as well. All are taken from a Google cache a few days after the forums were closed.

This may be a source of nostalgia for some of our members who were there at the time. More importantly it may be of interest to the development of future city builders. Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it. In a way Cities XL was a failed experiment, but it can be learned from. By the principles of science, no experiment can truly fail, as even a negative result proves something.

A few points to note:

Posts are numbered, giving sme sense of the chronology of when they were made. Just over 100000 posts were made, spanning two years.
Links to other threads are of course broken. Quote boxes are not visible. And emoticons are gone.
Most of the multi-page threads are incomplete, because finding the cache of one does not necessarily lead to another. They have their page numbers for reference.
I had time to convert a few of them to .doc files with all the pages in one document, but most of them are still in the raw html format.

And now a few quotes to make us excited:

“and this is for ALL buildings in CU! This game will be definitely THE city builder game!! you made my day! i couldn't be happier seeing this! this is a sign of what you guy are doing in MC, and i must congratulate you! ”

“If you get rid of the water pipes, you might as well get rid of subway rail.”

“I like the idea of a "planetary simulater" per se, but I doubt the devs will take on something like this right away.”

“Can you tell me just ONE Single Player mode ONLY feature in this game? Just ONE.”

“I Agree, the single player will be the winner out of this. I can see myself playing single player for some time, what with sand box mode.”

“We have just been ignored, lied to, and quite possibly betrayed. Just face it, don't deny it.”

“But it's out of our hands! We ain't the developers, it isn't our call. Let us just focus on things we CAN do. We can still push forward good ideas, work out concepts for future patches, etc.”

“Must I say, it's been great being with this community. I'm really proud of what I have achieved, and all the lessons I have learnt from many others.”

“

so they are going to delete all the old forum threads??? if so, it's be sad”

Ephemeron · September 3, 2010

It's been just over a year since they closed the forums at the official site, and now seems the right time to reflect on the history of CXL. Included here are some of the ideas threads (the concept articles, etc - some of these date back to Cities Unlimited), and the complaining ones (including some old favourites such as "Single players neglected" and "It will be a flop"). Blog comments are included as well. All are taken from a Google cache a few days after the forums were closed.

This may be a source of nostalgia for some of our members who were there at the time. More importantly it may be of interest to the development of future city builders. Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it. In a way Cities XL was a failed experiment, but it can be learned from. By the principles of science, no experiment can truly fail, as even a negative result proves something.

A few points to note:

Posts are numbered, giving sme sense of the chronology of when they were made. Just over 100000 posts were made, spanning two years.
Links to other threads are of course broken. Quote boxes are not visible. And emoticons are gone.
Most of the multi-page threads are incomplete, because finding the cache of one does not necessarily lead to another. They have their page numbers for reference.
I had time to convert a few of them to .doc files with all the pages in one document, but most of them are still in the raw html format.