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I find it insulting that so may people disallow freedom of opinion in their posts. I am of the opposite opinion of the fanatics in this thread. I'm severely disappointed about this game. I personally dislike its graphics, its style, its entire function of online connectivity & cloud-storage, and its fanboys. But this is my opinion. This site isn't 4-Chan, treat others with respect here. I may not have the same opinion of a portion of you, but that doesn't give me the right to flame anyone who disagrees with me. I don't really know what to think of the latest news. From what I can see; Maxis/EA are too scared to call it SimCity 5 because it doesn't resemble SimCity 4 enough to call it its successor. I don't care about discussing Origin here because its medium for distribution isn't what makes a game fun. But at present we're stuck with a game that lacks the apparently complexity of SimCity 4, requires an always-online connection, owns our storage, and in the foreseeable future; disallows mods and modding. All I have to ask you all is; why are you a member of a SimCity 4 site when you look forward to a game that has tried so many different ways of destroying what made its predecessors so great? I mean, currently we're not even sure whether we can control public transportation. What kind of SimCity disallows that? I would be better off playing SimCity 2000, in which I actually can. A game which came out 19 years ago.

I wanted so much to feel positively about this game. I really did... but it seems like every piece of news carries a negative with it. Look, I understand they are taking the game in a new direction. To a degree, I'm fine with that, so long as the new direction is interesting. What I'm not fine with are the sudden limitations on gameplay. Each previous SImcity title expanded on what you could do from the previous game, to the point where in SC4 we could create entire custom regions to our liking and fill every space of it if we wanted. Now we suddenly have a limitation to only one tile size, to no terraforming, to a limited region scope, to empty space between regions, to no build-able highways, to cloud-only gameplay... I mean, how exactly is the community supposed to be doing any modding with this, aside from the occasional house or two? It honestly feels like they made two decisions- 1) "let's make it an online game", and 2) "let's have the Glassbox Engine simulate everything!"- and ended up having to restrict giant chunks of gameplay that previously existed because of them.

The closed beta for SimCity 2013 is now accepting sign ups. You will have to be picked to get the beta, but anyone can sign up. The signup is now live and can be found by clicking this news item. You will need a Origin Account.

Story of the last 5 years, really. Create great franchise with many loyal fans. Dumb down franchise to sell to Facebook crowd for more money whilst alienating the smaller original fanbase that got you there. Profit.

I think we all gave this game a chance. Those who are now frustrated with it have good reasons and valid opinions backed up with facts. I will say that the new gameplay video (SimCity World) looked rather appealing, but unless some things are changed about this game I will not be buying.

Hm. I was going to register, then I read the EULA. Wow, that thing is... Wow. "Unfortunately you did not accept the end user license agreement." Yeah, no small wonder I did that.

Hi everyone- After a nearly 4-month hiatus, Tarkusian Cities is back in the thick of construction season. I have a few capital improvement projects all around Chemeketa to showcase, which, for the first time in awhile, will entail visiting the south side of town. I've replied to everyone who commented on the previous update on the end of that update's comments section--thank you all for the support! First off, a current region map, to reacquaint yourself with Chemeketa. (Trying out a new color scheme here, too.) Current region map: [link] Highway 36/Sorenson Street Project PROJECT OVERVIEW ORDOT has identified that the segment of Highway 36 between downtown Chemeketa and the interchange with Highway 15 as a viable candidate for capital improvements. Among these improvements, one particular project was shortlisted for construction, the interchange with Sorenson Street. Sorenson Street is a north-south arterial maintained by the City of Chemeketa, which provides access to several major industrial areas, and has long been a source of congestion. While city public works projects have noticeably improved the road well to the north of the project area, the portions of Sorenson Street in the vicinity of the existing interchange with Highway 36 is a 2-lane roadway with a 30mph speed limit, and has not seen much improvement since it was a semi-rural road on the outskirts of town. As a result, it suffers significant congestion, and operates at LOS D at most hours, dropping to LOS F at the interchange and immediately south during peak hours. As part of the project, ORDOT will be modernizing and re-aligning Sorenson Street, widening the roadway to include 4 travel lanes, from just south of the interchange, to 5th Avenue NE. The City of Chemeketa will be widening and re-aligning Sorenson between 5th and 16th Avenues NE in coordination with the interchange redesign. The illustration below gives a rough outline of the improvements planned for this project. PRE-CONSTRUCTION CONDITIONS This is where the ramps to and from Highway 36 eastbound intersect Sorenson Street (facing north). Here is a full overview of the interchange area, with earth moving commencing on the new alignment of Sorenson Street (facing north). This is an overview of the area surrounding the intersection of Sorenson with 5th Ave NE (facing north). As evidenced by the outlines of preliminary preparations for construction, a number of structures will need to be demolished to make way for the new roadway. This is at the north end of the city's improvement project, at the intersection of Sorenson with 16th Ave NE (facing north). The segment north of 16th has already been widened to 4 lanes, and this project will widen the segment to the south to match. DURING CONSTRUCTION Another look, a little farther south, with some preliminary construction preparations underway (facing north). Sorenson will be realigned slightly toward the west, with more slight curvature. Demolition of structures near the interchange has commenced (facing north): Just north of 5th Ave (facing north): Farther north, near the existing curve (facing north): This small pocket of residential will not be directly connected into the new alignment Sorenson Street, and will instead be accessed by a segment of the old alignment, which will be retained for local access purposes (facing north). Closer to 16th Ave (facing north) A portion of the new alignment has been constructed, and 9th Place NE has been extended to it (facing north). This extension will provide access to the portion of the old alignment that will be retained for local access, and will minimize disruption during construction staging. The collector roadway just to the north (Meander Drive NE) will also be realigned, with its intersection with Sorenson being moved roughly 300 feet north (facing north). This is back at the new 5th and Sorenson intersection (facing north). You can see the old intersection just to the right. That does it for this installment of Tarkusian Cities. Next update, we'll be delving more into the reconstruction of the interchange itself. Hope you enjoyed it! -Tarkus

All: I see you've generally liked the airport, I'm so glad to hear this. This has been my first two-city tiles airport (in the next post I'll try to show an overview where you'll see that. Its construction from its inception to the final details took around 15 hours more or less (5 hours during 3 days) excluding the photoedition I had to do to solve some issues... Thank you all for your comments!! Fox, Benedict, k50, IL., Gugu3, Numbers, Evillions, SC4L0ver: I personally hate how in-game monorail looks. It can't overhang on lots and its 45-degree-turns make me really sick. I always liked how those ATEX tubes look and they've been for a long time in my Landmarks menu waiting for their opportunity. My usual building style doesn't allow me to use them, but in Al-Qurayyah, Petrodollars make possible almost everything; so I followed that Dubai catchphrase "Why not?" MilitantRadical: I can't really remember where I downloaded this set, it was in one of those confusing Japanese sites. It must be probably down these days, but you can try looking for it in the sites listed here [link]. NMUSpidey: Yeah, my final thought about it was "it doesn't look that impressive" but guess it is OK for such a tiny place... BTW, congrats on your MOTM! Schulmanator: A G-R-E-A-T C-O-M-M-E-N-T. Adooxx: Here you are! SimCoug: Before the "invention" of MMPs, all airports looked a bit dead, except the ones whose creator knew how to use the LE. Now, even the laziest player like me can build a busy airport with the marvels the SCAG creates. dubaidude303: Thanks! Simul8ter8: I'm amazed to see you amazed by my CJ! Hazani Pratama: The beautiful stuff is about to come! 100000....: I was actually inspired by the expansion project of Al Maktoum Intl Airport (DWC) in Dubai [link]. Anyways, I have no doubt that it's designers were inspired by ATL at some point... Mithrik: The biggest? No way, have you seen Jorge_Carrillo's work at the Show Us Your Airports thread? He does it BIG! Megaopolisbuilder34: Thank you! MayorHerzog: Unemwhat? I envision a vibrant nightlife here, but it's hard for me to show it in SC4... I'll come up with something eventually, I guess. Woke up early that morning. I was jet-lagged and I was nervous, working for AQPOC when you're a chemical engineer, is something big, some dream of this since middle school. And I was there, having my breakfast in one of the several restaurants in the Princess Hotel. The AQPOC (PetroQurayyah) HQ is just a block down the street, there's no problem on going there walking. I walked all the way looking up, that tower is a structure that deserves to be watched for a while. PetroQurayyah has it's global headquarters in a building called Al Burj ("The Tower" in English), which is not simply a building. It is the tallest building on Earth, measuring 1030 m from its base to the top of the spire; only available to a company where money is not a problem like PetroQurayyah. The AirportLink and Al Burj are the real pride of Al-Qurayyah, the structures that placed that tiny emirate into the global scenario. Al Burj is, for some, the 8th Wonder of the World and in that moment, I understood why. A revolutionary construction method was used to build the foundations of this building. Sand was dug until reaching the rock basement underground, and foundations were built on it. This makes Al Burj boast of 10 underground floors of parking space and 3 gigantic mass dampers to prevent seismic damages in case of earthquake. I nearly broke my neck staring at the top before entering the building, took some pics of it with my iPhone. And then, I came into that Wonder of the World. I was directed to one of the offices in the 84th floor, seems that all that area belongs to the Human Resources department, which must be an administrative monster inside a monstruous company. The elevators took me to the 84th floor faster than the elevator of your hometown hospital takes you to the 3rd floor. The interview was plain spectacular. They recieved me as I was a kind of Messiah (which I'm not), gave all the practical info I had to know to begin living there, the keys of my apartment and my corporate car, contracts, computer, computer keys, instructions, blah, blah, blah; everything compiled in a portfolio and a computer bag. Finally, I was given like an insight of the company I'd begin to work with tomorrow. All production, revenues, profits and investments figures seemed to be like from another world to me. I see that everything is larger and faster in Al-Qurayyah. I was taken into a brief tour on the company, this was the less impressive part, after all. Golf oil rig. Juggernaut oil rig. AQPOC crude oil seaport, South Beach. Al-Qurayyah University of Oil and Gas. The interview finished and I took the elevator down to the street level in panic. This seemed to be a much more serious business than I expected. Everything I had seen on the Internet or read about PetroQurayyah was simply not enough. I was about to work for the company that literally fuels a nation and fuels the world; were things happen. There was no more time for thinking, I took a yellow taxicab at the door and gave the driver the address I had been given some minutes ago. He seemed to be from Pakistan or perhaps Sri Lanka; he said nothing during the whole trip, he directly drove the taxi into Sheikh Rahim bin Al Attiyah Road and headed north. Several meters below us, an AirportLink train should be travelling at a speed around 250 km/h, everyday stuff here. We went into the collector lanes of Al Attiyah Road in a few minutes, finally, I was taken to a tall waterfront estate, surrounded by single-family houses. My apartment seemed to be placed in the Sorrento 1 tower, 24th floor; according with the address. The apartment interior was more luxurious than any other five-star hotel I had ever been before (except Princess Hotel), with all the necessary stuff to have a humble way of life: 50" LED TV, a huge sofa, minimalistic furniture, an also huge but empty bridge, a fully-equipped kitchen, a king-size bed, an iHome, a luminous studio full of shelves, a bathroom large as a dance club, shower, jacuzzi... If they gave me all that for free, it's because they expected some return with my work. I had to sit down for a while before attacking my nearly-infinite to-do list.

Large cities in SimCity 4 was a big illusion, it was just a bunch of small buildings that only varied in height according to the chosen density. Moreover, the high density areas in SC4 were small to create the false impression that the space 2x2Km was great. In SimCity 4, the land occupied by large skyscrapers is unreal, for this reason it was up more buildings. For example, the Burj Khalifa occupies an area of 0.334 km², the Empire State Building occupies an area of 0.257 km², Los Angeles City Hall occupies an area of 0.046 km² and the Triumph Palace in Russia occupies an area of 0.17 km². Manhattan is full of skyscrapers has an area of 59.5 km² (almost 15 times larger than the standard size 2x2 of SimCity 4). Manhattan is only 7.17% of the total area of the city of New York. And another thing, Maxis believes that small and medium cities don’t have countryside, limiting the space for 2x2km. Administratively, the city also includes rural areas and not just urban areas. Maxis say that you can create a great city based on a region with a lot of specialized small towns is a great illusion. Well, this only complicates the game, because you need to create a bunch of connections and manage various cities instead of a big city with only one town hall in a large area as in Cities XL. Maxis wants to deceive whom? A region formed by small towns without rural areas is not equal to a large city. I don't understand why Maxis did not want to increase the default size for SimCity 2013. They think we'll be satisfied with a great city all fragmented instead of having a space large enough to build a true metropolis in SC2013. However, be satisfied with 2km by 2km in the same patterns of SimCity 4 for SimCity 2013 is also absurd. A city with over 1 million for more densely populated it is, it does not fit within an area of 4 km². I don’t want a change of a deception of the present (SC2013) by a deception of the past (SC4), this would be how to stop in time. I want an area larger than 2x2Km and ready.

Thought I may as well register to try out simcity. Origin account required. No thanks. Presses CANCEL.

Welcome to a Bonus Update! You can consider today's update "Update 4.5" - if you will. It is not a complete update, however it will be one everyone is interested in for sure. Today I am going to show you various Regional views of Holt District! Woo - hope you're excited! And I sincerely hope these don't disappoint you and meet or exceed your expectations. Let's get on with the show! Regional View 1 - General Region View This shot shows you the un-altered view of Holt District in its entirety. Click for full resolution! The next regional view we're going to have a look at is the above regional view - with municipality names added. This way, you always know where we are when I say "Today, we're in City/Town/Township XYZ" Click for full resolution! Oh no, we aren't done yet! In this second last regional view for today we see an "satallite" view of Holt District - we are looking directly down at Holt District. Click for full resolution! And for out last regional view, a night-time regional view of the populated area of Holt District. This one I am particularly fond of. And now... a teaser of our next update. That's all for today, folks! I sincerely hope the regional views didn't disappoint - and that you are looking forward to our next update. As always, don't forget to follow me on twitter, visit the HD streetmap and website. Replies will be done at the next update.

Replies: ggamgus: Thank you!!! TowerDude: In Spain you can find those huge empty fields too! grstudios: Thank you!!! Actually, fields and machines (and roads, railroads, etc.) are lotted, and I use the props in LE instead of the MMP versions. TekindusT: Thank you!!! Very nice poem! Actually, my hometown is in the Castilla region, and when we drive somewhere out of town, this boring landscape is what we see Hazani Pratama: Thanks!! ThomasSimpson: Thank you!! I was inspired a bit on your last Lessito updates halenbyname: Thank you!! aparrot7: Thank you!! dubaidude303: Thank you!! Markus J: Thank you!! testuser1234: It was my first rural scene but thanks for your advice! Now we are again in Vistalegre. So we go down the Vía Imperial from the Imperial Square (Remember it?) to reach the Plaza 18 de Marzo (March 18th square) where the Parliament is. March 18th 1521 was the day the first colonies were discovered by the Empire, and were ruled by the country until their independance in the XIXth century (still some archipelagos belong to the Empire nowadays). But before arriving, a little pic. Now we arrived, and we reach this traffic chaos roundabout in one side of the square... Here is the Congress building, built in 1850, after the first Constitution, and it hosts one of the two Chambers of the New Iberian Parliament. The monument in the middle of the square was erected in 1871, in the 350th anniversary of the discovery of the colonies. In the '70s, two big buildings were built in the square. One of them is the headquarters of the Banco de Comercio de Nueva Iberia. The other one is the Petrasa Tower, built in 1978, headquarters of the national petrol company (now private since mid '90s). The building, with its 182 metres, has been the tallest in Vistalegre until the 2000s, when the new CBD was developping. Loved and hated at the same time, it's now one of the most important landmarks in Vistalegre. An overview of the square... And a last pic from the Petrasa tower. Hope you liked today's update!!!

the beta requests CRASHED THE SERVER!!!! hahahahaha! online-only game and they can't even handle beta requests. poetic justice!

to be honest guys, that video actually made me more exited about sc5. my favorite part about it was seeing the sc World, i LOVE the idea of a connected economy. i feel as though im the only one on this community that has been affected positively by that video

i hate to get sucked into this debate and maybe you'll think i'm paranoid and off my rocker but this is the way i see SC5 snick25 is correct that maxis is alienating the core fanbase to chase after a few more dollars to keep the beancounters, the CEO, the board of directors and the shareholders happy. but those who are the staunchest supporters of SC5 fail to realize a glaring flaw in their logic. you are not buying the game in any sense of the word. you are buying the software and files necessary to access their game servers and in essence you are leasing server time. i don't know the ages of those posting here but i will date myself and tell you that i learned how to program computers in BASIC on a commodore 64 in the 6th grade and i have watched the evolution of technology, computers and gaming over the years. i witnessed the birth of multiplayer games back in the late 90's and early 2000's with the unreal tournament series, quake, diablo, etc. some of you may not be old enough to remember the originals but i do and when multiplayer games were coming of age it was a much different political and business climate. i remember getting UT2K3 and the developer not only released demo's but the server software necessary for fans to host their own games. you don't see that anymore b/c of the almighty dollar for newer games and you can only play older multi-player games from the fans hosting them on their own servers and not the company that created them. but back to SC5, do you honestly think that maxis is going to give the general public much less the core fanbase access to any of the programs that will alter game-play ? of course not. if you think for one minute that the bigwigs haven't noticed fansites like simtropolis, sc4devotion, citybuilders and simpeg which are the main ones then you are mistaken. take simtropolis, how many buildings that are custom are on the STEX ? i don't know but there is a lot and just think all those buildings are FREE. maxis knows this and wants to control that aspect which is more than likely the reasoning behind the "cloud". they can charge whatever they like for custom buildings and since the game is on THEIR servers and not on your rig you can kiss custom content goodbye. and for those not keeping track we live in a copyright mad world where anything including ideas can be trademarked and since the original limit was 7-14 years but now has escalated to 50 years even lifetimes the odds that we the core fanbase will get access to the modeling and other software will probably not happen in most of our lifetimes. oh sure they will have really nice buildings and they will let people get new ones that they control but if you want really nice ones, take a guess what you have to do ? pony up the money for it since the CEO has already stated he wants to pursue the freemium business model. and remember, maxis controls the game, the networks, the buildings, etc. and since we live in a PC world where god forbid should someone get offended certain buildings will be eliminated. take chick-fil-a and the brouhaha surrounding it. personally i don't care one way or the other but if the public gets enraged they will demand certain buildings to be pulled from the game servers to lodge their protest against your wishes which leads me to the second quote. indy says that maxis wants to join the world economy and this i can tell you right now that is going to blow up in their faces. i don't know where everyone lives but certain countries who shall remain nameless like to censor everything including the net. if you think tiananmen square will be available for SC5 you are in for a very rude awakening. and that's the just the tip of the iceberg. any country that has a problem will either ban server access or file lawsuits. and i haven't even touched hackers and viruses which maxis has to keep out to allow the "world" to play their game.

Your loss.

Exactly, well put. If only Maxis got rid of that ugly "no-man's land" separating each city, this wouldn't be that big of a deal. However, it looks like it is here to stay. So... concerning regions, with this "no-man's land" separating each city from its neighbor(s), the recreation of real life cities is made impossible. For example, how is one supposed to realistically create Chicago when you have no terraforming tools? Unless Maxis creates the map themselves (or creates a Modding tool which would allow players to do so - unlikely, considering the strict online multiplayer nature of this game), you won't be able to create it. And even if the map was available, how would Chicago look with a giant empty space separating the Loop from the South Side or northern skyline? BLSmith2112 at the Official EA Forums posted a great visual example: So, you end up with tiny pockets of skyscrapers (1 x 1 km or 2 x 2 km, still small either way) with giant gaps of emptiness in-between. Yep, that's definitely Chicago all right.

Fair enough...I won't.

Guten tag, Mayors! We’re coming to you live from Cologne, Germany at the uber awesome, uber eventful, and uber packed consumer and press event Gamescom where we’re amped to announce a ton of breaking SimCity news we just released at the EA press conference.

"And for some of you, the wait won’t be long thanks to our first big announcement: beta! Yep, you asked for it - we’ll be running an exclusive beta before SimCity’s launch that will give a generous group of lucky fans an opportunity to not only don their mayor hats early, but also have a chance to provide valuable feedback straight to the team here at Maxis. We’ll be releasing more details on the beta soon, so in the meantime, visit the beta section of SimCity.com to sign up today" And they have also announced that they're coming to the Mac! Link is right here!! http://www.simcity.c...e-from-gamescom

Received an email regarding simcity and simcity world (social whatever they're calling it) and the first sentence in the whole thing starts off this way: "As Mayor, you can buy resources on the global market". It's amazing they don't even greet you before trying to get into your pocket book. We all know DLC is the new future of games as companies try to milk what they can now for titles. The tie in between simcity social and simcity is too close to be coincidental and here's my prediction. EA is going to use simcity social to see what they can get away with in terms of selling items and resources to to users. That data will then be used to give DLC packets to regular simcity users in the form of buildings/landmarks/parks/resources/vehicles/skins. Think Total War and the unit packs they sell. I think EA will severely limit most mods and plugins/skin changes. We know you can't really control the roads and definitely cannot control inter-regional traffic. Guess what, inter-regional traffic can bottle neck...DLC super highway for only $3.99 and increase the commerce power of your region by 50%! I also foresee that no mod will be allowed that would duplicate the landmarks EA is already selling with the digital pack, otherwise why buy the digital pack if you can just add in the building yourself. The genus of "cloud" storage and regions is that they can 100% control what mods you put in your game. Further, DLC is just then plugged into your map on their server and attached to your account so they wouldn't have to worry about hacks. The more I read the more I honestly think this game is going to be a basic platform for pushing DLC and other cash-funded modules to users. I do not believe there will be modding as we know it, especially with resources given the Terra forming and "regional resource" model they've switched to. In the end, I'm starting to have a very strong feeling most people will continue their life with SC4. BWT: I'm not hating on EA/Simcity, I'm expressing the growing sense of disappointment in the game being developed versus the game most simcity users would like to see come to fruition.

Don't you think that if they had larger maps they would have shown them off a bit by now? I mean, why show potential customers tiny cities on tiny maps when you could show them fairly decent-sized cities on larger ones? Unless they show larger maps tomorrow at Gamescom, I will take it that 2 x 2 km is the default city size.

IGN said they had the ability to build a 'gigantic' city. I'm getting good vibes that we might get large maps. Unless their idea of gigantic is completely different from ours.

Schulmania Brainstorming Time! I would like your thoughts to help me generate some stuff for the new Schulmania capital city. If will happily review your suggestions and add in stuff that sounds good. The first topic is government buildings. I have several assigned thus far, and others with agencies but no buildings. But, I am sure there’s lots more agencies I will want in the capital. See if you have any suggestions for me for worthy offices. I am especially interested in ones feline related. As you can tell, I have a few already. GOVERNMENT BUILDINGS Bureau of Feline Affairs HQ (done) Travel & Tourism Agency Diplomatic Office (done) Fine Arts Council (done) Transportation Commission Medical Corps Colonial Government & Exploration Commission (done) Education & Literature Commission (done) Schulmania National Military Treasury (done) National Archives (done) Commerce & Trade Office National Tribunal National Parks Office (done) Catnip Comptroller’s Office (done) Agriculture Commission Schulmania Post Museum of History (done) National Library (done) International Trade Office (done) **The ones that say (done) have a building already… the others will as I build up more of the city Next, how about some ideas for districts of the city? I have some already decided but need more suggestions… QUARTERS Diplomatic Enclave (just started) Royal Quarter (in progress) Ecclesiastic Quarter (in progress) [which is better – ecclesiastic quarter, holy quarter, or sacred quarter? Or something similar…] Government Quarter [not a thrilling name… got a better one for it?] (in progress) Feline Quarter (done) Gilded Quarter (done) Theater District (done) University District (just started; not real happy with it and may redo it completely) The Woodlands (residential; in progress) So, what sounds good to you? Oh, how about some good names for public squares? Parks? I am going to have several and would like to give each a name. Something feline and/or regal would be nice. And also some good names for churches. There will be several and I am running out of good ideas and wish to avoid being redundant. Something clever and/or feline would be nice. ************** Another note: Some additional information is already available on the Schulmania Blog. From July 1 onward (that’s when the NCR was officially opened) blog posts have revealed more about the nature of the National Capital Region. It does include a sneak peek of one part of the capital in there somewhere as well ******************* On a separate but somewhat related tangent, if you are someone whose first language is Spanish and you are interested in proofreading something for Schulmania’s upcoming bilingual update, please PM me and I will send you the text. My Spanish is OK but not thrilling… as I learned it on the fly in the Dominican Republic a while back and didn’t take classes in it. I want to make sure what I have sounds OK before I post it. Gracias mil veces!

Sure the game has its flaws, but its not a complete failure- its got plenty to offer. Just because it doesn't suit your likings doesn't mean it wont suit anyone. I'm gonna wait until release day, and judge on my own whether i am gonna buy it.

I gotta admit, the SimCity World feature sounds pretty awesome. Having single player but requiring participation in the world economy actually sounds extremely realistic and probably even fun. I am however disappointed that they've taken away many of the civil engineering projects I'd come to love in SC4 like airports and freeways. I liked having personal control over them and their construction. Once the price drops after a couple months and definitely if they release modding tools, I think I'll look into purchasing this game.

I really hope that SimCity World would not end up being pay-to-win, just like games made by a certain company that is practically at the end of the alphabetical listing.

Zulu2065- Thank you!!! Sciurus- Thank you!!! Vlasky- Thank you, I'm using Nofunks building called the Ford Building to make sure the white building texture is not so far off. You can use my render to see what it will look like in the game. Sgt Pepper- Thank you, still have a way to go. Yeah, your right I think blue hue and pink hue in the white bricks is great on the buildings, look at Nofunks Ford Building it's have blue in the white. Francis90b- Thank you, I hope someone can see how it looks with other buildings by just using my render. 605 Park Avenue I have did the night version on one version of the building, I still have a way to go.

I'm looking through the video. This picture is strange, it shows an extreme ammount of cars, yet a small population. This one has a different User Interface than above, although the one above seems much more final. Its on the oil well, but it's strange to see this one with the RCI display and options, while the above doesn't Its very interesting though. Strange how there are two, maybe more UI's. It may be that you get different information through each building. But i guess we'll see tomorrow- or in the beta just how its gonna work out. Just pointing out some stuff I've seen in the video.

That is a good idea of moving some unused or seldom used plugins to a Plugins.hold folder (which the game would not see). Also, how often do you run disk maintenance? NTFS is very good at leaving junk around and creating multi-extent files, especially SC4 city files when they are saved. You should run disk cleanup weekly, and after it finishes, also run the defragmenter. If you have never run these maintenance programs, the first time they will each need an overnight run. Start disk cleanup before you go to bed and make sure your power supply is plugged in. Ditto with defragmenter. Watching either of these run is the same as watching paint dry or grass grow. Also, boot your machine daily if you don't already do so. This will clean up any zombie processes that might be laying around. If file system indexing is on, turn it off.

Must we be so negative? In my opinion, the Simcity World feature is awesome. It's a lot better than I expected, with the global markets and leaderboard.

It's not because of bugs or anything, it's just too many people tying to access the page at the same time, it's pretty normal...

You know I'm registering!!

OMG. I want this game sooooooooooooooooooooo badly now! Load Simcity.com! LET ME REGISTER FOR TEH BETA!!!! I'm so hyper right now. Lol. The website refuses to load :L

Really, the actual tile size isn't really the issue. They're small. We know they're small; they've confirmed they're small and that there's only one tile size. Again, as far as I'm concerned, that's not really an issue...the regional play we all grew to love in SimCity 4 allowed us to bypass that limitation quite gracefully. However, the size limitation combined with the regional limitations that we now know about for the new game really do make the small tile size detrimental to the gameplay many of us expected.

No I did not. I said that citizens in SimCity have been referred to as "Sims" prior to the actual Sims game. It's not like the new SimCity is simulating Sims bladder, it's simulating everything the way it was done before but now it's in real time. not if it required sacrificing size and scope. I'm not interested in Sim-Town.

If you're considering BATing the Daley Center, I found these images and websites quite useful for determining scale when I attempted my own SketchUp model of the building. Hi-res photo: http://www.cookcountypropertytaxconsultants.com/NewFolder/Daley%20Center.JPG http://www.galinsky.com/buildings/daleycenter/index.htm "The Daley Center was built to house more than 120 court and hearing rooms, a law library, and office space. Each bay is 87’ wide and 48’ deep, with 12’ high windows. It stands 648’ tall, generous for 31 stories."

You do understand this is now in beta form and there is no going back? Things are confirmed that this game is not what fans want. Actually your right, thanks for the heads up I had to fire up SC4 to be sure .

Yeah, their claim of medium tile size is a joke when looking at those pictures. Ideally I'd want an increase in size, so I can build the massive metropolises of my dreams without having to deal with all this border-crossing crap. This is turning out to be more like SimCity - Small Town Edition. I'm sure part of it was computer performance. The traffic simulator in SC4 would really lag up cities once you got high enough population. So they increased performance by limiting the size of our cities. Sad they couldn't find some better workaround; I guess GlassBox isn't efficient enough. Unless miracles happen at GamesCom, I think SimCity 4 remains the vastly superior game.

In order to buy this game, I need to see it as a superior to SimCity 4. If the sequel isn't as good as the game it's based off of, why would I buy it? If I can do everything in SC4 plus more than I can do in SC2013, it's not worth it. Curvy roads and full 3D is not worth 60 bucks.

I am pessimistic regarding 'Maxis', seeing as 1. what they've released about the game recently and 2. the fact that they aren't the same company that made 2000, they have evolved to become a very different company since that time, no matter how much we might like to read about Ocean being a SC veteran and this that and the other, the fact is this company has barely any connection with the company that gave us 2000 or with Mr Wright. Putting aside whether Maxis is really the same 'Maxis' we know and love that gave us the various Sim games, they are now a tool of EA corporation, and while I tend to avoid using over emphasised generalisations like 'the Evil Empire' and so forth, Maxis is certainly a Lord Vader at best, and EA is probably to a large extent to blame. However this is purely speculation. The fact remains however that whoever is in charge, or has the power to influence the course of the game, is either not in control of their own actions entirely, or is ignoring the fans for commercial reasons. I could understand releasing a limited versiuon of the game for starters to appeal to the quick-amuse crowd of Facebook gamers, and they have done that with SCSocial. In future the game could be modded to include further additions and more realism, or a separate version could be released simultaneously for the core crowd, which is what I assumed they were going to do. The recent news appears to show that not only was my hypothesis incorrect, and SCSocial is not the limit of simplified casual gamer targeted play, but that the main game is, in addition to sounding highly simplified and restricted compared with 4, also restricted unecessarily. I do not see any reason why the recent information can be defended on the basis of making the game multiplayer. A SC4 style gridded region could be made multiplayer, by two people using the same region file. Multiplayer compatibility isn't rocket science, Maxis. There is simply no excuse for these 'bubble' cities. Real regions are nothing like that except if each city was an arcology and this was 3000 ad. Also the 2 by 2 km limit means that these bubble cities are not only unexpandable, but very restricted with their space for development. And we can't terraform beyond simple civic terraforming within our bubbles. Great, Maxis. Really well thought out. We're listening to the fans now, sure. Even casual gamers should wonder at these decisions. They can't be performance based. You could have a SC4 style grid array and still have 2 by 2 km limitations on individual lots for development. There is no excuse from a technological perspective. And another wham attack point, Maxis, is this; they speak of higher realism, 'you see what we sim' etc with GlassBox. What is the point of added simulation realism if our regions are composed of bubbles exactly 2 by 2 km connected by pre defined transportation infrastructure? Where is the added realism in that? Strategy games with dragons and princess rescuing gameplay that have more realistic urban development. And to top it all off, they have included 'Heroes and Villains', a completely unecessary addition to the game. A unrealistic and silly scenario pack, and two or three highly stereotypical and predictable tilesets. Great, that was worth the extra dollars, not. So they are definitely not at present listening to their fans, indeed it seems they are listening to Metallica at full volume with earphones and facing their backs to us and humming. They have half a year to rectify this trend, and I, despite really wishing I could trust 'good old Maxis that gave me 2000 etc', have very little hope they will change their course if it means lost time or money, although imho they could have created what we wanted and still reaped in the cash.

YAY! Back to Sky Haven My favourite!!

It actually seems kind of silly to take the conversation to PM when every single person reading this thread wants to read the answers.

That is one of the saddest things. This game is supposed to grow in scale and scope, not shrink itself into tiny pebbles. When you look at the best City Journals, they're always about a small country or a county/province with lots of towns and cities interconnected into a beutiful region. I hoped for the next Simcity to enhance this experience.

Updated version of my former map. You can see it better here : http://linoa06.deviantart.com/art/Leyawiin-S-Bahn-318988633 Basically, I've been naming better all these lines as well as added more faithful interchanges. :>

So far, I've been very disappointed at what I've seen. I can live without terraforming and the requirement to be connected online but I will not shell out $60 of my hard earned money just to play an updated version of Sim City Societies (with a bit of Sim City Social thrown in) nor will I be scammed into buying DLCs just so EA can make a quick buck. I sincerely hope that EA/Maxis are playing some kind of sick & twisted joke on us because if they are, it's absolutely hilarious. That being said, they have 6 months left to regain my attention and money.