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REPLIES Fox : Thanks for commenting, I'm not that good at American style grstudios : thanks a lot ! NMUSpidey : I am the envious one here, from what I've seen you have a loving family, 2 nice kids, I do hope to be blessed with that myself one day oh and BTW ! that's a very nice car, I have a Volvo S80 a bit different Hazani Pratama : Thanks ! SimCoug : It's part of the "Palais du Luxembourg" you can get it at the LEX ! megie : thanks ! I'll do another upate of the Euro City soon enough ! TekindusT : well..I live there D: so mmmhh Blakeway : oui oui ! ggamgus : oh noes dried eyes kakdo_to_save : Thank you ! 111222333444 : Yes I do ! and Deep House !!! Militant radical : it's part of the Palais du Luxembourg that you can find on the stex panthersimcity4 : Thanks LIVE THE NIGHT ! Okatabawashi City is often referred as Asia's Ibiza with many nightclubs around the city and at the top of towers, the worlds best DJ's go there, will you be partying ?

Update 18 The American Civil War 1861-1865 Part 1 I am excited to present a special collaboration between myself and kakado_to_save. It became quite obvious that my skills in photo editing are severely lacking – so instead of spending hours upon hours practicing, I decided to just collaborate with one of the best photo editors I could think of. Fortunately, kakado was kind enough to help me out, and I think the results speak for themselves. I merely tinkered around in SC4 – kakado was able to bring these images to life. Please, while you are viewing the following images, don’t forget to rep up kakado_to_save’s work – his most recent being World War 2 and Volynsia. My goal was to use a real life image, either a photo, drawing or painting, and attempt to re-create the scene in SC4. I am happy with the results, and I hope you enjoy them too. So, without further ado… Fort Sumter In the early morning of April 12th 1861, confederate batteries began firing on Fort Sumter after the union forces within the fort refused to surrender. The bloodiest conflict in American History had begun. The confederate barrage lasted for 34 hours On April 13th the union forces were forced to surrender. Amazingly, there were no casualties throughout the battle despite the fact that the fort was in complete ruins. Bull Run On July 21st 1861 the union and confederate armies in Virginia faced off for the first time. It was widely believed that the Union army would defeat the confederate soldiers in battle and open up the way to Richmond, the Confederate capital, and end the war quickly. But the confederate line held, and a strong counterattack broke through the union lines, sending the routed Union army fleeing back to the safety of Washington, DC. The realization of a long, bloody war soon became apparent. Shiloh On April 6th 1862 the confederate army attacked an unprepared Federal force commanded by Ulysses S. Grant. The Southern rebels were initially successful, and the fighting continued all day and through the night. The next morning, the reinforced Union army counterattacked and overwhelmed the smaller Confederate force. With more than 23,000 casualties, Shiloh was the bloodiest battle of the civil war up to that point. Antietam The Union Army of the Potomac and Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia faced off on September 17th 1862, producing the bloodiest day in American military history. The battle was fought near Sharpsburg, Maryland over three days – and despite the fact that the result was more or less a draw, President Abraham Lincoln used the ‘victory’ to go forward with the Emancipation Proclamation, which would make the abolition of slavery a primary goal of the Civil War. To be continued…

It's not just Simcity, it's been a growing push from all the major players. They don't make games for the "old original gamers" or whatever you might call them. They're looking to basically broaden the market base and force them all into a steady stream of nickel and diming. We're just not allowed to have nice things anymore One can only hope that the Indie developers continue to flourish and will fill the gap.

I figured that out already. That's why I now build larger and think in larger scales, and therefore, my cities don't fit anymore on a 4x4 large city tile. I have one city with almost 1.5 million citizens spread over a 12x12 km surface. And how was I able to do that. Correct: Region play! And not just region play, no, a type of region play with a coherent region were all city tiles border each other, which allows me to make seamless transitions between cities. This is what makes the whole limited tile size a non-issue in SimCity 4. However, from the looks of it, this is not possible anymore in SimCity 2013, since the regions are not coherent, so you can't construct cities side by side. This is with the small tile size a major game breaker for me...

i yelled and screamed after I saw the new trailer... "millions of ways to play" more like millions of reasons not to purchase

Umm..... What? Maxis/EA: "We're going to create T-Stacks for SimCity 4's Rush Hour Expansion Pack." Will Wright: "That's it, I quit."

Thanks very much for the comments. So I got 9 bats ready to be released, mod them to be CS stage 1 or 2, I don't know much about modding myself so I would truly appreciate if someone knowledgeable can give them a look before I release them. I noticed that sometimes when I load the game the default PIM-X base textures appears on my models (as you can see on the Vips model), I checked that I indeed changed the textures to the $$ so I don't know why this happens. I also finished the Humanidades tower II for my UNAM campus series, I made a few changes but not much from my previous update (I will release it as it is). I am currently working in two new models both are at early stages but I decided to show them to you just to get a flavour of what I am working on. First is one more addition to my old-Mexico city down town, this a group of three buildings just opposite from Madero 47 and the second will be another addition to my UNAM series this time is the Architecture Postgraduate Building, which is located adjacent to Humanidades Tower II, once I finish both I might release them together as they are in real life, but first I will release them individually.

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.

Ever since the people of the Arab World protested for increased human rights and less corruption, riots broke out in Egypt, Libya, and other nations. Though no outside nations helped the people, they successfully overthrew their leaders. What if foreign nations did help the people? What if it happened in Onubis? In a hypothetical scenario, the United States did intervene in a civil war in Onubis. -------------------------- With increasing human right abuses and government corruption, the people of Onubis can not handle the current situation any longer. Since this spark, people formed militias across the nation, attacking the military, government officials, etc. As a result, the Onubisan president swiftly acted by ordering the military to hunt down these militias. As the situation grew worse, U.S. President Barrack Obama initially urged the Onubisan president to step down peacefully. Like most leaders, he refused and continued the war. Several months later, President Obama militarily supported the rebels. Day by day, the Onubisan military weaken as they were no match compared to the superior U.S. military. The battlefield steadily moved towards urban environments. Although the people were urged to evacuate, they decided to support the U.S. military. The Onubisan president frantically panicked and issued martial law across the nation. He knew this day is coming and will not back down without a fight. Secretly, he arranged meetings with his allies, hoping to garner foreign military support and restore order. To be continued...

Not a lot of new information revealed in the Gamescom interview with Jason Haber, and some straight-up dodging-the-question on those aspects we're most concerned with. Not to mention the interviewer's absolute lack of real citybuilding experience, gushing about Origin preorders robot-shaped cities and placing superheroes all about. Questions are cleaned up where necessary; answers are transcribed from the video feed and abridged. What kinds of public transport will be in the game? "We've got a lot of things ... We have some light rail in the city; it's gonna be a key form of transport in the city ... bus system ... a bigger train system that will help you on a regional level ... lot of features we're not talking about today." Also as part of the answer to another question, he talked about new transport data layers that include info like distance to walk to a station for the sims, etc. Will there great power generation projects like hydroelectric dams and nuclear power stations that generate electricity for your region? "Yes there are... I don't think I can answer that one, sorry." When playing with others in a region, will we be able to have more than one city? "Yes, and you can play an entire region alone..." One of my friends said he heard there wouldn't be any disasters...is that true? "Nothing to worry about...there are disasters." Are there new ways to update our buildings? "You can open up your buildings in a building editor ... add additional functionality ... inspired by Spore ... but these come at a cost." To which cities did you look in designing the buildings? "We looked all over the world... Some of the citysets have been really impressive." Will there be seaports in the game? "I don't think we're going to talk about that one today, sorry." How have you guys solved the traffic? In SC4 the traffic just took the shortest path without considering the most convenient way i.e. highways and so on. Will the traffic consider these things? "Glassbox really makes traffic exciting...Sims will go to where they're needed...traffic's a big challenge in this game...And again, that public transport option's going to help you a lot when you get to bigger cities." What are the different roadtypes? Street, road, avenue, highway? Is it possible to build roundabouts? Is it possible to build traffic lights manually? "Street, road, avenue - those are all there. And again there's the light rail running down the middle. As for roundabout, I'm not sure if we have proper roundabouts right now, I mean, not that we wouldn't someday. You can draw curvy roads and they're really amazing. With those curvy roads you can do lots of things. You could probably simulate your own roundabouts with that...We know we have lots of players who really like to optimize their space, so we actually have guides to place them, to keep the optimal distance between them." Is there still zoning like in Sim City 4? All the trailers show single buildings being planted. Do you still zone residential/commercial/industrial areas? "Yes, I can assure you: everybody out there, there is still zoning in SimCity. It's a big part of this SimCity...R, C, and I." And then a bunch of nonsense on video recording, screenshots, and llamas. Other takeaways: Regions function differently from the larger World. He couldn't comment on the possibility of watching a friend's city in the same region The foreign tilesets look good but their growth in your city seems predicated on their proximity to the appropriately themed landmark (e.g., near the Eiffel Tower, Brandenburg Gate). And of course your preordering it. A whole lot of meh, except, I suppose, for the light rail.

Let me throw my 50 cents here.... First of all, the Sims is a different game. Like others stated already, it's centered on micro simulation - for example the need of the guy to eat, drink, have fun, decorate his house, etc. Sim City is centered on macro simulation - the needs of a whole city, like electricity, water, transport, resource management, etc. The two are interdependend, of course, but only to a degree! Would the city mayor concern himself with the individual needs of every single citizen? Of course not, and in the same time - yes; because he wouldn't be able to hear the needs of every single citizen, even if he wanted to. He thinks, then, in generalizing terms, instead of individualistic terms. For example, Citizen X likes to party, while citizen Y likes quiet life, and these are two opposing styles of life. The mayor's job is to provide places where both citizens would be happy, fitting them into the general plan of the city. Because apart of this, he also has to think of transportation, electricity, city budget, etc. So, to summarize: the name Sims is simply a coincidence, and it shouldn't be taken as a basis of the simulational strategy of a game like Sim City. Second, for me the tile sizes are indeed alarming. I've been in many places around the world on three different continents, and I've never seen a city as small as the ones we're seeing in the screens here. Those would be towns, not cities, and they wouldn't have the scyscrapers they show so proudly here. Where on Earth you have a power plant which is 300 m from the business district???? So, they are basically forcing us to think in matters of neighborhoods, not cities, if we want a reasonable degree of realism. Now, I'm a Cities XL fan (where you have these huge maps), but I really liked the regional concept of SC4 - I wanted that back and enhanced. Unfortunately, the large tiles that we had in SC4 are no longer gonna be available in SC 2013.... So, how am I supposed to develop even one single city the way I want? Obviously, by developing 5 - 6 cities at the same time. and I don't like that a bit. Yes, I'm aware of the hardware requirements that are behind this decision, but indeed, I'd rather this game be a little more generalized in terms of simulation, and allow me to build bigger cities in one tile, then simulating every single citizen and industrial agent at the same time, when they go to work and back. I'm sorry to break it to you, guys, but Cities XL is already doing a decent job with citizen simulation, despite the large maps - satisfaction in many services, transport routes and options that affect satisfaction, job options..... (what they lack is in other areas, like budget options diversity). True, the game lags on slower machines in big cities, but so did SC4 and nobody seemed to mind. So... I hope for Maxis and EA's sakes that they manage to deliver a really stunning degree of simulational depth and realism with SC 2013, otherwise, for me this game is gonna be a bigger disaster than CXL's Planet Offer was.

Well I didn't get anything new out of this (except for the confirmation of no Highways) other than confirming this is going to a huge disappointment.

I don't understand why they had to put so much detail in simulating every Sim in the game, like making Sims run out of houses during an arson caused by a bad sim. It's just a blatant waste of computing resources. It's as if they're not happy with the exact same features they put on SC4 (like gun-fire sounds and CSI props) and decided to make it obnoxiously cinematic in front of everyone. It's overkill.

Fine! Do you want a super-slow game that fries your PC? No. Do you have the money to buy a super-fast gaming rig or better? Probably, not. Does a casual player have the money for that? Hell no! That's why we actually want division: because otherwise the peformance of the game would get really bad when your computer is desperately trying to simulate every sim. And with large city tiles, their numbers grow quite fast. The only way to limit this intensive and resource-sucking process is by limiting the viewing window of the simulation itself. This is where city tiles come to mind. Each city tile is a view window of the simulation. Due to it's limited size, you can't fit too many sims on one tile (unless you play everything maxed out, which I do not advise). This makes the game playable (AKA it doesn't lag too much or it gets too slow, something that happened to me in CitiesXL) and with SimCity 2013 coming up in full 3D, the rendering itself will also get a great deal of processing power. For us, it's a weigh-off between practical playability of the game by dividing up the cities in tiles on one side and large city tiles with poor, poor peformance on the other side. And the first one deserves my preference... Anyway, those are my two cents. Offer multiple tile sizes (just like in SC4) so those who do have good computers can make big cities, while those who don't can stick to the smaller sizes. Problem solved. Edit: And that was the entire purpose of the SC4 regions in the first place. They broke up large cities into managable sectiosn that most computers could handle.

In SimCity 4, the fantasy to create a city of over 1 million inhabitants in an area of ​​2 x 2 km was indeed possible in this game. Maxis wants to continue limiting the space to 4 km² in SimCity 2013, repeating the same mistake of SimCity 4. Moreover, it wants to create empty spaces non-editable, making it impossible to build a truly great city or small town with rural areas. I don’t want to continue with this fantasy fragmentation of the time of SimCity 4 to be able to make a truly great city. I want to make a great city in a game without having to make a lot of connections and manage a lot of town halls. I want to regions that are regions of truth and I want cities that are cities of truth. Small towns that are actually surrounded by rural areas and forests within the same map. There are people who is satisfied with this idiot fragmentation instead of having larger maps to the ridiculous 2 x 2 km. I'm not satisfied with that. I want an area larger than 2x2Km and ready.

lastest updates: water color and sky color improved, also replaced the ground texture \

I believe they have designed it to be moddable, however they won't be at the stage to release or show anything about that just yet as modding is usually post-launch projects. Read an article here, I have also seen it mentioned elsewhere but I can't remember exactly where. Check Ocean Quigley's twitter, I think he has told a few people that modding will be available. There will be modding, but not straight away, and don't expect to see much about it before launch. My guess would be after any possible DLC has been released, makes sense.

source : http://www.simcity.com/en_US/blog/article/Community-Interviews-Maxis-Part-1 this isn't me talking but straight from their mouths. does it sound like they are going to give any of us, the core fanbase, modding capability ? you can be an optimist all you want but i can read between the lines. there is still hope that they might do a 180 and listen to the fans but i'm not holding my breath

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

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.

I just don't understand why they artificially cap it low for EVERYONE, just because some may be on poor systems. It should be reasonably easy for them to do a quick benchmark to see what your system is capable of and enable/lockout larger sizes or more features based on that to maintain a minimum FPS or whatnot. The only logical reason is because of forcing online play and having the leaderboard, etc. Otherwise hampering users just to annoy them doesn't make good business sense. But yes -- I'm genuinely hoping we can diffuse some of the anger and frustration with Gamescom. I'm just skeptical, because game development rarely involves drastic changes 5 months before release. Or maybe we can raise enough of a fan outcry that they WILL add said benchmark/larger regions to the game. The one nice thing about running the game on a distributed platform like Origin, and it being supported by a monthly revenue stream from DLC sales -- is we should see a lot more granular update support for the game and/or adding of new features even after release.

Nothing like designing a game in this day and age to make 5 years outdated in terms of graphical content. When SC4 came out it had high requirements, yet it was a huge success for EA, selling copies to this day. Perhaps they should have low polygon/performance settings for older computers. I know awesome-looking games like Crysis, Grand Theft Auto IV and Starcraft II have just these settings. Why not SimCity (2013) as well?

Fair enough...I won't.

And honestly, the size of the tiles doesn't concern me...it's the fact that the regional functionality doesn't work the same as in SC4 where you can have them butting right up against each other and then go to the region view to look at a complete metropolis if you choose to build it that way. I wouldn't mind the smaller tile sizes if that were the case but that's not what they're doing. Explain how a game that's focus is simulating a city is taking the wrong approach by simulating a city in real time. SimCity is a macro-level game. simulating each and every person in the city is the job of a game like the Sims...if I wanted to do that I would be playing the Sims. Edit: if they have to sacrifice the scope of the game in order to accommodate the micro-simulation then, in my opinion, it's the wrong approach to take. Most of the people who play SimCity just want to build cities...they could care less about what's going on under the hood. Glassbox is neat but if it's the reason for the limitations then it was the wrong way to go.

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.

It appears the Mac version of the new SimCity will be available around the same time as the PC version!

- Listen to this song, for a sad feeling. - Tvorskaja Street Pre-war. Tvorskaja Street pre-genocide, was the center of Pizen, the center of the rich and famous. Traffic every day, here you came to the see the heart of the capital. Now the capital streets are empthy and the traffic is dead... cars are standing still as there owners left them for the closest shelter or subway. In the day, we heard sounds like barking... they grew louder and louder, as we started seeing group of "Them" coming... we started running.. leaving our bags and tents... we got information that Pizen City Shelter-21, collapsed. Now our only hope is to flee to Neo-Tzargrad, the last remnents of civilization.

DITTO....and I predict MAXIS-MD will say "We cant answer that right now but just wait at the December event at bla bla land we are gonna show some awesome stuff" . And only to have another uninformed group of game analyst ask the same flarping questions as they did at gamescom,community interviews,magazine articles, and E3. Also add that they wont show new footage. Gamescom was so pathetic they showed barely nothing new in gameplay footage. They had the gull to mention curvy roads again. This is becoming a joke.

WOW ! I'm at a loss for words that do this entry justice, so I'll stand by my initial reaction.. WOW ! Incredible work, guys. So life like and full of action. Can't wait to see what Gettysburg holds for us.

SC4Devotion's LEX is the place for large industrial lots. marcszar uploaded several excellent American-styled factories, colyn and tag_one are also creators with a fantastic history of top-quality industrial uploads, . In the STEX, fukuda's large industrial BATs are a must for me and paeng's diagonal industrial lots and truck parking lots can make also a good job when dealing with diagonals.

Actually, that would be 16 times the power. But yeah, agreed. Large tile sizes is a lot more fun. Starting out at a few strategic places around the map, connect them and watch them slowly grow together. Develope entirely new areas between them to house the suddenly growing population, see industrial areas grow and slowly be discontinued in favour of commercial districts. To play with many small communities growing together to form one big one, all seamlessly. Make new highways as traffic caps out along the old roads. It's immensely fun.

I found the soluthion - you should rename Dxdiag.txt to somethink like 1234.txt (I renamed it to 1432.txt and it worked)

In fact I like it! I mean, sure - it's bland, ugly and uninspiring as a building, but that's how many buildings are after all. And I'd say it's very good as a BAT. On the version with the open balcony to the left (upper half of the picture) the door frames are lit a bit too brightly IMO. Is that a spot or an omni you've used there? Otherwise, I think the roof texture may be the weak point here. A bit more variation, weathering and contrast may help. The shop windows (and generally the night lights) are absolutely mouth-watering, though - among the best gmax night lights I have seen.

I like to build stuff in minecraft. I have a singleplayer world to be creative in, and I also like to play legit survival in multiplayer worlds to see what I can build without cheating. Here are some pictures of what I've built. Some are from my single player world, others from a freebuild multiplayer server a friend of mine used to have and two others from a survival multiplayer server. Castle tower, Single player world. Another castle tower, legit, multiplayer server Palace and street, freebuild multiplayer. Other palace, also freebuild multiplayer. Library, Single player world. A castle, single player world An other castle, legit, multiplayer server Airship, freebuild multiplayer server

God I really hope that they wouldn't do that... seeing or hearing that already makes me vomit ughhh..especially bearing in mind that this game doesn't deserve simcity five as its title (and im glad it isn't)... In fact they shouldn't even call it Simcity.. due to the fact that it ruins the whole "There is no winning or losing, the goal is yours" (or something like that) concept spirit of the Simcity series. It will also seriously limits where our aims to recreate cities or just make an eye candy realistic city.

Well, this game finally came up on a Sims forum I frequent. Lot of folks there are Simcity fans too. For those thinking that the negative comments are just from the core of hardcore fans here? Uh, I got some bad news for you....

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.

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.

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.

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

What I find funny about that is the feigned tone like you have a choice or not. You don't. They claimed graceful degradation for when they have server troubles though -- I wonder what would happen if you just routed all the server calls to localhost in your hosts.txt file...

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.

Because they're taking a micro instead of a macro focus...that's the problem. yes, we understand that there has to be some reasonable correlation between what you build and how the imaginary inhabitants interact with it...SimCity4 handled that fairly well once they got it patched a few times and the bugs ironed out. However if the whole "agent" system employed by Glassbox is limiting the size and scope of what you are able to build then, yes, I think it's the wrong approach to take with a macro-level game like this if computers don't yet have the power to handle it.

This appears to be a textbook case of FUD--fear, uncertainty and doubt. Maxis representatives have stated on the official forums that the city tiles are exactly 2048m x 2048m. There's a lot of speculation going around, and while the way those images are oriented may lead one to believe that the city tiles appear smaller (or stuff is scaled larger), until someone's actually played the game and more information has been revealed, we have no way of knowing. The reason for the city tile size is due to system performance. They want this game to be able to run on older systems, allowing them a larger potential customer base that can reliably run the game. This is the same reason why the traffic simulator in SC4 was "tuned down" on the pathfinding heuristic value, leading to many of the quirks in its behavior (without the NAM). -Tarkus

Not sure what you mean by that. Care to explain? meaning I don't believe the SimCity fanbase is quite as willing to pony up for endless DLC and expansion pack fluff that don't really add much as the Sims fanbase is. http://pc.gamespy.co.../1225696p1.html "In yet another example of why you really, really should be using multiple, secure passwords and every security feature you can get your hands on, Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime announced today that Blizzard's internal network has been illegally accessed. While he says it's not possible to access anyone's account solely with the information Blizzard knows for sure was taken (security question answers, unspecified mobile and dial-in authenticator data, encrypted passwords), he recommends that North American players change their passwords immediately. That's good advice." And if people didn't have to have an account and be online to play a single-player game they wouldn't need to worry about this at all would they? People can choose to avoid MMOs if they don't want to deal with this kind of stuff...if EVERYTHING has to be online and through an online account then their only recourse is to not play games at all. I don't know why it keeps combining my reply to Spirit and this post...I've tried separting them several times. The current SC4 fanbase/community has gotten used to high quality DLC that is free here at Simtropolis and other sites. I agree, I think it will be hard to get us to pay for DLC that is not as high quality...EA is taking a big gamble that may not pay off at all. Sure the Sims fanbase will probably do so, but will they stick with the game for long? I suppose the major difference between The Sims fanbase and the SimCity one, is that the former is much more larger (so much so, you could claim they killed off the rest of Maxis, e.g SimsVille, SimMars) and stuck with it, true that may be helped by the fact it has been in constant production since the days when mobile phones only allowed you talk and text, coffee was less frothy and people were scared that their '98s couldn't handle the change the millennium so everyone rushed out to build nuclear shelters or some such lunacy we mock in retrospect, anyway, obligatory rule of three over, what I'm getting at, is that in comparison, SimCity is the forgotten older brother, in essence, Charles Cunningham, it's been that long since Maxis have done a SimCity title, that one can safely say with a conservative estimate, that the large majority of purchasers of SimCity 4 and previous titles have since stopped playing it; the people of these sites are a minority who stuck on in there, who no longer became fans of SimCity, but SimCity 4:Modded Edition. It could be seen as no longer a worthwhile marketable audience. The online bit doesn't bug, I've played several games that require being online, many examples are those found in my Steam library, what I'm far more concerned about is the game itself, the meat and potatoes, not the dinner service it's served on or the attractiveness of the waitstaff of your preferred gender who served it to you. Some things are a little iffy, like city size, (but I've always been able to accommodate a fairly balanced and varied cities on medium tiles), but that can be changed later, like how Kalypso increased the population cap for Tropico 4 to 1200 people (or was it 1600), provided your computer could handle it, I can see Maxis adding regions later after SimCity's release to test the waters, to see how peoples' computers can handle such feats of Glassbox on the medium tile scale. In all honesty? I'll try out the multiplayer mode, it seems interesting, at the worst, I'll be stuck next to someone annoying (but I don't have to talk to him or her), at the very best I could be inspired and learn new techniques and how well things function (something I struggle to do with the "ooh pretteh! Now guess which lot is the one functional lot in this sea of ploppable props" screenshots), and possibly make a friend or two online. Only time will tell how well everything - including the always online - will be implemented. Hey now, those pallets of SPAM are still perfectly edible...that stuff is indestructible. The problem with always online games (and especially DLC games) is that often the core game lacks items that in years past would have been expected to be included in the core game. Instead, you have to pay extra to get things that should have been there all along. You should not have to pay extra for basic gameplay code. And as always I am against always online because when I pay for the license to use the game, should it not be up to me when I actually get to use it? It just screams 'poor customer service' and 'rip off' to me.

There most certainly won't be a monthly fee. As far as modding goes, keep in mind, modding for SimCity 4 wasn't available on day one. It took some time before those were released. The team understands the importance of modding, though. I can tell you that. So...since we're talking about the forced online and you can't lock threads on this forum would you like to explain to us why when you state "Just to clarify here, if you decide to build your own private region and claim all the cities within it, you don't have to participate in the social features (leaderboard, Global Market, etc.)." here:http://forum.ea.com/...st/8892871.page in direct contradiction to the reasons Ocean Quigley stated were so compelling as to require online play, the reason for forcing us to play online? Hey ya -- I'm more than happy to continue this conversation over private messages, but I'd rather not derail this thread. Thanks! I'd also like to know the answer to this question. If you are unable to tell us now, will we be told at Gamescom on Wednesday? Sure! But again, I don't want to detail this thread. So I'll just say this: We encourage you to participate in our social features, as it gives the series a lot of newly added depth, but we also understand that some players would rather play their cities/regions solo. Hence why we give you that option. Simple as that. And you'll learn more about our social features at Gamescom in a few days. No, you don't understand...we would rather play OFFLINE. Oh, and that wasn't an answer either...my question was: if we don't have to participate in the online features why is it not possible to create an offline mode?

As a community we know that we are able to solo play. The question is will we able to play offline? If not at launch at some point in the future? The reason we ask is that we are concerned if the server is taken down in a few years time we have a game that we can no longer play. But also SimCity for me and many others has been a game that we like to play when we don't have an internet connection, while on the train, holiday etc. It would be a real shame to loose this ability. I understand why the online may be required with having multiplayer regions and leader boards. If we wanted to play offline in a particular region (as a sandbox) I would like to be able to opt out of this, then have an online region with friends where I am fully involved with the community and online aspects. I agree with you that the social features could bring a new depth to the game. Making it more realistic especially with neighborhood deals and great works. It is something I'm very much looking forward to trying when I get the game and wish I could be at Gamescom this week to try it out. In my head though I could see an offline aspect as a training zone for the game. In a similar way to how Battlefield and Call of Duty have a campaign areas for people to practice and understand the game, before heading online to compete in a social environment. I look forward to hearing what you have to show us on Wednesday and thanks for making the game.