SC5: Brings Age Of Digital Interconnectivity

uh what? this feature this article is talking about sounds an awful lot like the regional play that already exists in SimCity 4. There's no need to require people to be online and forced to interact with others to be able to have neighboring cities interact with each other.

So why can't we have offline sandbox mode with the new SimCity?

No offline=no buy. Simple

That screenshot is from the SimCity Trailer, which clearly states it is not actual game footage. Misleading much?

There are no official screenshots of the game yet and even the mechanic details are scarce. So any other thing out there is pure speculation or even manipulation.

I know, that's what I'm getting at.

Online = 'Stealth DRM'. You can't DRM 'crack' an MMO without creating a back-end server.

Seriously guys, why is everyone so negative each time a piece of news about the game comes out? I reckon this idea is totally awesome and has the potential to add a new depth to the strategy of the game.

Because I've been waiting for a new SimCity for 10 years and I don't want to have to interact with others to play it...why is that so difficult to understand? I couldn't care less if they have multi-player as long as I'm not forced into it in order to play the game at all. And, no, the fact that I can play my own region while still shackled to their "global marketplace" and being required to be online is NOT single player.

Maxis better have a good plan brewing for the community...

I'm really getting tired of all these negativity.

I dont know what you guys are thinkin, I cant wait to interact with other cities. I relish the idea of creating an industrial black hole city that puts the surrounding cities industrial sectors in the toilet...rober baron style. Now I can mass pollute, fouling up water systems of downstream cities and smogging out the region. I can undercut the market, sell cheap and both bulster the commercial sector of the region and doom the rest to rust belt unemployment... yep cant wait ;P

was that my chernobyl? my bad...ill offer some money for your city's issues...as long as you take my garbage too....ohhh this is going to be good.

All this negativity happened before SimCity Socites, and somewhat before Cities XL (especially as they got closer to release). And those games flopped. Maxis need to be very careful about how they proceed concerning the online connection.

If they just had a single player mode which didn't need a connection, they would completely destory all the negative comments and press. Pretty much everyone who will buy this game and play it for an extended period of time visits this website.

I agree that a single player mode without internet is needed. Connecting to internet to securely access the game is one thing, that's a security measure that everyone is ok with, but to have to be connected the whole time just to play by myself and being forced to use other peoples cities to interact with takes the fantasy of sim city away and makes it jumbled and non-controlled. Most of us are micro-managers and want to control every aspect.

I will say I like what i see so far, but I'm afraid that the cities will be too small and rely on other peoples cities to make a large enough infrastructure. So it's going to be similar to SC4 where the actual technical cities aren't large enough to be realistic. That's one of my big concerns. Also they seem to be trying to incorporate SC Societies type gameplay into this game, and with all the backlash that happened there, it scares me that it could happen again.

Just having a simple single player mode that doesn't use internet content would alleviate all this negativity for the moment. Hopefully they can still work it in. Not all of us want to work as a team to build cities.

No, everybody is not ok with the game going online to ask daddy EA if you're allowed to play it. Some people don't have (or want) a constant internet connection, and most people don't want to be treated like criminals.