mk11232

No, you're not, you're the worst company in the world (universe, perhaps?) and I'm sure that you will make sure that the award will be never given to any other company in this planet (or even probably, in the universe). Not to defend EA but are they the worst company in the US? HELL NO! Sure they're good at pissing off their customers but worst company? NO. Worst company is any bank, AIG, the investment banks that brought the country to the brink of collapse. They are the worst people around. EA pisses off gamers and that's it, the banks destroyed lives.

It was known as an MMO after the terrible launch and disabling of all the online features (kinda prerequisite for the O part and M's but I digress) when Bradshaw was frantically trying to quietly shift discussion of the failed DRM strategy. That's the straw they grasped not realizing anyone can lookup when the shift first occurred Though EA has issues with the truth, they'll catch fire and stock will decline if they ever tell it once.

This isn't a surprise that they would be greedy and I hope it serves as a wakeup call for those that believe this game will be "great once the modders get their hands on it." EA service is saying all modding is against TOS and that they will ban your account immediately if they detect anything, in direct contradiction of Maxis. EA wins this fight and there is no way they will allow any substantive moding to interfere with their up-coming cash cow. An aside, I've rounded the 180 year mark in one new city (Sc4) and the tile is still only half full!

They tried to sell themselves, nobody wanted EA as it stands. Sure they'll take certain titles but not the entire company...its toxic.

It really i$n't that hard to $see why EA decided to put limit$ on thi$ game $ince tho$e item$ can be put into the $imCity$tore for late purcha$e

Found this video on rredit today, basically simcity doesn't require jobs to grow a city at all watch the video Some background, that city is the only one in the region, there aren't any other cities for the sims to go to, they're all at home another nail in the coffin of Maxis credibility and confirms EA being the worst game company ever.

I've seen on rredit and elsewhere the 20 minute time is correct. Most have claimed and show in videos that they are able to manually disconnect from the internet and play up to 20 minutes before it stops to force a reconnect. EA did blatantly lie to justify their DRM scheme and it isn't hard to prove otherwise. IF you have the game test it yourself. Sounds a little shady to me. But I'd definitely be interested in a "proper explanation" from Maxis in response to this.

This has been such a disaster it made it to Forbes.com and a call for a unified return policy for video games that fail to launch. The call is made due to the huge clustercrap that is SimCity http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2013/03/08/the-simcity-effect-we-need-an-industry-wide-return-policy-for-defective-and-unplayable-games/

I like the petition idea but the whitehouse.gov is just plain stupid. The government has nothing to do with a digital consumer product, you want congress to stop trying to fix what's broken with the country to address a company's poor game? Seriously? That kind of attitude is simply pathetic as it is not the job of the government to even bother looking at this or wasting diskspace with a whitehouse petition. There are plenty of avenues of redress against EA and the courts are wide open, your credit card company, the BBB, public petitions and shame.

You cannot be more incorrect on this point. The server is an critical part of the game, part and parcel and cannot be separated from the game itself. The server connects you to the "back house" of data that supposed occurs and passes between your machine and the server to create your city. It is not just some service, it is more akin to the back house database the client relies upon. The quality of the server is directly and proportionally related to the quality of the game. The crappier the server the crappier the game experience which has been proven.

If someone wanted to crack it they could easily. It only took a month to crack the diablo servers and setup private servers. It only took 30 days to capture all the data required to simulate their own and I highly doubt Maxis has the same level of security or knowledge that Blizzard poured into Diablo 3.

This thread needs to be removed and a new sticky put in place. It doesn't make sense to have a 2012 pre-release thread as the "gameplay" thread now.

LOL monsterjamp, that'll never happen you can download the DLC of bigger maps for a one-time payment...or they'll be really cheap and dirty and try to call it an expansion

In the New Simcity Sears Tower is 34 floors. In the real world its 108 floors. In SC4...sears tower was.....108 floors. 108 floors would look ridiculous with the current SC scale... its too large!!! They should of used the SC4 scale. That can't be true because I've heard over and over that this simcity's scale is completely "realistic"

I think this attitude is naive in the extreme regarding EA. Look at the Sims, it's a game that could have been made even better with community modding but they went with the $$ path and released their own mods and charged for it. They will do the same here. Remember, EA doesn't care about the community or the game, their only concern is the bottom line and what they can give back to the stock holder. If this game folds but they made their investment back after release then it was a win for EA. It all comes down to the bottom line, EA is in financial distress and must do everything to maximize profit which means anything that they can provide as a DLC that entices you to purchase they'll keep to themselves and release it themselves. I can also see EA opening up certain aspects of modding and allow modders to sell the content through their store and take a skim, aka Itunes store. Either way, don't expect EA promote a simcity community out of the goodness of their hearts. If it isn't helping the bottom line or even hurting it (bandwitch, server stroage, etc for free stuff) then they will eliminate or minimize it.

I think there will always be a rift between hard-core mod-loving SC4 players and people who are entirely unexposed to Simcity in general. The later will buy the game, the former not. However, I think the biggest problem with most SC4-modded players boils down to this: EA wants me to spend nearly $80 for a basic engine that strips away near 80% of what SC4 had in it, be connected all the time to their server, and buy DLC to make the game functionable! I believe the reaction to Simcity's core change would not be as dramatic if the damn thing wasn't priced at $80 just to get the privilege to buy DLC. If the game was priced at $40 then the negativity would subside and reflect actual value of what EA is putting out. Lets be realistic Simcity base-game is merely a DLC-ready platform for you to spend more money; it is NOT a base game or a complete game unto itself. I get better value out of Megacity for Andriod v. Simcity because Megacity is free then they charge for unlocking it. That has value that I can appreciate as the incomplete base game is free and the extra stuff that I'm interested only cost a few bucks. I would never play it if the incomplete base game cost $5+ As to every game industry going to always-on DLC is untrue. Several great studios are continuing in their francises and doing perfectly well. Bethseda instantly comes to mind with Skyrim. A full complete base game with over 100 hours main story line and 1000's hours side quest for only $60. On top of that you have one of the most extensive modding communities that add 1000's of more hours of free content to make the game even better than the designers wildest imagination. Even their DLC adds tons of changes and updates to the game without the need to be always online. (even with steam you don't need to be always online, you have offline mode which checks in every 2 weeks at most) . EA is a failing company and they're forced to rely evermore on DLC to make money. They are absolutely desperate to change the mindset of gamers to accept the manure they're peddling. If a company has so many employees they need to market about the need for DLC on half-completed games, then the company is too bloated and should be trimmed down. Relying on emotional attacks to make you feel bad for wanting a complete game for $80 is pathetically low and so are attempts to justify those prices.

3 hours and they have towers and a very populous city? That's just stupid the game is so simple. I'm working with a new regional map and I'm 25-30 hrs into one tile alone and still only 25% finished with what I want to do before starting the connecting areas. I can't see how SimCity will hold someone's interest for 30 hrs of gameplay if you have a full city in 3.

And this is the attitude EA wants to foster. People who are willing to pay $60 for a base game and then $5-10 here and there for more visual goodies. Before you know it in 6 months you'll given EA over $200 to make the city look the way you wanted, a way that was free before, and thank them for the opportunity.

@InCommandOfCars someone protest too much about growing up and being whiny in an incredibly whiny post. In fact, your post actually went and tried to show your outrage and "yelling" via use of italicized text. Congrats, you are the whiniest thing here.

I first called this way back when the always-online mode was confirmed as required. No surprise and they will not see one dollar from me.

This is going to age me a bit but I remember Lord of the Realms 3 and the fiasco that game turned into. Originally priced to be $49.99 (which was the high end of games at that time, equal to $60-80 bucks today) everyone was super excited because LotR2 was awesome (still is). Then the demo came out and less than a week after people got their hands on it, pre-release, there was a press release and the game came out as a $14.99 throw-away bin disaster. I still bought the game knowing it was going to be utter crap and it wasn't worth $4 bucks and destroyed the series, but at least the publisher was honest once they received player feedback about the game and priced it accordingly. This smacks of the same issues as LotR3 except I don't see EA dropping the price to reflect the actual quality of the game and the end result will be much bad press, hurt feelings, and the death knell of the series as who will trust them after this?

If you read the SC2013 forum you know my opinion I think the devs got exactly what they deserved. When faced with the fans that they couldn't sensor (like on the forums) they were presented with the real feedback they've actively denied. I also think its funny a certain overactive moderator in that forum likes to shut down active discussion saying the devs have heard enough and are getting annoyed. They should be annoyed for those that venture here and elsewhere in the real world.

How do you expect EA to get your credit card information and entice you to buy "sim gold" to augment your depleted resources to continue building your city if you isolate yourself? /no they haven't announced sim gold for resources yet //it's only a matter of time and the only other logical reason to have online-only depleted resources in single mode

Sorry but the bold part is the biggest load of PR lies said about Simcity 2013. I, as a player, want to make cities built into the sides of mountains like a snow village. Can the new simcity do that? Nope. I want to build Island towns where wharfs dominate one side and nice low-density neighborhood, travel ports and parks reside on the other. Can I build that? Hmm, well maybe I can build my communal farming village with a rail to connect a few communities together and a dirt mountain path for those taking the scenic route. Can I build that? Well hell, what can I build. Oh I can build a perfectly flat city that somehow can grow skyscrapers within a 2x2k square area yet not have any connection to any other city nor see other cities from my town. Look a skyscraper surrounded by 2k by 2k greenspace...yeah real there. The new game brings in improvements I agree. However, the things stripped from the game and the complete crippling for true freeform CITY BUILDING outweighs any positive. There is no honest attempt by maxis to do anything here. They built a "pretty" game engine and then tried to make simcity fit within that engine. What they found is that the engine cannot run a simcity-style game. They should have stuck with the original plan and remade simtowers with it. Lets be honest and look at the "real-life" conditions presented in cartoon simcity: City only 2x2km square and only flat terrain, city can't terriform itself, city can't build on the side of hills, city can only connect to other cities by predetermined roads and not make their own, city can't develop robust transportation systems, city can only hold about 100 buildings, all buildings must have green space around them so no packed in suburbs. Yeah real life mimickery here...but the fire station is modular! The "challenges" posed by this game are simple and few. Incredibly limited space, artificially limited resources, build what you can with those 2. I played this game before, it's called Warcraft 4 and you could build very nice looking settlements. If we're being honest about Maxis then lets be honest. They took the name SimCity to capitalize on the existing fan base and history of the series to sell as may games as possible. That is the honest evaluation here. I don't believe people would be as upset as they are about the game if it had a different title. Simcity Societies tried using the same capitalization and look what occurred there. But to try and bridge a connection with this game and the prior series is intellectually dishonest.

You know what has jumped out at me as another glaring issue in these videos and other screen shots of the game, everything is FLAT. I haven't seen any shots where they've built their "curvy" roads on any type of non-flat terrain In fact, the video shows hills surrounding the city but the roads went around them...intentional? How unbelievably boring is it to have pure flat cities? Can anyone confirm if this is true, I haven't found anything with google yet. If true, another example of 10 steps back for Maxis.