LadyKate

Originally posted by: Asheroo Terribly sad, but I think we could almost see this one coming. Obviously as the more "optimistic" one of the CXL community, I hoped for it not to happen and MC just survive, but unfortunately they've dropped. You guys at MC have done an amazing job, and I wish you all the very best to your lives and that you'll be employed elsewhere. Thanks for the work MC, you may not have hit the top with the city building community, but you sure had an amazing and very brave attempt at it. CXL still is to this date my favourite city building game, but it's good to hear a company will continue development, but I hope they have a good understanding of the community, but they should after this. It shows just how powerful we are, the city building community, how small and picky. We're not like other gaming communities where we have lots of games to chose from. All the very best, to all MC employees. quote> Unfortunately, the original message did not say that development was going to continue, merely that another company will retain the rights to sell the game.

Originally posted by: Skimbo I would wait until the release of cxl 2011 (That's a patch that makes the singleplayer much more attractive than it is nowadays; Release should be on march 8th). quote> See, here's the problem with what's been going on. MC has been very coy, and hinting at a lot of things, like they have always done, but I don't really remember anywhere from MC saying that CitiesXL 2011 is going to be released on March 8th. I will happily stand corrected if anyone can show where they have specifically said that. March 8th was the day that I understood that Busses would be available in single player mode, and that the PO servers were shutting down, though, I may be mistaken in that as well. Right now, all we know for certain is that nothing is certain, and MC is not doing anything to clear up the rampant rumours around all of this.

Originally posted by: dedgren Liv- I'm not trying to stir the pot here. I am just so incredibly frustrated that it is seemingly impossible to get a straight answer from Monte Cristo on anything. The current situation continues a track record that dates back now almost two years, and if you believe the conspiracy theorists among us, even further than that. It strikes me as funny that EA's method of communicating with the SC4 fan base, which is to not communicate at all, seems somehow preferable to being serially misinformed. MC would appear to be in a terrible situation. Without a revenue stream, there is no new content developed by MC for the game. Without interest in the game, there is no revenue stream. Without new content, there is no interest. The only way out of that circle- actually a spiral of decline- would be for MC to do something that it is demonstrably not good at, and that is to think outside the box. This community, imho, is the only possible potential source of rescue out there, and that would only be possible if MC was to take SP CXL and open it completely to us. An active contingent of MODders and BATters making worthwhile content and changes to the game would create the buzz that MC so apparently can't. On the other hand, MC likely feels it can't do that, because every BAT and MOD release competes (and, in truth, with a totally unfair advantage- it's free!) for the dollars that MC needs to earn selling the same thing. The company would have to take the very long view that, if it put CXL's fate in the hands of this community, we could be trusted to do the right thing. I don't know how anyone who has followed this situation since the Cities Unlimited days, as many of the commenters on this thread have, could possibly see things any different. Trusting MC to live up to any "promise" at this point concerning this game is just misguided, in that MC has no track record whatsoever of honoring commitments to the many who were the game's potential purchasers and to the unfortunate few who actually bought CXL. My prediction- CXL 2011 will be a kludge of whatever stuff MC has sitting around on the shelf today. Not a single new development dollar (or Euro, I guess) will be spent. A year from now, CXL will have the same size following as SimCity: Societies, and all the rest of us will be enjoying all the new stuff that's been developed in the meantime for SC4. Davidquote> I agree with the frustration, but I think it goes even a bit farther than how you put it. In some peoples opinion. not only did MC not deliver on promises made, but it seemed like they consciously went against, and did the opposite of the very input they activey sought. City Builder programs are inherranty niche programs. They can be made to appeal to wider audiences for sure, but the long term survival, of any game really, but especially a game that by its very nature is niche, depends on the niche market, and I'm just afraid in this case, apparantly very poor decisions by MC has poisoned that long term market to the point that they will not be able to ever recover in the City Builder niche. I only hope that they haven't poisoned the wider niche market with the debacle that is Cities XL.

I remember chats with MC that happened way before beta even where some of these questions were asked that in the event PO didn't work out, what would happen. Call it a self fulfilling phophesy or what ever anyone wants, but the reality is still the same. MC said that PO was the direction they were going, and it would not fail. That there would be long term support, and they did not even entertain the thought that it would fail. I understand that there may have been behind the scenes contingencies if it did indeed fail, but they seemed at least publicly, when asked directly what were the plans, that MC had none. Here we are again. PO has failed. The question is now being asked...what if...and we are basically being told don't worry about it. We have no intentions of having to take the authentication servers offline. Does MC have a contingency plan for the event that they have to take them off line? I know that they have no intentions of them going offline, but then again, they originally had no intentions of having PO failing either.

Originally posted by: Gregory_C Yes you can absolutely play disconnected when in solo mode, and that will includes all of your additionnal content. And, who is hosting the authentication servers... MC or a third party company (I do NOT want a specific name, as that could be a security risk to their games authentication, just MC or a 3rd party company) that provides this type of service as their main business. What happens if MC does (unfortunately) go belly up, will they put out a patch to remove the authentication, or have they made provisions for the authentication servers to live on indefinitely?quote> Auth servers (as well as all other servers) are hosted by an external company. As for the future well, I can't tell the future, but we have no intention of closing the auth servers any soon. Should this happen for some reason, I guess it would be technically possible for us to change the way the game starts. quote> And I guess that's what concerns a lot of us...a lot of things have happened that MC had not intentions of happening...and none of them good.