Oxworth

It's very simple, any time you buy a game, you do not then own that game, the creator still does, Maxis (or EA as the case may be) owns all of your Sim City cities, legally. You license games, you don't buy them, it's very different. I suspect that MC has all legal rights to cities you create in Cities XL as well, as is standard in the games industry. edit -- Honestly though, what's the difference, it's not as if you're going to be selling your cities for profit, I suppose you could sell them on e-Bay, but that is technically illegal and MC could prosecute, much like Blizzard frowns on the selling of accounts, and will immediately deactivate any WoW account they believe was sold to another player. I don't see it ever becoming an issue though. Suppose I should explain what licensing is, you buy the right to play the game, not the actual game. That's what it boils down to anyway.

Originally posted by: altumus I hope they fix this, I do not want to have to go online and "connect" every time i play, I use a laptop at work and I cannot connect and I cant play the damn game,please please please fix, anyone else in this situation? quote> So you're mad that you can't play the game at work? Slacker.

I dug up my dusty old copy of Sim City 4/Rush Hour, and compared to Cities XL the interface is clunky, and overcomplicated. Admittedly I never was a HUGE fan of watching sliders and numbers go up and down, but I do like city builders, and games like Civilization, The Settlers, and Stronghold. Sim City 4 is a great game, it's fun and all, but for my money, I'd rather play Cities XL, I don't have to worry about going bankrupt because some obscure slider on a firestation is set too high, or fires breaking out because I didn't budge the slider up when my city grew, micromanagement sucks. Maybe I'm the wrong demographic for Sim CIty, but Cities XL has the type of interface I like, without being utterly terrible like Sim City Societies. I pay $15 a month for World of Warcraft, the Cities XL monthly fee to play online doesn't discourage me, and a world-wide economy that one governor has no control over seems far more interesting than total control. Planet View > Region view. Terraforming? If you're building a city, you could, in theory, move mountains, and the like. But in the real world that would be far too costly most of the time, there are some cases where they've done this, and even cases where they've created new land in the middle of the ocean, it's certainly possible, but it's far more likely that the city would be build around whatever environmental issues comes your way. Curved roads certainly helps with that. Full 3D, exquisitely detailed, I don't zoom in and get a pixelated picture of a house, there's an actual house there. Certainly the public transportation issue is a big one, but it seems that issue will be rectified very shortly after release, so I don't see an issue at all. It's certainly not the perfect game, but neither is Sim City 4, and for sure Sim City Societies isn't. Interacting and trading with another player's city, specializing your city and cornering the market on a specific resource. Sounds more fun than watching charts and graphs move around to me. You want the next step up from Sim City 4, guess what it's either this or Societies, and for my money, you know which one I'd pick. Swear word removed. --Liv