bergerrunner

I'll be honest, I was a definite "no" before, during, and a little bit after beta 1 but the game has really grown on me. It looks really in depth, now if only they could expand that out a little further. Ultimately though my computer won't run it (which is my fault of course) so the price tag for me is whatever a new graphics card costs plus sim city

wow thanks for the link, rawls, that's awesome!

Er, its very southern California looking (as expected, unfortunately)

How ridiculous is it that every city has only one entrance/ exit ramp? no wonder every city will have traffic problems. Unless regional travel isnt used as much as I think it will be

I think my thought process is similar to yours. I played beta 2 and not beta 1 since I gave my key away and my thought in that Sim City will be fun, but not $60 worth of fun(for me anyway). Meaning that instead of a game like sc4 where you can pick it up for 2 hours every weekend and have a new experience every time, SC will offer "limited time fun" as it stands today (or two days ago I guess)

Ocean was tweeting them out, like a ton of them

Yep! Looks like the manual got zapped. I'm glad I had a chance to view it before, but wish I would have downloaded. I'm hoping to be able to play the Beta this weekend, and it would have been nice to have that keyboard shortcut list handy. Weird, because I remember Ocean Quigley posting a link to the game manual on his twitter account (I can't find the tweet because I'm at school and twitter is blocked)

I don't believe they've been sent out yet

According to this EA staff member, you will be able to. Whether it's true is beyond me. As for Societies, I guess it's possible, although I've heard over at SC4 Devotion that SC4 doesn't run well. Can anyone else with some experience cement any of this? Runs fine on my Windows 8 PC, which is a lower end dell inspiron 3520. As for societies, I have no idea. I have it- do you want me to load it and try and play it and tell you if it works?

Oh wow I didn't know that. Did they show survey data saying most people liked it? I would endeavor to guess that yes they did, just because its new and people like new stuff. Lets face it, there is a large contingent of users who aren't like the ST community, and don't pick the game apart at the microlevel. As long as it looks visually appealing, they're on the boat-- and it does for the most part. Plus, you've got new users who don't know what to expect. This is kind of why I bet the game will sell decently well at release, but enthusiasm will taper off fast. It'll be buoyed by the casual, non sim city players because it looks relatively well put together (if you don't do your homework on it), but then 1-2 months in I think those flaws we've found will start aggravating even the most basic player, whether it be because of the graphics (the repetitiveness of building styles and colors), or whether the user is looking to go "deeper" and is looking for something beyond merely laying out chunks of zone and watching stuff happen. In an hour beta/ demo whatever, the average user isn't looking for a lot of depth in the game because there isn't a lot of time to experience anything other than scratching the surface (whether that be because of the in game limits or the fact that the depth isn't there). Once players get their hands on it for 5 or 6 hours, that's going to speak volumes about the game. So no, im not surprised that the reaction would be a positive one after an hour of playtime

Okay I'm confused. In Minnesota its a law that cars move to the shoulder or as close as they can get for emergency vehicles with their lights on. Its not that way in sim city? emergency services who need to get from point A to B are just regular traffic?

No, I will not pay for things that I should have been included when I paid for the game (hypothetically speaking, of course)

RE: JoeBearPA Thats one of the things I was thinking about mentioning but didn't know how to put into words. EA (and I'm not going to mention Maxis because the elephant in the room is that EA is driving the sim city ship) promises these mythical updates where all our problems as sim city players will be solved. I'm not so sure. EA isn't going to produce these updates and patches and DLCs because they're nice guys. EA is a business, and they're only going to produce content if theres a market willing to consume it. One thing I'm concerned about is that the Sim City market will taper off. Myself-- I got bored of the beta after 30 minutes. I don't know what its going to be like to the new Sim City player, but you worry that the lack of features will make for a game that people wont want to play consistently and eventually forget about, and if thats the case, why would a company expand on a game very few people are interested in? Even if the DLC's make the game super amazing and everything we've hoped for, you wonder if it would be too little too late at that point Edit: formatting got funky on me

Thanks, I got it working. It seemed that when I did a fresh install, none of the graphics options within sc4 had had their radio button selected to high, medium or low Anyways thanks for the help everybody. And yes, back when I was working tech support at the university I went to, we gave all our profs laptops. 3 years old and dells so middle of the road at best, but whatevs. I'm working for the Minneapolis School District and they're kind of underfunded across the board, plus the school I work at is inner city and all special ed which puts us at the bottom of the list for resources (which makes absolutely no sense) being a first year teacher doesn't help much either

It is a fresh install, but I never checked the graphics settings. I'm a little embarrassed actually, that's a $%&^! mistake. And yeah, windows 8 is, I don't know. Its optimized for tablets and since I don't have it on a tablet its annoying. It came with the laptop I bought (since I'm a teacher and don't have a computer in my classroom or my office so I needed one on the cheap) so I've got to live with it

Hmm thanks for the input guys. I guess I'll wait for when I finally fix my XP/ 7 PC then. That's weird

Its a shame that Sim City has omitted so many of the features we (or at least I) loved in Sim City 4 because the visuals from the screenshot thread look fantastic, albeit a little too shiny. For me, I'll buy this game but not now, maybe not even next year. I don't want to speak for anyone else, but I find it a little ridiculous to spend $60 on a base game plus more for the features that we're used to and feel like Sim City deserves based on Sim City 4, plus DLCs. I'll wait until a dramatic drop in price before I even think about buying it, then I'll have the conversation with myself around if the features included (in the base game plus expansions) justify the money. For me, SC4 was one of the best and most fun $20 ive ever spent. If Sim City isn't comparable as far as features go and more expensive, then there's really no conversation