It's amazing how many haters there are out there. Here are some facts, if they haven't already been posted...
The creators of SimCity (2013) use to play the old SimCity games and also programmed/developed the recent ones. Keep that in mind. They are lovers of the series and have worked hard to develop something everyone will enjoy. I don't think they would do anything else but make the best SimCity ever.
This is a reboot. They decided to make something from the ground up again. In doing so, they decided to focus on the simulation engine (which they did in their spare time first, then introduced it to EA and said "this would be great for simulating cities... whaddya say?" <--- this is a fact to, btw. look up some of the video interviews/spotlights
Ocean said, explicitly, that it would be much easier to focus on the simulation in the beginning and master it first, and then increase city size as PC power/memory grows... he's implying that city size is something everyone at Maxis would like to see increased... I think we can expect this in a future upgrade/patch.
They also said (explicitly, again) that the reason for not having the cities right next to each other was due to the limitations of current PCs (probably the mean, not us extremists with 16 GB of RAM and OC'd everything).
I played the beta (as I'm sure many of you have), and although I was taken aback from how small the plot size was initially, I quickly got over it and fell in love with how rich the simulation engine was. In fact, city size doesn't mean much to me anymore like I thought it did.
Since the beta, my itch to play SimCity became overwhelming, so I reinstalled SC4 and Rush Hour. After playing SC4 for about an hour or so, I quickly realized how dead this world was compared to the new SC. It was flat out boring in comparison. Statistical simulation is nothing compared to GlassBox... it's just amazing.
FYI... the game wasn't solely built for multiplayer. Building a simulation engine the way previous Maxis employees always dreamed of was the #1 motivational factor. <---- another fact, explicitly stated by Ocean.
Finally, if you want large sprawling cities using a subpar simulation engine, there's always Cities XL and SC4. PCs just aren't powerful enough to handle the simulation engine AND huge huge cities. You can't have both... not yet.
If you always wanted to keep track of the details in your city and how your decisions can influence each individual sim, then March 5 your wish comes true.
