Shadely

Does anybody believe this? I mean, do people really think this whole always online system was Maxis' idea, and not forced upon them through EA's policy to make everything an online, F2P game? Heck no. I mean, how long do you think she'd keep her job if she said, 'This is all EA's fault."?

The phrase, 'There is no such thing as bad press.' may work for movies and reality tv stars but not when it comes to products. Just ask Proctor and Gamble, when they were accused of being devil worshippers because of perceived signs in their logo, which weren't true but still lead to decreased sales and a change in their corporate logo. To say that all bad press is good press is premature, IMO. However, if EA is able to ride this storm out and placate the masses with a free game as compensation, if the masses except it then all the bad press could be turned into good press. I just hope that the majority of my fellow gamers are smarter than that.

Edit: <double post>

According to Lucy Bradshaw, they have no intention of offlining it any time soon, so what does that tell you? It tells me they're just trying to do damage control so EA can go on business as usual.

Yeah, it's great and all but it just looks like lip service to me right now, particularly with this: Question 5: When SimCity servers are taken down in a few years, will an offline mode patch be distributed? Perhaps before then? Answer: We have no intention of offlining SimCity any time soon but we'll look into that as part of our earning back your trust efforts. We have no intention of doing what you'd like but we still hope to earn your trust back....right. Color me unimpressed.

His opinion has more weight, because he is the creator of Simcity. No it doesn't, often those closest the a project are the worst ones to get an opinion from, a game is made for gamers, not developers. His opinion has more weight, because he is the creator of Simcity. That's like saying George Lucas didn't destroy the three latest movies because he's the creator. To be fair, only Episode I got bad reviews. III was rated quite highly! None of the 3 were highly rated nor are they good movies..... Episode II was the worst rated actually Attack of the clones was horrid, facts, get some. II was OK, at best, 1 and 2 were terrible. The writing was atrocious.

I just want the gift of EA actually listening to the community. Is that too much to ask??

You mean if it was released on Steam? I might, if the game was mod-able. If not, then if I bought it at all I'd wait for it to hit the bargain bin as I will for this current SimCity.

EA Louse was right though. I read his letter back then too but I didn't want to believe it because I was so excited for SWTOR. It may have created a mess but hey, he was spot on. I really wish he had been wrong though.

Years before Spore's release I read one of the first leak articles about it and what Will Wright had in mind for the game was absolutely amazing. Then EA came along and decided that it was too 'sciency', butchered it and dumbed it down because in their opinion that's the only way kids would be interested in it. Short-sighted as usual. If they had just left well enough alone and let Wright do his thing, I believe EA would have had another phenomena on its hands. He hasn't released anything major since then but can you blame him? I wouldn't either if I knew anything developed with outside-the-box inventiveness would be promptly put back into the box by EA in the end.

That letter is absolutely beautiful.

To be honest, I'm not surprised by this. Although, I do find it hard to believe that he'd say anything negative about the game publicly during its launch, for no other reason than to support the devs who worked on it. However, I hold no illusions that everything would be wine and roses if he suddenly returned and took control of Sims Studio once again. I've heard that he's involved in social networking and it's not out of the realm of possibility that he's ok with how EA is nickle and diming its fan communities without mercy. However, I do find it hard to believe that he'd be all right with removing the ability to mod the games because that was one of his core intentions to begin with, giving the user community the freedom to create and share content.

Can anyone explain why Sims 3 was worse than Sims 3 to me? I bought the game and I thought it was better than Sims 2 because of the real time play. The obviously frustrating thing was all the micro DLC you were bombarded with and the content left out from the previous games. But thankfully there are other ways to acquire such content Sure, I can try. Two words - Rod Humble. He's without a doubt, the worst director of Sims Studio, ever. He stripped much of what made the first two installments so charming and gave us text messages and rabbit holes. Babies who are always swaddled, Sims teleporting into their cars, etc. The seamless neighborhood is cool, and a necessary evolution in the franchise but it just seemed like so much of the game design was made with micro transactions in mind first and foremost, interactions were sorely lacking. Besides that, Humble made it very clear that he hated anything having to do with fantasy or the supernatural, I can't think of a worst trait for the director of Sims Studios to have. Thank goodness Mr. Boring is no longer running the show. If it weren't for Twallan, there's no way I'd still be playing the Sims 3, his mods breath life into an otherwise soulless world. Anyway, that's my take on it.

You must be new here. Mod support practically makes SimCity 4. Without it its not really worth playing as its not so realistic enough and very odd specially road traffic... NAM is a must. The fact that EA has never been able to recognize just how integral modding has been to the longevity of their games absolutely kills me. How is it possible they can't see that?!? If it weren't for mods, EA games would last me a couple months tops, instead of years. Its near antagonistic stance towards modding is unbelievably short sighted. And not only that but it flies in the face of Will Wright's original intention of allowing users to create and share their own content. And about online always...I would love to know how Steam's model is doing as far as curtailing piracy goes. While probably not foolproof I bet it's at least effective and lucrative as well since gamers can actually PLAY.

That is the earmark of EA. Makes me think fondly of back in the day when Maxis was still Maxis, when games were complete, the excitement of SimDay Thursdays when you often got a free, useful object, and game play was designed for the players enjoyment first, rather than as a thinly veiled excuse for micro transactions, as it is today. Yep, those were good times.

This is disgusting. As usual, EA leaves me feeling sick to my stomach.

Even though I'm curious to see the game for myself, I'm not going to buy it for a few months, until there's a price reduction. I made this decision months ago when I first read about the always online feature, which is an absolute deal breaker for me.

Well, actually they don't deserve nothing at this point simply because they didn't do anything, nothing positive and nothing negative....yet. Nothing important enough to mention it. If the game will jump up within the next week or so, then it should be alright (personally I still won't like the game though because of the internet connection, simply becasue I cannot use it where I play my SC's the most.), and if not....well...then I think it will be necessary to give them what they deserved, if so. And so what exactly should they deserve? What could a small failure like this do to a company that big, eh? Do you actually think that folks will stop buying their products because of this? EA is a big money machine and a little publicity like this, whether bad or good, can only be of a positive follow-up. That is Marketing! I'm pretty sure that more people know the name of EA now than last week.... What do ya say.......... mrb Bad publicity is great marketing for people like Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian who have no other talents to speak of but for a corporation like EA that needs to keep its shareholders happy, with thousands of consumers demanding refunds, this very public debacle is all bad.

I think eggabooha is referring to the facebook backlash EA is experiencing. Every time they post an update for SimCity, they are flooded with angry responses. I could be wrong though....

I'm truly amazed. I never thought I'd see the day. Wow.

I would say it's more of a bad day for EA. There's still a lot of exciting things on the horizon for PC gaming, thanks to Kickstarter. It's experiencing a renaissance, in a way. Star Citizen, Project Eternity, Wasteland, just to name a few. If these games do well, then there's a lot of hope that a high profile development team could make a city builder in the future. 22 Cans, Peter Molyneux's new development company, is developing Godus which is more along the lines of Populous but I could see him embarking on a city builder project in the future. Perhaps the EA debacle might inspire independent developers even moreso now, who knows. I still think it's an exciting time for PC gaming.

LOL! Awesome.

This. Well said!

I couldn't disagree with you more. I've gotten the general impression from various forums that gamers do take the user score of Metacritic more seriously than that of the professional gaming 'journalist' whose integrity is often suspect. There may be some fanboys that create multiple accounts but if a game is good and PLAYABLE, those fanboys would be countered by the scores of gamers who do enjoy the game. I was talking user score not review score. Review score is better than Gamerankings which is why it is taken seriously. Actualy now days fanboys are determined to make sure a game they don't like or a company they don't like gets a mediocre or negative user score on most sites. Fanboys are known for pettiness. Um, I know you were talking about user score? I just don't agree with dismissing the user score as simply being the work of a horde of angry fanboys. Welcome to the next gen, where hordes of Fanboys: Flood user scores on sites with negative ratings Raid forums of their "enemies" Hack games and companies to cause trouble Pirate games to "punish" companies Etc... Fanboys get worse each passing generation. It's an epidemic!! Fanboys will take over the world before we know it!

I couldn't disagree with you more. I've gotten the general impression from various forums that gamers do take the user score of Metacritic more seriously than that of the professional gaming 'journalist' whose integrity is often suspect. There may be some fanboys that create multiple accounts but if a game is good and PLAYABLE, those fanboys would be countered by the scores of gamers who do enjoy the game. I was talking user score not review score. Review score is better than Gamerankings which is why it is taken seriously. Actualy now days fanboys are determined to make sure a game they don't like or a company they don't like gets a mediocre or negative user score on most sites. Fanboys are known for pettiness. Um, I know you were talking about user score? I just don't agree with dismissing the user score as simply being the work of a horde of angry fanboys.