alina2004

Well guys (and gals), I guess our beloved game has been updated to cater to the new generation. I started playing the original DOS version when I was in highschool and yesterday I bought the new game for my 12-year old son. All his friends have it and right on cue with EA's design, they all play together, using Skype or GoogleTalk (depending on which gives them the best connection on any given day). I can hear them constantly talking to each other, 4 chatterbgus, complaing when they can't log in to a specific server, arguing that one city has too many fires, the other city the terrain does not allow for something or other, discussing which city to host one of those new cityhall departments, they play for hours, always connected and talking to each other. They don't give a damn that they can't recreate this or that real-life city, they don't care about beautiful maps, terrain smoothing, placing trees that change colors with the seasons; it's a new generation that never played and thus never knew what we had. It is (like another post said) the SimFacebookVille version geared for this generation. We (the players, but mostly the amazing developers of custom content) used to obsess endlessly about more realistic transit networks, minute details about bus stop capacities, new bridge designs, all matters of city design, while EA took a long look at us and left us behind; almost nothing in this version takes into account how we have been playing this game 10 years after its release. The aim of this version is not to build realistic cities based on real life, but something else, not sure what. I, like lots of you, played for a few hours, built a mediocre city of about 60k but run out of space, couldn't build a train station, there was no palce to even lay railroad tracks, couldn't plant trees or paint the landscape in any way, couldn't upgrade my streets without demolishing everything, couldn't do any of the trully fun stuff we have all been accustomed to doing. Yes the economic model is new and can be fun, but after you build the oil drilling plant or the coal mine all the way to max capacity, then there isn't much else to do. Even if you take region play to the extreme and specialize, most regions from what I saw only have a handfull of city tiles on them anyway......I am sad about the direction EA took this all-time classic, but looking at the kids who never knew or care about classics, why should they care? We are the dinosaurs of the gaming world perharps, complaining, bitter perhaps, some from what I read even angry, ha? maybe we should get with the program.....The end of the PC era is coming, isn't that what they say? Maybe it was naive to believe that a corporation would continue to cater to our types.....