Just played beta again for the second time and indeed the city size is a bit disappointing, you can easily fill it within an hour and run into space issues, even when you can outsource a lot of stuff to other cities in the region I can imagine on a map like this even a dedicated casino city will run out of space easily.
Another downside in the beta was that many buildings and options were not available and industry per example complaints quite quickly about not enough opportunities to sell goods.
On the other hand I'm very happy that SimCity depsite all the extra rendering of unique sims etc the game runs without problems on my old Windows XP machine, only GFX don't look that great but for me gameplay has always been more important than looks, so its more important it runs smooth than anything else.
The building expansion options are a great way to specialize and enlengthen gameplay on a micro level. As a transport fan I miss some options regarding road improvements (there is no traffic map as far as I could tell) and no option to make streets one way traffic or setup special bus routes. For all transport / road fans out there these options would add a whole new dimension to the gameplay which with the glassbox engine should be easily and realistically possible (missed chance maxis!).
Making money is fairly easy, making Sims happy and getting higher density buildings is a bit vague but I'm sure when the came comes out we will soon get the hang of it.
