And now Sim City has been modded to play offline. The city size has also increased.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-03-14-simcity-modded-so-it-can-be-played-offline-indefinitely

 

Looks like the rumours and inside sources were correct. The servers do no sim calculations at all. They just provide glorified social play, cloud saves, and DRM.

 

Not surprising really is it? You have to run servers hosting regions, save-games and then doing the users calculations as well? So if you have 1 million people playing at the same time you need servers capable of running all of those calculations smoothly instead of letting the users own computer handle that aspect? I think its bullshit and the only reason you need to be online is for the DRM and social aspect to work.

I'm by no means a computer expert but surely the amount of processing power that would constantly be in use server-side would have to be absolutely massive? Even if you're only doing 1/5th of the total work per user... you have to set up several regional servers, North America, Europe, Asia etc. They all require space, cooling and staff to repair, upgrade and maintain the hardware... It just doesn't seem like a financially viable model unless you're constantly bringing in revenue like MMO's with a monthly fee.

If this had been done properly with single-player, no always online DRM and proper city sizes... I'd have pre-booked a copy for myself months ago.

 

I'm pretty sure that SimCity's servers run on Amazon SC2, which is a massive cloud computing service. It's elastic so it scales up to whatever computing power you need.

 

Turns out the amount you need is zero. Which makes the disaster with nobody being able to log in even more hilarious.

 

The constantly escalating drama surrounding this has provided more entertainment than the game ever could.

 

I've been a SimCity fan ever since I played the Windows version of SimCity 2000 Gold Edition from a copy that a friend lent to me.

http://www.ea.com/news/simcity-update-straight-answers-from-lucy

That bullshit above is just honestly both disappointing and full of corporate spin that a politician would approve of.

I'm thankful that I decided against buying SimCity.

Oh well, back to playing CK2 and EU3.

 

EA CEO resigns. Can't imagine why. I mean, all of EA's recent games have been such resounding successes. [/sarcasm]

 

Good...get the fuck out you turd burglin' arsehole. And take the rest of the shitty decision making shitbags (Stockholders/chairpeople) with you.

 

Reinstalled 4.

Scratched my itch, and I don't waste money on a facebook game. Problem, solved.

 

Did exactly the same thing. SimCity 4 deluxe found it way onto my laptop and I am enjoying it again, tremendously. That and dwarf fortress is what is taking up most of my time at the moment.

 

Lol, I reinstalled simcity 4 too. Also picked up Tropico 4--that game is dificil. :b