The continuing problems of SimCity

SimCity, one of the most influential titles to ever hit the video game market. Over the years, the franchise has snowballed in both popularity and spin-off territory, which has essentially ended in the huge crash that was SimCity `13. What are the problems of this game? Well let me tell you the story of how EA not only layed out some problems to coincide with the launch, but are also providing problems that update with the game.

It all started before the game even launched. I like to think of this game as a taste of what the XBone was going to be like before Micro$haft finally realized that spying on everyone wasn't going to net them any more than an angry mob and a lynching or two. (Seriously, we need to start killing government people in return for the horrid things they're doing to us. Every time something as heinous as this comes into the public eye, about five of these political fuckers need to be publicly offed to send an example of: "You piss the public off, you die.")

But anyway, the point is that the so-called "revolutionary" cloud was pissing more people off before the game was even released. That's not even talking about the trainwreck that was the launch of SimCity `13. Because Electronic Arts wanted to go with this mandatory cloud gaming, and with so many people buying the game just to try it out, the servers for the cloud became overloaded pretty quickly. Overloaded servers makes for impossible online play, and that's a PRETTY BIG PROBLEM for a game that's always online. That's only the launch though, I've only barely begun to talk about this shitstorm.

Then there was the DLC. This was mentioned before the game was even released, and it's only gotten more annoying. Before it was released, EA mentioned you'd have to pay extra money to get such content as optional themed tilesets. Now that it's been released, it turns out the EA is attempting a very underhanded way of getting people to pay some sort of monthly fee by releasing the content they had blocked on a monthly basis, starting with May and the "Amusement Park set." Only two packs have been released so far, and one hasn't been released this month, so either I was right and EA failed, or EA was just pulling their typical DLC bullshit ON TOP of their online code bullshit.

Next came the idiotic way that they tried to take the load off of the servers. After a few weeks, EA began to get worried that their scheme for always online wasn't going to work and that they would actually have to let people play without any terrible restrictions. (Scary, I know. It's not like any other SimCity games were like this.) It was getting to bad that Amazon put up a warning saying how the game may not work after you buy it, and EA was asking for online advertisements of the game to be taken down. So because EA couldn't let their grand plan to suck up as much money from the game as possible fail is the best set of decision makers ever, they chose the best solution possible.

...

Wait, they did buy more servers or take down the servers of games that didn't work anymore to repurpose them for this game, right? I mean, that's the logical thing to do after all?

No? What do you mean that they took out achievements and the fastest game mode? How in the hell does that bog down a server? Player traffic bogs down servers, not the features of the program, though with the cloud you aren't allowed to save any data to your computer. I guess that achievements must take up a pretty good part of this cloud. Or maybe it's just EA trying to stick to their guns and continue to force this always online DRM bullshit on everyone.

I can mention more though. Let's talk about CalebPeters and the refund trouble that he had with an employee of EA. When he asked for a refund of the game after its atrocious launch, he was refused multiple times AND threatened with a ban from the game when he threatened to dispute a refund with the bank. After this, the chat text went public and it turns out that people HAVE, in fact, been getting banned from their Origin's because they tried to get refunds for SimCity.

And that's the main problem with SimCity: the company that owns the name. Maxis isn't owned by the EA of old, the one that released most of the Sim games in a big boxed set in like 2001. They're not the EA that released The Sims, which ended up outselling MYST. They're not even the EA that made the Sims 3, because at least that game wasn't always online. The EA of today is a leech of a company, willing to sell you a down payment of a game for $60 and then force you to pay $10 intervals whenever they feel like. Or take away features because the servers are being bogged down from a mandatory multiplayer mode. Or force a mandatory multiplayer mode in the first place!

As a result, I'm appalled at this horrific trainwreck of a game, and I'm a die-hard SimCity fan! I liked SimCity 2000 and I even downloaded the source to the original game when I found out about it.(Currently porting the code to GM8 so that the Game Maker community can learn from it.) I got Sims on GameCube and I played the shit out of the Sims 3 on my Xperia play when I got it. Hell, I still have a big boxed set of Sim spinoffs and main games that I got when I was 6 years old. I will NOT be buying SimCity unless an offline mod gets rid of the DRM and let me play singleplayer. Otherwise, I'll just stick to my Virtual PC and SimCity 2000.