SimCity is out

[Nefaro]

So.. what are the dirty details on the DRM scheme?

Well it's Origin. If you play BF3 then you're not bothered by it.

I don't play BF3.

You need to be connected to play.

LOL!

The ultimate abuse.

A bit ironic when their host servers keep screwing up, too, isn't it?  ::)  You'd think after Ubi's debacle, these cheesed*cks would've taken note.  It's good that EA doesn't have any single-player games that entice me to use this crap DRM.

[LongBlade]

A sense of anxiety felt annoyingly over the years. Has Steam folded?  Stormeagle? No. Let an important client/server fall, then we can wail.

EA shut down a bunch of old game servers. The list is too long to recount here. Suffice it to say that, yes, most gamers will move on (including me in all likelihood) but for anyone interested in playing Civ 5 five years from now, their record isn't good.

http://www.ea.com/1/service-updates

[Bismarck]

I'll whine then. ::)

[Swatter]

The fact it has anything to do with Origins is an automatic no sale for me. I got ripped off for $10 from the service, but it will be the only $10 they get from me.

[Arctic Blast]

A sense of anxiety felt annoyingly over the years. Has Steam folded?  Stormeagle? No. Let an important client/server fall, then we can wail.

EA shut down a bunch of old game servers. The list is too long to recount here. Suffice it to say that, yes, most gamers will move on (including me in all likelihood) but for anyone interested in playing Civ 5 five years from now, their record isn't good.

http://www.ea.com/1/service-updates

I'd be pretty upset as well if EA shut down Civ 5, considering it's a 2K game... :P

As for the list, more than half of it consists of sports games with annual releases that the entire community moves on to. Add in assorted Facebook crap and 5+ year old MP shooters and there aren't a lot of "Oh no! Not that one!" games on that list.

[tgb]

The price and server functionality today are bigger concerns for me than the possibility of it one day being shut down.

[JudgeDredd]

^ my concern also.

I seldom plays games long after release - so a server disappearing in 2/3/5/10 years isn't really a problem for me. There are no games I'm that mental on that I play them continuously

[LongBlade]

A sense of anxiety felt annoyingly over the years. Has Steam folded?  Stormeagle? No. Let an important client/server fall, then we can wail.

EA shut down a bunch of old game servers. The list is too long to recount here. Suffice it to say that, yes, most gamers will move on (including me in all likelihood) but for anyone interested in playing Civ 5 five years from now, their record isn't good.

http://www.ea.com/1/service-updates

I'd be pretty upset as well if EA shut down Civ 5, considering it's a 2K game... :P

As for the list, more than half of it consists of sports games with annual releases that the entire community moves on to. Add in assorted Facebook crap and 5+ year old MP shooters and there aren't a lot of "Oh no! Not that one!" games on that list.

Heh. 2K is a powerful company.

Sure, many of those titles are annual sports titles. But some are not. I'll be the first to tell you that once I leave a game it's a rare time that I come back to it, so shutting down, say, Armies of Exigo, won't break my heart. But that said, if I cared, I'd like the option to host my own MP game with some buds for old time's sake.

I can't remember anyone marketing Armies of Exigo as a game whose multiplayer shelf life had an expiration date. There should be some truth in advertising if that's the case.

[jomni]

It's common to find a statement that says they can terminate service (servers) anytime hidden in the user license.  These aren't advertised.

[Kushan]

Pretty much sums up what I've seen when watching Twitch TV streams.

http://www.dorkly.com/article/50759/simsimcity-the-simcity-simulator

[Bison]

What a damned debacle.  I can log on but cannot start a city. 

[jomni]

Crazy stuff.  They should have prepared for this like MMO's since it works in the same way now.

[MikeGER]

What a damned debacle.  I can log on but cannot start a city.

don't believe they had learned from it  ::), the Euro launch 2 days later was stiiiill f*&%ed-up as well >:( 

... yep, i had taken the plunge too ;)
(sometimes i love a game where i can sit and watch a situation develop and only do a little interaction here and there... like CommandOps BftB in the Wargame world ) 

most of the time of the S(erver) i(s) m(alfuction) City release day i was reading the German language EA forum and the angry ppl venting there ... while the server were disconnected... or when i was in,  i couldn't claim my invite-only region start city.

positive side of that f*&%-up: I started the forced! tutorial ... server disconnects, but it counted as i've i had finished it, and next time ...late afternoon, i was finally able to do my first city experiments.         

[Barthheart]

Tutorial:
You don't have to do it at all. When it starts, click on the options drop down, located in the very top right of teh screen. Select erturn to main menu or whatever is says. It'll complain a bit but it lets you out of the tutorial and you never see it again ... for that server...

I Logged on no problem when I got home from work yesterday, played for about an hour. Quit. Made dinner, watched news. Tried to log in again and EVERY server was marked as busy. OK, I've got chores to do, my wife came home and we spent some time watching our recorded TV.
Logged in again about 9:30 pm. Straight in. Played until about midnight, only "problem" was a red message in the upper left syaing it had lost contact with the srever and was trying to reconnect. Didn't affect my playing. about 10 minutes later a green message syaing it had reconnected.
So yeah it's a pain I can't play when I want but it hasn't been life crippling... :P

It's a very fun version of SimCity. Lots to do even if you are waiting for the money to pile up. Small side tasked that can net you a pile of cash quick - collect 5000 tons of garbage in 24 hrs = $30,000!  Stuff like that.

[DeathTouchWilly]

Well Wednesday night I can definitely confirm server problems left and right but yesterday the game worked flawlessly for me. If you can palate the DRM even a little perhaps wait a few weeks and then maybe give it a try.

On Ars Technica someone brought up the interesting point that online-only games almost 100% of the time have a shitshow of a release. This track record stretches back to Ultima Online which is like a decade old. Any major online-only release has been a mess at first. And this stretches across all companies. My suspicion is that testing for extreme load is a lot harder to do than one might think.

Look at Blizzard, a company I think is fairly reputable. Both their online-only games, WoW and Diablo 3, were unstable debacles at release. They took some time but they made it right.