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Sim City is now down, the maintenance message is amazing

I will purchase this game on <parameter:string>

seinfeld.gif
 

Muku

Member
What's considered the best sim city?

I have the snes version, sim city 3000 unlimited and sim city 4 which I got off the origin free games fiasco but have never played.

Personally I prefer 2000. Though to be fair I've not had the chance to touch 4. I guess I'm too afraid to. I wasn't a fan of 3000, so I think 3000 has kind of held me down.
 

Dartastic

Member
Uhx4wN2.jpg

You have too many servers.
You should remove some to save on maintenance.


Gotta say, GAF called this months ago, as soon as Always-On was announced. Good job, EA.
I thought it was super funny that people were actually defending ea over this mess when it was officially announced.
 

rrs

Member
What's considered the best sim city?

I have the snes version, sim city 3000 unlimited and sim city 4 which I got off the origin free games fiasco but have never played.

2K for a fun game, 4 for the mods, and more complex overall gameplay.
 

MormaPope

Banned
I can already map out the first Sim City DLC's.

Sim City: The Medieval times: Get ye sword and shield ready for some Medieval action! Build castles and keeps, manage ore and iron, forge steel. Electricity not required.

Sim City: Mass Effect Citadel edition
: Manage a sprawling space station filled with anything imaginable, make sure this city can be habitable from infinity and beyond!

Sim City: Mass Effect Omega edition: One of the hottest places in the galaxy is also the most dangerous. Can you run these streets before they run you?

Sim City: Hollywood: Glitz and glamor can only take you so far, what happens behind the scenes?
 
So I've been playing for like half an hour with 'SimCity servers are down. Attempting to reconnect" in the top left screen. I'm real worried about logging out and I'm real worried about continuing to play; either way I don't want to lose all my 'work.'

This sucks.
 

TheNatural

My Member!
So I've been playing for like half an hour with 'SimCity servers are down. Attempting to reconnect" in the top left screen. I'm real worried about logging out and I'm real worried about continuing to play; either way I don't want to lose all my 'work.'

This sucks.

Don't worry.

Server is overloaded too.
 

MormaPope

Banned
So I've been playing for like half an hour with 'SimCity servers are down. Attempting to reconnect" in the top left screen. I'm real worried about logging out and I'm real worried about continuing to play; either way I don't want to lose all my 'work.'

This sucks.

It's sorta ironic that you have to keep your game currently running to keep your current progress, because the always on/always online system is broken.
 

massoluk

Banned
I like 3000. 2000 seemed a bit dated now, SC4 is a bit too complicated for me. 3000 just the right balance between fun and simulation.
 

Pachinko

Member
I fully understand why this is happening but it only hammers home quite easily why people hate always on DRM as an anti-piracy solution.

Any online game is only going to run enough concurrent servers to handle 15% or so of the total player base. The problem is that launch day and the few days following 90-100% of the customers will want to be online at the same time. In a proper , well set up system- this would result in que times. As this is a simcity title though, people aren't just playing for an hour or so at a time, they're playing for 3+ hours in a sitting. So the que in an MMO might see a user leave every 10-15 minutes allowing a new player in to play for a bit themselves. In simicity you've got 1 player leaving every 60-90 minutes and the limited number of servers are getting hammered with log in requests at every available opportunity. This is causing them to run unstable and crash lots , kicking ALL of the players off.

So I can see after the beta test EA was thinking "yeah we could do 1 million sales that first week, demand is there, so let's have server capacity ready for 150,000 players an hour" Then, much like the enormous diablo 3 launch last may- sales expectations were likely exceeded and I'd like to think the servers they'd planned to have up weren't ready to go yet, this is why the second server for us west and east and today europe east and west went online later. Oceania may get a second server tomorrow.

So in a nutshell- capacity is 150,000 an hour and demand is there for 300-400,000 per hour. So the gamble now- do they add another 2 servers to the US and hope people are still playing it in 3 months so they don't end up with empty servers or do they just let people get fed up with the game much like sims in a poorly run city and leave to play something else ? It's not like this is a barren month for releases either.
 

sp3000

Member
I remember when EA was good for one year this gen. They released Mirrors Edge, Command and Conquer 3, and Battlefield Bad Company all in the same year
 

Jive Turkey

Unconfirmed Member
For some reason, I always imagined that the portrait would change with the "you will regret this" line.

Was that all in my mind?

It never changed. I think it's the way he always seemed like the chill guy who was so easy to please until you cut his funding and the caps that made him appear to change.
 

saunderez

Member
I don't know if they have built any servers for this. Ever since the game has been out I am having trouble logging in or using any of the online features of my Sims 3 games. Are they sharing servers or something; is anyone else having problems logging into Sims 3?

Normally takes a minute to sign in, and the past few days it has taken ~10 minutes just to sign into my account to actually start the game, let alone trying to upload sims for simport.

I'd imagine they're using virtualised servers, so its possible anything on the same cluster is affected if they don't have guaranteed CPU and RAM resources.
 

MormaPope

Banned
I remember when EA was good for one year this gen. They released Mirrors Edge, Command and Conquer 3, and Battlefield Bad Company all in the same year

What do you mean? They released these classic titles afterwards:

Cc4tt-cover.jpg


250px-Darkspore.jpg


256px-Warfighter.jpg


These games were so great that they killed the franchises they were in. Classics.
 

awm8604

Banned
What a fucking joke. Vote with your dollars and don't support this anti-consumer bullshit.

I will never buy a game with always online DRM.
 

Uthred

Member
I can already map out the first Sim City DLC's.

Sim City: The Medieval times: Get ye sword and shield ready for some Medieval action! Build castles and keeps, manage ore and iron, forge steel. Electricity not required.

Sim City: Mass Effect Citadel edition
: Manage a sprawling space station filled with anything imaginable, make sure this city can be habitable from infinity and beyond!

Sim City: Mass Effect Omega edition: One of the hottest places in the galaxy is also the most dangerous. Can you run these streets before they run you?

Sim City: Hollywood: Glitz and glamor can only take you so far, what happens behind the scenes?

Even though 3 killed the franchise for me I think a Mass Effect Citadel "skin" for SimCity would be pretty cool

You cannot forget Burnout Paradise.

You mean the Burnout game that took local multiplayer out of the franchise? Beginning of the enda
 
Here's the upcoming server shut downs for EA. I wonder what SimCity's date will be.

*edit I can't read. 2012

April 13, 2012 &#8212; Online Services Shutdown

&#8226; BOOM BLOX Bash Party for Wii
&#8226; Burnout&#8482; Revenge for Xbox 360
&#8226; EA Create for PC, PlayStation 3, Wii and Xbox 360
&#8226; EA Sports Active 2.0 for PlayStation 3, Wii and Xbox 360
&#8226; EA Sports Active NFL Training Camp for Wii
&#8226; FIFA 10 for PlayStation Portable and Wii
&#8226; The Godfather&#8482; II for PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
&#8226; MMA for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
&#8226; Need for Speed&#8482; ProStreet for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
&#8226; The Saboteur&#8482; (loss of The Midnight Club access) for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
&#8226; Spare Parts for PlayStation 3 Xbox 360

March 31, 2012 &#8212; Online Services Shutdown

&#8226; BATTLEFIELD&#8482; 3: Aftershock for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch
&#8226; Fantasi Safari for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch
&#8226; Ghost Harvest for iPhone
 
Just watched the Giant Bomb Quick Look. I know I kind of keep saying it but I am genuinely sad over what this game, one of my top childhood gaming memories became. From the connection problems, to the online requirement, to the WAY TOO SMALL city size (do not they not realize how ridiculous those artificial borders look with perfectly good land right next to a city??). I've never been this disappointed by a game before, and granted I didn't even buy it but I played the beta at least.
DLC coming soon!
 

Everdred

Member
I thought everyone was blowing it out of proportion but now that I've seen how EA is handling this I wish I didn't give them my money.
 

HylianTom

Banned
Enjoy your bowl of shit, gamers. You asked for it.

Welcome to PC gaming and soon to be console gaming :/

The luddite within me is kinda giggling at some of these happenings.

"We want online! We neeeeed online! We can't play without online!" claimed gamers.

Well.. you're getting it now. Online enables some really neat stuff, but I haven't been that impressed with it. Online also enables all sorts of temptations for various companies - temptations that seem to be pretty difficult to resist. It's going to be hysterical and fascinating to see what kind of mischief arises over this new console generation.

I loved earlier Sim City games, so at the same time, it's sad to witness. Looks like I'll be going through a third generation without buying a single EA game.
 

Gadfly

While flying into a tree he exclaimed "Egad!"
Anybody knows how to go about getting a refund? I can't even contact a tech support.

And shame on gaming media for not giving this the attention it deserves.
 
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