SimCity's Launch Isn't Going So Well

I had no idea how bad this was going to be. Funny thing is I really enjoy playing it! It's just getting to the part to play it that makes all the rage happen. =(

Reading all of these things is like an out of body experience. I've said it many times before already, but I'm just not having the problems everyone else seems to be having. I just get to enjoy the game, although to be fair the game itself has a fair number of bugs that I've encountered so far. I hope this gets ironed out really soon because this game is actually pretty fun. Hours melt away (and not because you are waiting in a queue, har har).

Good! While I feel bad for those who purchased the game, hopefully this will give EA pause next time they choose to do some gully bullshit in the name of squeezing out a few extra bucks. I, too, used to defend them. After all, it is a publicly held company and they need to make a profit. And if they were putting out stellar games, I'd still defend them. But when marketing and microtransaction-related directive from EA hamper the overall experience, they should rightly suffer in the marketplace.

So glad I stood by my principles and continued to ignore everything that has an always-on DRM. The core-game itself doesn't look too appealing to me either with the small maps and everything. Too much "The Sims", not enough "Sim City".

This is basically Diablo 3 all over again (or even worse), complete with the core-game being fucked up because it was designed around the always-on DRM.

That's how I was on the first day. I got off work and was able to play for some 4-5 hours straight before I went to bed without a hitch. I have yet to get in the game even once today. You're very lucky.

Wish I would've pirated it.

I hope Sim City is the second game for TnT and its just 2 hours of Vinny closing down and reopening Origin.

Feel bad for the people who bought this day 1, but cmon people you should have know better after D3. I predicted this before the D3 launch and I thought the servers would be shit for SimCity (although not this bad). EA really fucked this up though

Yah, I had no problem playing until they started "fixing" it. which probably means that amazon called them up and told them that they were over heating the server room. Or they looked at how much band width they were using and realized this was going to cost a fortune.

All things that probably could have been figured out in a beta test. But my guess is that they had a test server up, in another location, probably using different hardware, for the beta test, and no one thought about that.

EA is the worlds worst drug dealer.

Numerous issues, it installed and patched perfectly but then

I could connect to the server in the launcher but once the game was launched, no dice.

When I finally got in the tutorial it would sometimes load and sometimes didn't exist, I got in the tutorial twice on two different servers but once I visited the other city within the tutorial I got disconnected.

I then couldn't connect for hours

I had to delete local user data multiple times because it got stuck in a checking for updates loop

When I finally reconnected later, I got through the tutorial when i went to create a region I couldn't claim the region I had created (on multiple serves)

Again left it for another hour and then had to do the tutorial again however this time it would not load it properly so i could see the city but had no instructions on what to do, I couldn't do a thing and this went on for about half an hour, after multiple server changes (where I basically couldn't even connect in the launcher most of the time) I got through and started to build my city and finally play (4 and a half hours after install) I played for about 3 hours and I really like the game.

I find it annoying that people are calling the always-online part of the game DRM, when that's really only half of it. Most of the simulation is being done on the cloud, that's what's fucking up the hip-hop so much.

As an owner of the game, I can say that when it works, it works really well. I've managed to get two cities going in a 5 city region and probably sunk about 7 or 8 hours into it. The worst part of the game is that it will sometimes launch when the servers are 'down' and then tell you when you load in that you can't do anything. Very frustrating.

The actual building part of the game is very good. It has a really neat trading system and building upgrades are satisfying. It also has a neat system where as long as you keep expanding zones, it's almost impossible to go broke. That's sort of like Anno 2070, where the solution to running out of money was to build more houses for taxpaying workers. The upgrade system for buildings is reminiscent of the last two Tropico games.

I really hope they get the bugs ironed out because the core game is worth playing.

I wish i could have that feeling =(
Until this server stuff gets sorted I'll play Tomb Raider.

I bought this on sale for $3. No DRM, takes up 50 MB, bigger cities, has Cheetah Speed, has a Mac version.

It's all part of the DRM scheme though. It's not like standard PCs are unable to do the simulation part; they do some of that stuff server-side to prevent the game from being cracked.

So glad I knew this shit was coming.

If only everyone else did...

This is the strangest game launch I've ever encountered. Somebody at EA fucked this up real hard.

I HATE EA so much, they just ruin everything

Same

I hope it's working when I get home, just bought it last night.

@project343: I have a feeling a lot of people are going to be saying that exact same thing lol.

"Well guys, back to the drawing board!"

I want to buy this game, but knew this would happen after my experience with D3. I'll be avoiding that 'confirm purchase' button until I see on here or some other website that things have been sorted out.

The game is now officially out in Europe. Expect server problems to be doubled.

The word of mouth for this game is already polarized to hell and back. Way to scare away potential customers and piss off everybody who already bought the game.

I find it hard to believe that nobody at the companies saw this coming.

"Everybody has to sign into the EA servers first before they can play."

"Shouldn't we test and make sure we'll be able to handle launch day and beyond?"

"Nah."

I don't even want to play the fucking game anymore, I just want a refund. I could have used that money on drugs and pizza.

There's no metric to measure how quickly my enthusiasm for this game shriveled up and died. Yeah, I anticipated server problems, although not on quite this monumental a scale. The biggest killer is the designed focus on multiplayer and cooperation, coupled with the abysmally tiny cities. I'm completely with Jeff, I want to build huge cities and that's about it. I don't give a hoot about other players, and I don't want to run multiple inferior cities by myself. Fundamentally they've designed a SimCity I don't want to play. So, meh.

Its really sad. SimCity doesn't deserve this. It should have been a new, bigger and better game, a 2013 title. Now it will be remembered for small city spaces and a bad launch.

When I log in to Origin it shows I've got 3 hours of time played. I've only played a few minutes and the rest of that time is how long its sat trying to connect to servers.

Love the series but I will not buy always online games. This is why.

This whole situation seems fairly similar to the whole mess surrounding the Simpsons Tapped Out Game that ea also have

Ah crap. I really wanted this game to be good. But EA stuffs it up again. Frickin "always online" crap.

The whole gameplay mechanic of being dependent on other players to make your city run well, as well as the small size of the cities is really not making me want to play this game anyway. I was looking forward to making a huge city, not those tiny things they showed in the quick look.

Polygon just dropped their score to 4.0. It is too bad, I imagine that original review sold a lot of copies.

I gave up buying day one releases a long time ago for these type of problems that continue to plague the industry. But no one ever learns. I would bet in a month or two, once this mess has been cleared up, it will be everything they have advertised it to be. Just like Diablo, Skyrim, Red Dead, Wii U, etc....

http://kotaku.com/5989350/nfl-punter-kicks-the-crap-out-of-ea-and-simcity

This is the greatest thing I've read all day. Oh man. Props to this guy. He tells it like it is. Kudos.

Hahahaha.

I say all of us out of luck mayors go build a sewage outflow pipe in EA's headquarters.

well i finally got into a game and played for a few hours but the game didn't save any of what i did and i lost everything! FUCK THIS!

European Servers seem to be imploding. First time I've seen that much red on the server screen.

A++ would prank again

I haven't played a PC game in a few years, and this was going to be the one that was going to draw me back in, but like a lot of people I have been hesitating to pick this up because of all the pre-launch issues and now with these launch issues I am just going to wait until it drops in price, or until they remove the stupid always online model.

http://www.polygon.com/game/simcity-2013/2630

From 8 to 4.

Oh wow! Also Amazon stopped selling it, there is a warning about the servers.

Dang, they stopped selling the damn thing? That's a whole new level for this stuff. Ouch.

It's day 3 and the servers are worse than they've been all week. The updater is slow, the servers disconnect constantly, the tutorial doesn't work correctly, and the game lags out consistently. EA really fucked this one good.

Congratulations Giantbomb on being the only site to write an article about SimCity's problems without using a SimCity natural disaster publicity shot as the picture for the story.

To EA and any other company that wants to restrict their game with crippling DRM: Stop It.

I'm sorry, but EA can sit and spin. I've never liked always-on DRM.

Lost all interest when it was clear it was just going to be Sim Village 2 with tiny districts and super heros so luckily stayed with CitiesXL Platinum ( Sim City 4 fans should give that a go ) and now that it's clear just how much a mess the launch is I'm really starting to apriciate just how sceptical I have become with age regarding both reboots of old franchises, but certainly also EA

Feel bad about those who lost money and time and still can't play.. but are also wondering why they haven't learned the lesson to wait for reviews and launch before buying games

It's seriously depressing that these sorts of releases are continuing. I dread the future where it's an accepted thing that you just can't play a new PC game for a few days after it comes out while the companies try to get their stupid always on server shit strait.

Maxis' getting boned over by EA on this one. They must be pretty bummed out.

At the same time though Wow is a MMO this is happening to people trying to have a single player experience. This is just the worst.