SimCity performance/server/technical problems.

Thought I would start a general thread about performance/server/technical problems with SimCity.

I downloaded the game this morning and been playing it for the past 30 minutes. My game crashed four times in a row after a few minutes of play. WTF is going on with the EA servers, my game has been lost every time.

Initially when I started the game, the tutorial was bugged and no menus appeared. I quit and restarted and now no tutorial appeared.

I dropped all my settings to low, even though my PC runs most games at Ultra setting and the problems still occur. The EA community mangers haven't made a single response to the numerous complaints about the same issues. I'm not one to direct irrational complaints at EA but I'm in NYC and playing day 1 in the evening, if EA can't get enough servers going to accommodate this area they are dropping the ball. Sort it out!

@djou: I HAVE THE SAME PROBLEM. The game is unplayable. I cant even view the icons for the build menu. I'm done with the game for today, hopefully this is sorted out quickly.

Tried to play the "getting started" mission to get acquainted with the game's systems. Loaded fine. Then nothing happened. Couldn't click on anything or do anything. So I guess the lesson is: don't play this game.

You know what, fuck this shit. I'll give it another couple goes, but if it stays like this I'll be back in two weeks to see if anything works.

Having the same issue...

I was able to get on and play a private sessions about 4 hours ago. I tried just a minute or two ago and nothing. Either the servers are congested or busted. Or both.

Also, the region I started has vanished into thin air. Not that I care since it was more of a test region, but fuck man.

The tutorial progressed after I deleted the beta and changed servers.

Other then it being a pain to install I have not had a single problem until the last couple hours. It takes forever to load or move through menus, when I try to play a city I have built it only lets me spectate it and not play it, and when I try to make/join a new one it just says it can't and to try later.

I'm trying to claim a City on a private game and getting denied... so thats cool

@endoworks: You might need to quit, restart SimCity and wait for the tutorial mission prompt. I think it'll deny you until you play the tutorial msision, sadly. It just happened with me.

Now I'm experiencing the strangest thing with none of my terrain showing in the city view. I basically just redownloaded it and I'm going to see if it was just me messing up an update or something but I'm pretty worried.

EDIT: I actually ended up fixing it by redownloading it and letting the update finish; for some reason the first time I updated it the 'processing large file' bit didn't come up and I'm betting that's what had to do with me not seeing the terrain first time around.

Whew, I almost died of cardiac arrest five times from SimCity today, and not a in a good way!

I'm starting to feel extremely fortunate that I haven't had any problems like everyone else has so far. I had my first city get rolled back once, but other than that no trouble whatsoever. No queues, nothing. I'm on US West 1 I think, but I joined a Giant Bomb region so I'm not sure if I am still on US West 1.

I've been playing all day without issue, but that's probably because I'm on the European servers. Maybe I wont be so lucky on the 8th, when it's released there...

This is not being helped at all by the fact my mouse decided to start intermittently unclicking and reclicking, so I tried dragging a long straight road and instead dragged a bunch of little extra ones at the end jutting off at awkward angles wasting money. Hooray for circumstances. And my mouse is no longer under warranty because I opened it up to try and fix this same issue before.

So yeah, SimCity is not really rubbing me the right way, and neither is my formerly trusted Logitech G500.

I had completed the tutorial already, I was just getting denied on creating a game after that. I have since gotten to start a few cities but the game crashed back to windows after about 10 minutes. Oh well it will get figured out in good time!

I can connect to the servers (European because North America only has 2 which are overflowing) but I can't make a city because I can't claim a plot, SO FUCK THAT I GUESS

I downloaded it this morning at 12AM when it was released. Took about 25 minutes. No issues. Then played it for 2 hours with no issues. Went to sleep. I have been playing it all day today with no issues, expect that while I was playing it said the server went down. So at some point something must have happened but I was ok with that as I figured something would go wrong eventually. That stuff just happens. Other that, have been having a great time with it. Great game!

After a few hours of trying to find a resolution I was finally able to log on and play. If others are having a problem try jumping onto another server. I've been looking at the EA twitter account and they seem to be opening up new servers to address people's complaints. Even though I'm on the East coast, I started playing on the new West coast server 2 and had no problems besides a few laggy points.

Initially it was running great but now it seems to crash every 30-60 mins. Thankfully the game saves my data somehow before it crashes and I have to ctrl-alt-del that shit. Maybe it's the saving that's causing the crashes?

Has any one else been able to play? Since around 7:00pm-8:00 last night I have not been able to play this game. Every time I try to log into a city or make a new one it just times out and says to try again later, but the launcher is saying all the servers are up and running fine.

And now I can get in but it crashes to desktop every 10-15 min. Joy oh joy.

@crusader8463: I had a similar problem last night but eventually I was able to get on. After a lot of web browsing I figured out all the problems are on server side. I got past it by jumping around between different servers. I would seriously recommend tweeting Maxis or posting on their forum, they seem pretty active in answering people. (link) The community managers are dropping the ball in a lot of aspects. I couldn't post on the forum last night because their servers were crashing. They really need to get an earful from players. Especially if EA is price gouging folks with deluxe editions and day one DLC and then not opening up enough servers to accommodate players in a game that doesn't fucking need to be online.

@djou: I was finally able to get on about an hour ago, but after 10-15 min they kicked me out for server maintenance. Fingers crossed that will fix the problem. I'm not going to waste my time setting up a twitter account or a forum account just to bitch and moan because it's not going to do anything. There's already 20+ page threads of people doing it. One more isn't going to do anything, and EA is not going to change their ways. They already got our money so unless this pisses off enough people that no one buys their next few games they will keep on doing this.

Due to the limited size of the city, I decided to start a second city to support my first. The game started to crash, so I decided to switch servers from Europe to North America (I don't even know why they assigned me to Europe in the first place). Upon doing that, I've lost my first city and can't get back onto the European server to see if that's the reason. Nothing they've done to "support" the players as they claim has been particularly helpful.

I was able to play it last night, but I tried to start it just now and it hit me with a three hour queue. That is insane, I shouldn't have to wait any time to play a single-player game, but three hours is just bonkers. I just closed the game and I'm going to play something else. Even Diablo 3 wasn't this bad. It was messed up on launch day, but after that the worst I ever had was a two or three minute queue.

I think maybe my favorite technical problem is the part where it tells me I can't connect to the servers and to click the "more info" link to find out more...and when I click on said link it redirects me to a thread on the EA forums that doesn't exist.

I played all day yesterday, without any problems. I live in Utah, and even playing on the East US (it wouldn't let me choose any other server) server, I was fine. Today, I can't play. If I can make it in the game, it says I'm not connected and I can't do anything.

Well...I bought it this morning at Gamefly with a promo code...figured it'd be working tonight. It's not. Cannot authenticate with servers, cannot claim land, and once the tutorial loads up...nothing happens. It just sits there. I can't do anything. No voice over, no controls given to me, just a tease of everybody rioting in front of Town Hall. It's March 6th guys...this game isn't even operable on my end yet.

Wow.

Got into the game for about 5 minutes today, waited for servers to load for 30. One thing amused me, while I was waiting an incredibly long time for my city to load one of the messages read: "Generating Wave of Unhappiness".

:'(. EA, you should be ashamed of yourselves!

@endoworks: I got the same thing, then came here. Been waiting for the tutorial to pop up, nothing. So I go into the menu, press the "How to play" or whatever: "Cannot load city at this time". Funny.

Not strange though, seeing how it is currently 8:45 PM on the day it unlocked here in Norway. Seeing how bad it went down in US I kinda expect it not to work today. Will see later I guess.

i'm currently stuck in the "Check for updates" screen. i checked EA's site, it recommended deleting the folder User Data. i don't have a folder called User Data, so i guess i'm just s**t out of luck. unless it wants me to delete the files in SimCityUserData... i might just do it out of cheer frustration.
https://help.ea.com/article/why-is-my-launcher-stuck-at-checking-for-updates

I've gotten to the title screen once, but the game kicked me out of the server when I tried to start a game. For the first time ever I'm thinking of demanding a refund, but since I bought the game through GOG I think it'd be too much of a hassle.

I've been able to get in without issue and play without doing the tutorial since launch day, but the game itself doesn't feel quite right..(I'm in the U.S. playing on a European Server)

This is just pathetic, just released in my region says servers are up but when I go to play I go into a tutorial that never loads.

@ienkub:The folder is somewhere on your HDD everyone has one, but beware if you delete it your city may be stuck on the server you originally played. A few people posting on this thread since the patch last night have had the same problem. I deleted my user data folder and my region got stuck on the West 2 server even though I could only log onto the European servers. The whole thing has been real fucked. Worst part is that my city was hitting a critical point, 200k population and many of my services were beginning to fail so I need to micromanaged the hell out of it and couldn't log back in to work on it.

@djou: cheers! yes, i deleted the files in SimCityUserData, thinking i don't even care if the game breaks - and it worked fine. they could have said "Simcityuserdata" instead of just "user data", but whatevs.