Is it really safe yet? I mean, I can't avoid the horror stories. I want to play it, but just cannot justify supporting continuously broken content. Thanks Duders.

Don't support crap DRM.

@bestusernameever: Yeah, Its really a disappointing thing in all.

@vegetashonor: At least wait until they re-enable cheetah speed. As it stands, you do a lot of waiting with llama speed being the maximum.

Its pretty much safe to get now if you really want to play, there haven't been any down time for a while (for me at least). If you dont absolutly want to play it right now i would suggest waiting for a sale or something

Wait for them to come out and admit they lied about the needing to be online for calculations. When they man up and admit they lied and say it was DRM then I will maybe think about buying it.

Wow, thanks so far guys

play sim city 4 with mods and wait

There's still many things broken with the game aside from the server bullshit, I would hold off.

Yeah, if you're not really jonesing for it then I'd wait at least until they reestablish Cheetah speed. Also fixing the commuter bug would be nice.

That said, I've been having a ton of fun with the game, lumps and all. I've had absolutely 0 problems playing since last Saturday and have probably put in something around 20 hours + another 10 letting the game generate money while doing periodic spot checks to fix issues. If you can't get behind the core design idea of multiple smaller cities forming the equivalent of a megacity within a region, then don't bother. This isn't the game for you. I've embraced it though and have derived endless enjoyment both from min/maxing multiple cities in my own private region and participating in @sexytoad's GB region.

There are numerous tiny issues and things that don't work quite as well as you'd like them to, but I've stopped noticing all of them because of how much fun the game is pumping directly into my brain. Now excuse me while I get back to working on my city with 0 traffic lights.

Play SimCity 4. It is so awesome. I started playing it a bit ago. It is an absolute blast.

yea, its pretty safe to play now. It sucks that you have to be online all the time, but the game itself is great.

Even when everything is working as they intended the game is still broken. It's just when there's a problem as big as their server issues people tend to forget about complaining about the other stuff. It's amazing for the first 5 hours or so but after that all the broken shit starts to rear its ugly head. If you listen to the Tested podcast they point out some of the problems.

Bought it today. It seems like a really great game, everyone just wants to throw a fit to get attention and feel important. If you like Sim City you'll love the new game.

Plus if you buy it and activate it before Monday you qualify for the free EA game (yet to be revealed). You'll be losing money if you wait to buy it.

@seamus85: Is it really that good? I didnt play it man

I'm on my phone so I can't reply directly, but oh man, jdh5153, continuing his streak of being a pretty big tool. "You'll be losing money if you wait to buy it." That's precious.

If getting some undefined game for free before the cutoff motivates someone to get the new SimCity, then A) that's ass-backwards, and B) they're a terribly irresponsible consumer.

@bisonhero said:

It's a legitimate point, even if he expressed it badly. If you're leaning toward buying the game, it makes sense to at least get something additional out of EA while you can. On the other hand, if you're not leaning toward buying the game, the free title from EA shouldn't be enough to change your mind.

@haggis said:

Yeah, that is true. If people are doing it for the right reasons, I'm fine with someone buying SimCity to cash-in on the free game. Still, I think it's a little scummy the way that EA did it, where the free game A) placates disgruntled owners of SimCity, and B) also entices non-owners who have been turned away by the bad word of mouth. They're casting the widest net possible to get people playing their game, even though the traffic is still broken and cheetah speed is still disabled (or it was when I last checked).

I know it's not the exact same situation, but I prefer how Nintendo did it with the 3DS:

• Buy it before the price cut date: be an Ambassador, get free downloadable games, hopefully you like some of them
• Buy it after price cut date: not an Ambassador, but the price cut happened, so you pay less

For non-owners, what they got out of the deal was up to the consumer: get some free games (that have stayed Ambassador-exclusive for quite some time), or save some actual money. With SimCity, for non-owners, they can: pay for SimCity now and get a free game, or pay for SimCity later and get nothing else. I just really hate the "BUY NOW!" mindset it promotes.

@bisonhero: I would have been more supportive of EA's free game thing if the date cut-off had been, say, anyone who bought the game the first week, when people didn't know the servers weren't working. Pushing the date to the 18th seems to be them trying to entice people to buy it when they're not even sure the servers are going to be up and fully functional.

On the other hand, I don't think it's "scummy" for them to be trying to sell their game, even if it does rub me the wrong way. They didn't have to give anything away, after all. It seems unlikely that anything they did in response to this was going to be completely free of criticism. As far as things go, I don't think the free game thing is the worst of their response. The worst of it has been Lucy Bradsahw's Baghdad Bob-like "we're getting so many positive comments!" bullshit. I wouldn't want her job--it's damned near impossible--but they could at least treat their customers with some respect and be honest.

In comparison to that, the free game bit is damned subtle. :/

They probably have gotten lots of positive comments. Aside from the tiny city size, the game actually makes a great first impression. Hell, despite my issues with some of the broken gameplay systems, I've still been playing it for a few hours almost every day (with the hope those issues will be patched).

If all you do is look at the reaction a game is getting on the internet, then you're probably not getting the full picture. People who are just playing and enjoying the game, largely won't take the time to go to forums and talk about it. On the other hand, if you hate the game, you're liable to want to vent about it.

And if you're a casual SimCity player, you may have not even noticed that some systems don't work right - like how cop cars will all swarm to each crime in sequence, or how dumb traffic is.

Honestly, if they implement an option to, say, double the city sizes, and fix the busted gameplay systems, I think it's a pretty good game. Probably not the revelation Sim City 2000 was, but still a good game. The online integration has some neat ideas, though it requires you to put a lot of faith in your regional players to co-operate.

@scotto said:

If that's the case, which to people who've been around on the internet for while seems obviously true, then where would she be getting these 'positive comments' from? People in the street?

And to address the actual topic of the thread, I'd agree with other people saying buy it once they actually re-enable the things they had to disable to prevent the servers dying, as in cheetah speed and the leader boards. At that point, it should be like them saying 'this is now the actual product as it should have been at release'. How much enjoyment specifically you might get out of it will then depend on how sensitive you are to detecting the bugs and underlying problems.

We do have to keep in mind that if the game was functioning they would be too busy playing the game the first few days and weeks to complain about it. :)

People who bought the game can now geta free copy of Sim City 4. Just get Sim City 4.

http://www.giantbomb.com/simcity/3030-37620/forums/is-it-safe-to-buy-this-yet-1428190/

I cracked.

"As a token of our appreciation for all the support we’ve received from SimCity fans over the past week EA is offering a free EA PC digital download game to anyone who purchases and authenticates SimCity by March 25, 2013 at 11:59pm PST."

https://help.ea.com/article/simcity-something-extra