This doesn't really matter. Always online only really mattered during the clusterfuck of a launch. The game is still crippled by tiny city size due to a poorly optimized simulation and the agents are still pretty dumb. The only real advantage to this change is a save system.

I was fine with the online thing since I got the game months after release and there were no more server issues. I like the game. My problem with the game was the small cities. Offline mode means that mods no longer need to be "official". Hopefully that means we see a big city mod within hours of the patch. I could see getting into SimCity again. I like how it plays and everything else about it besides the city size.

About time. It's only taken 25 years!

Yeah no. Gamers are one of the few groups willing to make a stink about things when assholes in suits start infringing on consumer rights and trying to dick over the player with aggressive campaigns for nickel and dime schemes and blatant lies to the player base.

But of course, gamers are babies because you couldn't get off your ass to vote for a company that, in your mind, really does deserve the "worst company of the year" award.

SimCity, Battlefield 4, NBA Live 14

Hella babies, those plebian gamers.

I would love to live in the bubble which allows me to believe that a video game publisher is the worst company in the world.

But... but that's not possible!

This fixes one of my big issues with the game but it isn't enough for me to start playing it again. They would need to add bigger cities for me to really get back into the game.

On a side note I would love for a new Simcopter game where I could import my regions from Simcity (like the old Simcopter game could).

Great, now if they can just fix the part where a ton of the other parts of the game suck and it's not a very fun game to play as well.

Sure, Walmart might pay full time employees such low wages that they need to be on government assistance to not starve, be homeless, or for healthcare, and Bank of America might go absolutely nuts about evicting people from their homes, or Dow Chemicals might refuse to take any responsibility at all for the Bhopal disaster, and sure Monsanto is in the process of dangerously becoming a de facto monoploly holder in terms of food production due to some very questionable business practices, and then there is every energy company and nearly banking and financial institution as well.

But I didn't like how Mass Effect 3 ended and I Don't Like DLC!!

I would love it if they had the shear audacity to put out a trailer starting with (trailer voice)

"They said it couldn't be done.... They said it would be impossible...."

SimCity 2 (TBA)

• Now With Cities
• Walk The Streets Of Your City in First Person Pedestrian Mode
• New Terrain Deformation Options Opening New Ways To Utilize Your Much Larger Building Space
• Option To Buy Land And Expand Your Cities' Building Space
• Option To Create Artificial Islands To Expand Your Cities' Building Space Even More
• Option To Build Underground City Complexes Requires Post Apocalyptic City (Child Of The Caverns) Expansion Pack
• New Game Engine Optimized For City Sized Cities And Terrain Deformation
• New Offline Mode
• New Server Infrastructure Capable Of Serving Real-Time Multiplayer Gameplay And Stats World Wide
• New CO-OP Mode Build A Mega City With One Or Multiple Friends Share A Budget Share The Challenges Share The Success

or not.

So time for the inevitable question - Is Cities XL any good? Not sure whether to give it a download (picked it up for nothing in a sale ages ago but haven't got round it it yet).

I've yet to hear the part where you're trying to do something about any of that in your little diatribe.

Like I said, all you're doing is complaining about people who are doing something about a thing they don't like.

@ghostiet: Yup, agreed.

Too little, too late.

This is like saying "Yeah, it sucks that your dog died, but at least you live in a first world country and have internet access and 3 meals a day."

Don't minimize problems because it's "worse" somewhere else.

Been a great year for EA.

The fact that gamers think that EA is the worst company in America shows what a tiny little bubble you live in if DLC and poorly produced games are the biggest problems you see in the world.

Or should I be orchestrating a one person campaign of terror and assassinations to bump off those people and stop anyone from replacing them, would that be enough for you? Because I mean you clicked on a button on a web page a few time to vote in a poll so you're basically a hero. So really any tips you've got for me would be just swell.

Edit: And are you still buying EA games, despite how mad you are about them? I bet you are. Because it's very important to play the cool AAA games of the season. EA doesn't give a shit if you vote them the worst company in America as long as you keep buying their games.

Haha. 2013: I've wasted so much money on crappy, unfinished games I still think they had a great year because of morons like myself.

Offline mode seems good in theory (I won't call it great, because this is still Simcity we're talking about), but it kinda depends on if it's just an 'offline mode' toggle kind of thing, or if they do actual work.

Because I did kinda enjoy making cities that specialized and had interdependency, but trading (resources or services) between cities has always been a big, laggy, occasionally-vanishing-things-into-the-ether problem. And only moreso when you're one player switching between multiple cities.

You often have to kill a city's identity and design in order for it to be functional and optimal within the tight space it has available to it. It is really a bear-trap for creativity.

This is exactly what I mean; it's easy to be cynical and it's a lot harder to actually do something. So people like you, people who can't be bothered to get involved with something (anything) sit there and criticize and mock the people who do.

EA being a terrible company may not be a big deal to you, that's cool. So why don't you get involved with something you do perceive as a big deal? Why is it you feel the need to mock other people for dealing with something they consider a problem in their favourite hobby?

I don't think you can; or want to.

Yes EA is not the worst company, BUT for as little as a dumb online poll can have an impact, they are probably the most likely company among the top runners to actually react to it. To that end, I think them "winning" that poll is at least useful. I mean online polls are dumb, yes; at the end of the day what do they actually accomplish? If anything useful could comes from it, it's that the company will take it to heart and actually try to do something about it. I feel confident in my assessment that none of the other companies in the running are/were going to give two shits about an internet poll, but EA might. So end of today, it's probably for the better that they were voted over more "deserving" companies.

That's why, while yes it winning was probably due to a good amount of kids who lack more important things than video games to be concerned about in their lives, it's still probably the best choice in terms of that poll having any value whatsoever.

---

Regarding an apology for prior statements regarding the viability of an offline mode, I'd rather have transparency than apology. It would be really damn refreshing for them to say, "hey, here's what was going on at the time, here's what motivated that statement, and here's why we decided to change". Company apologies are ultimately hollow appeasement and not very useful. Transparency, knowing how and why things went south is much more useful, because sometimes in the very act of forming statements like that, companies themselves get to the bottom of why things went wrong and where they need to make corrections in their organization.

With games like Cities XL around, there should be no reason for anyone to play Sim City anymore. Sim City when compared to Cities XL is like a very limited and crappy port to an inferior platform. There is literally nothing that Sim City does that comes even close to quality of the game/mechanics in Cities XL.

Huh, who said that? Where was that said, not a single person in this thread said that except you. He said EA was the worst company three years running, that is a real thing he nor did anyone else say that they are the biggest problems in the world NO ONE except you stop being facetious.

I hate articles that end in a question. Alex somehow manages to do it in such a way that I don't find it as infuriating, but it still bugs me on some level. Part of it is because every time I see it, I hear a teachers voice telling me not to end a paper with a question (although I understand an article on the internet is not an academic paper), part of it is simply wasting part of your word count telling people to do something they're already going to do, and most writers completely screw up the flow of their writing to shoehorn that in to the last paragraph. Part of me wants to start writing BuzzFeed articles just so I can end them in nonsensical, philosophical quandaries that have nothing to do with the rest of the article, so I can show everyone else how I feel.

....</rant>

Maybe I'll boot up SimCity again.

Sigh, I might go back and try it again. I actually committed the sin of buying the game amid the shitstorm it held during it's launch. There was a core game there that I really liked. It's really too bad they fucked it up.

LMAO. That's all I can say.

Do I want to support a company that lied about the necessity of the always-online bullshit and tried to spin draconian DRM into an important feature for the players? Nope.

What an absolute clusterfuck.

So does this mean the GB duders now have to go back and redo the entire GOTY 2013 podcasts with this in mind?

@likeassur: "Don't minimize problems because it's "worse" somewhere else."

You're giving this advice in a conversation about the Worst Company in the World Award.

WORST COMPANY.

@dooley: The city size alone is a dealbreaker for me, there's just no variety with such small city limits. It's a huge step back from previous games, and that's why people are complaining.

Why do I find this incredibly hilarious?

Really though....?

Oh, so NOW SimCity 2013 will allow offline play. Sorry @EA, but until you let me create a metropolis within one tile, you can't have my money.

The reason they're doing this is because the game is pretty much forgotten by now. They're probably getting ready to take down the servers and hope to make a few more bucks out of it by finally giving the gamers what they've wanted since release. They shut down the Spore servers (though it worked offline without modification), they'll shut down the SimCity servers, and I think this indicates that'll happen sooner rather than later. It might be different if the game had been hugely successful.

It had so much promise. They have (or had) the time, technology, and money to do some great things with the game and its franchise, but too many things held it back.

Its just a shame, coming from someone who really enjoyed SimCity 4.

Maybe once the city sizes get bigger. Much bigger. (won't ever happen with this game)

First cheetah speed, now this! Wow, what times we live in. I can only dream of what they might think of next.

And still they're the company with the most power.

I'll play some Sim City if it's offline, like it should have been in the first place. I bought it on release, tried to play, and then gave up

Nope. Kinda don't care about simcity anymore. Maybe if they would have been more upfront about what the game actually was, I would feel different.

I wonder when they will realize they cannot salvage this mess.

@hunter5024: My guess is that they realized it months ago.

I always knew the future would be all about offline....

Thanks Electronic Obama.

So how fast can someone get out a bigger cities mod?

Looks like we have a nominee for "Greatest Update for a Game of All Time EVER" award at the end of the year. Yep.