SimCity launch shameful: don't buy it yet (or at all) - MyGaming column

That's a bit unfair. You fail to mention that since the EU launch yesterday Maxis have added 5 new servers to the listing, one for NA, 3 for Europe and 1 for Oceania.

You also fail to mention that the EU launch was a lot smoother than the NA launch. The worst I got last night was a 19 minute login queue. Even though it was annoying, it's a lot better than NA where people sat in queues and just got kicked the moment they tried to join the game or they got kicked in the middle of a session.
 
Graal said:
That's a bit unfair. You fail to mention that since the EU launch yesterday Maxis have added 5 new servers to the listing, one for NA, 3 for Europe and 1 for Oceania.

You also fail to mention that the EU launch was a lot smoother than the NA launch. The worst I got last night was a 19 minute login queue. Even though it was annoying, it's a lot better than NA where people sat in queues and just got kicked the moment they tried to join the game or they got kicked in the middle of a session.
Click to expand...

The game is unplayable today. The core of the design is flawed. It's not good enough to fix the game after the fact. It shouldn't have been launched as such a broken mess in the first place. This issue extends far beyond this one gaming title as well, and speaks to the direction the gaming industry is eye-balling in general.
 
Always on internet fail no.xxxxxxxx
At least some of the other titles have a offline components to
keep the buyer busy while there design/servers take a dive
 
Last edited:
You do know how hard it is to gauge demand for an online-only game is before release, right? You can make assumptions based on the beta, but the beta numbers are never going to be an indication of just how many people are going to be playing this. I agree, Maxis should have had more servers right from the start, but they're actually going out of their way here to alleviate the issues. The game's been out 4 days and the servers have been doubled already.

It's not like they can just decide before release that they're going to implement 20 servers per region, only for 10 to get used and even more of those falling into disuse as people move on to other games in the following weeks. Hosting a server costs a lot of money, especially when it needs to move the amount of data these are moving. The fact that I could still successfully play, without interruption, the game until 12PM (at which time I decided to go to bed) yesterday night shows the launch in EU went a lot smoother than NA. I'd probably be pissed too if I had the time to play today, but today's issues were not unexpected. It's saturday. There are probably 1000s of people hammering every server available trying to get a spot to play. NA users are more than likely also trying to get onto EU servers, making the issue even worse. It doesn't help that some of the servers are also down for maintenance, meaning the people who played on those servers are also crowding to get into the ones that are actually available.

As far as online-only launches go, I've seen worse. I actually think Diablo 3's launch was a lot worse than Simcity's launch. Blizzard also handled the issues with a lot less finesse than Maxis is doing. I don't recall apologies from Blizzard, or free games to compensate or them almost doubling their server capacity.

My advice? Get this game next week, when most of the issues should be sorted. It's an amazing little Simcity-offshoot that is loads of fun to play socially.
 
Graal said:
That's a bit unfair. You fail to mention that since the EU launch yesterday Maxis have added 5 new servers to the listing, one for NA, 3 for Europe and 1 for Oceania.

You also fail to mention that the EU launch was a lot smoother than the NA launch. The worst I got last night was a 19 minute login queue. Even though it was annoying, it's a lot better than NA where people sat in queues and just got kicked the moment they tried to join the game or they got kicked in the middle of a session.
Click to expand...

You effectively paid premium price for an unstable game, where you have to wait in a queue for over a quarter of an hour to play? I'm sorry, but but it looks like to me that you got the short end of the stick, and funny thing is, you're fine with it.
 
Because there hasn't been a single online-only game that has struggled with capacity issues in the last few years, right? Hint: Almost every online game struggles, even MMOs.

I'm not fine with the server issues, but I'm not a complete moron either. I realise that it was a mistake on Maxis' part and that the issues are temporary. Am I happy that I can't play at the moment? Hell no. Am I going to be an internet rageboy about it and be completely irrational? Also, no.
 
Graal said:
You do know how hard it is to gauge demand for an online-only game is before release, right? You can make assumptions based on the beta, but the beta numbers are never going to be an indication of just how many people are going to be playing this. I agree, Maxis should have had more servers right from the start, but they're actually going out of their way here to alleviate the issues. The game's been out 4 days and the servers have been doubled already.

It's not like they can just decide before release that they're going to implement 20 servers per region, only for 10 to get used and even more of those falling into disuse as people move on to other games in the following weeks. Hosting a server costs a lot of money, especially when it needs to move the amount of data these are moving. The fact that I could still successfully play, without interruption, the game until 12PM (at which time I decided to go to bed) yesterday night shows the launch in EU went a lot smoother than NA. I'd probably be pissed too if I had the time to play today, but today's issues were not unexpected. It's saturday. There are probably 1000s of people hammering every server available trying to get a spot to play. NA users are more than likely also trying to get onto EU servers, making the issue even worse. It doesn't help that some of the servers are also down for maintenance, meaning the people who played on those servers are also crowding to get into the ones that are actually available.

As far as online-only launches go, I've seen worse. I actually think Diablo 3's launch was a lot worse than Simcity's launch. Blizzard also handled the issues with a lot less finesse than Maxis is doing. I don't recall apologies from Blizzard, or free games to compensate or them almost doubling their server capacity.

My advice? Get this game next week, when most of the issues should be sorted. It's an amazing little Simcity-offshoot that is loads of fun to play socially.
Click to expand...

You've now turned into one of those idiots that defend a broken and flawed game.
 
An idiot for defending an amazing game that is currently experiencing technical issues which will more than likely be completely resolved by this time next week? Sure, czc. Sure.

Have you actually played the game or are you basing everything you think on hearsay?
 
Last edited:
I'm with Graal on this one. I haven't bought SimCity and I more than likely won't be buying it, but from what I can tell the game is fine. Altho, I wouldn't even say that it is the same as Diablo3 either. You'd think that Blizzard would have thought that they would sell insane amounts of copies of Diablo3, one of the greatest, biggest and most anticipated PC game for a long time, and planned appropriately with an amount of servers to keep up, whereas I don't think that Maxis would have believed that he would be selling as many copies of SimCity.

Should he have prepared for the worst? Yes. Is he actively communicating and trying to resolve the server issue..... from what I can tell....Yes.

My advice? Give it a day, see if it gets better. If it does, then they will have outshone Blizzard...... cause it took me weeks before I could play the game with any lagless success.
 
James said:
The game is unplayable today. The core of the design is flawed. It's not good enough to fix the game after the fact. It shouldn't have been launched as such a broken mess in the first place. This issue extends far beyond this one gaming title as well, and speaks to the direction the gaming industry is eye-balling in general.
Click to expand...

+1 million
 
Toxin said:
I'm with Graal on this one. I haven't bought SimCity and I more than likely won't be buying it, but from what I can tell the game is fine. Altho, I wouldn't even say that it is the same as Diablo3 either. You'd think that Blizzard would have thought that they would sell insane amounts of copies of Diablo3, one of the greatest, biggest and most anticipated PC game for a long time, and planned appropriately with an amount of servers to keep up, whereas I don't think that Maxis would have believed that he would be selling as many copies of SimCity.

Should he have prepared for the worst? Yes. Is he actively communicating and trying to resolve the server issue..... from what I can tell....Yes.

My advice? Give it a day, see if it gets better. If it does, then they will have outshone Blizzard...... cause it took me weeks before I could play the game with any lagless success.
Click to expand...

I would assume that EA felt it would be better to have less available connections to a server than have a whole lot of servers that become dormant after 3 months.
 
Glordit said:
I would assume that EA felt it would be better to have less available connections to a server than have a whole lot of servers that become dormant after 3 months.
Click to expand...

It's not just that people aren't able to connect to the server. It costs them the loyalty of lots of the people who pre-ordered the games (some would argue the most valuable people). It causes enormous damage to their brand name, because you can excuse the first company to screw up, but when every single always-online DRM game has screwed up at launch that just becomes more and more inexcusable. The same guys above who pre-ordered the games are the ones who will be advertising it to their friends (or who won't be). That could cause a massive secondary sales drive, or none at all. Lots of people also look to the reviewers and a lot of the big reviewing companies that I've personally seen have torn into this game and the DRM issues. Destructoid, IGN, GameSpot en Forbes (lol). How bad does it have to be that EA themselves have asked that people stop advertising the game? How bad does it have to be that Amazon have stopped selling the game because they must have received so many complaints and requests for refunds?

EDIT: How does all of that weigh up against the cost of additional servers to ensure a smooth launch, or just adding offline in the first place? Look at what happened with Torchlight II. Their servers also fell over on launch day, but nobody cared because they just went offline and had a ball! That's how it should be done... It should provide an advantage to the player to be online, not be a necessity.

After what happened to Diablo 3, how do you rate the chances of a Diablo 4 or even an expansion for D3? My guess is that it won't sell nearly as much copies as D3 because people have been burned. That hurts the industry and it hurts the franchise. The same thing will probably happen here. This Simcity might still get good sales, but it's effects will only be shown in the next title (if there ever is one).
 
Last edited:
Wyzak, you are aware that the biggest irony is that so far, on these forums as well as MyBB, the people making the biggest fuss are people who don't even own the game?

When people actually get to play the game the consensus seems to be that it's an amazing game. Once the server issues are sorted, do you think people are going to tell people 'this game had server issues don't buy it?'

I wonder, once the server issues are sorted, what are people like you going to do? I would assume it would get awfully boring for you once news sites stop having reasons to lambast the game.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top