SimCity: Now With 92% Less Crashing; Maxis Walks Back from Offline Comment

SimCity Update #4 is penned by EA Maxis SVP Lucy Bradshaw, who is "happy to report that the core problem with getting in and having a great SimCity experience is almost behind us," saying they have "reduced game crashes by 92% from day one." She admits she's not able to offer the "all clear" for the game she'd hoped to, but seems optimistic that they've turned the corner from the game's rocky launch. There's also a new tweet on the SimCity account quickly walking back from this tweet they posted over the weekend which said: "We have no intention of offlining SimCity any time soon but we'll look into that as part of our earning back your trust efforts." It seems there is a disagreement among the operators of their twitter account, because the new update states this isn't actually possible: "The game was designed for MP, we sim the entire region on the server so this is just not possible."
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Re: SimCity: Now With 92% Less Crashing; Maxis Walks Back from Offline Comment
Mar 11, 2013, 10:13
20.
Re: SimCity: Now With 92% Less Crashing; Maxis Walks Back from Offline Comment Mar 11, 2013, 10:13
Mar 11, 2013, 10:13
 
Kajetan wrote on Mar 11, 2013, 09:37:
Verno wrote on Mar 11, 2013, 09:10:
I don't see people getting a lot of mileage out of this, we were bored after a few hours and loaded up Company of Heroes to do some LAN. Cities XL seems more ambitious which is kinda sad.
Remember The Sims? The first one? Where, after a few hours of feverish playing you just stopped, because you realized that you had done everything this game had to offer? And when the addons were released, you thought "Oh, boy (or girl)! Finally some new furnitures and things to do around the house!".

Well, my sister thought that. Nearly three years. Bought an addon, played a week, got bored because she had seen everything, stopped playing, bought the next addon, repeat. And when The Sims 2 was released, she just shrugged and said: "Meh, the same only with nicer graphics, i'll pass. Lets play some WoW!"

They are trying the Sims approach. Offer the player little, so that DLC and addons seem to be much more attractive.

The Sims and SimCity are really pretty different games, though. There is really no such thing as "failure" in the Sims. You can entertain yourself endlessly by building a house and then watch your Sims go about their daily business without input from you of any kind.

In SimCity, your city simply goes up in flames once it reaches 150K population or thereabouts, apparently based on completely arbitrary reasons.

Casual players love the Sims. I'm not sure that SimCity has anywhere near that same appeal. EA WANTS it to, of course, and I'm sure they'll try to cram at least a dozen DLC packs out there, but I doubt the loyal fanbase is big enough to make it worth it for them.

Creston
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  Re: SimCity: Now With 92% Less Crashing; Maxis Walks Back from Offline Comment