Interesting comment in the RPS article, from someone who claims to be a Maxis dev:

So how difficult would it be for EA to create a single-player game that simply did away with the multiplayer-derived aspects and just let us build? It seems that lies somewhere between “easy peasy” and Bradshaw’s claims of “significant engineering”. According to our source:

“It wouldn’t take very much engineering to give you a limited single-player game without all the nifty region stuff.”

So if this source is good, than it really is all about the region stuff. Although the Kotaku article says he was sending and receiving region commodities while offline. Go figure....

Kajetan wrote on Mar 12, 2013, 19:17:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/12/simcity-server-not-necessary/

As it says: Servers are not necessary!

Crazy, and not totally unexpected. Thanks Kajetan.

Also found this:

http://kotaku.com/5990165/my-simcity-city-thrived-offline-for-19-minutes

19 minutes, no server.

If you think people were pissed about the slow server BS before, wait till the masses find out that the server isn't doing squat for the current city.

Ugly as it has been, it's about to get a lot worse.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/12/simcity-server-not-necessary/

As it says: Servers are not necessary!

Cities in Motion 2 looks more and more interesting as the days go by.
It is not exactly a city building game, but similar idea.

nin wrote on Mar 12, 2013, 11:14:
Basically they say "ask us any questions about ourselves and our team" and then proceed to say almost nothing for 9 pages...despite people calling them out over it.

edit: After reading it all and seeing they put up a video staring two people, I think I may change my opinion from "scam" to "wildly inept".

Yeah, I'll buy a copy of Civitas when (IF) it ever goes on sale. I'm not backing that with a ten foot pole.

Creston

Digitalfiend wrote on Mar 11, 2013, 23:49:
...and if retargeting for a Windows OS isn't possible, then you can just use a *nix image and one of the free VM players.

Agreed. Although if we're primarily talking about a number crunching application here with a network layer to communicate back and forth, I'm not seeing a ton of difficulty reworking that to a different platform.

But it's all speculation based on the concept that EA is being honest about the whole "has to be done a server" thing, with the "has" being the critical part. I haven't seen one rational explanation for that word as of yet.

entr0py wrote on Mar 11, 2013, 23:49:
It would be nice if it turned out that way, for paying customers most of all. However, remember that the entire purpose of all of this online stuff is to prevent unauthorized play.

I wouldn't be surprised if several critical parts of the simulation are never executed the client PC. Obviously not because they want to donate CPU cycles, but because they want to make it genuinely difficult to get a server emulator working properly.

Yeah it would be. I'm not so sure much of anything is being done on the servers outside of regions as several different sites have reported being able to play up to 10 minutes disconnected without any sim issues. The 10 minutes thing seems to simply be a check to see if you are connected.

Although I don't have this version, if it's anything like the last version having the sim wait 10 minutes between doing the magic "calculations" would seem to be useless.

nin wrote on Mar 12, 2013, 09:29:

I'll just leave this here. I'm up to page 6.

The questions about Greylan show more that Greylan is a tiny operation owned by someone that doesn't care about games and thinks it's a revenue stream.

But yeah, the other stuff...

Creston wrote on Mar 12, 2013, 11:12:

nin wrote on Mar 12, 2013, 09:29:

I'll just leave this here. I'm up to page 6.

For some weird reason my firewall seems to think that's a malicious page. What's going on over there?

Creston

Basically they say "ask us any questions about ourselves and our team" and then proceed to say almost nothing for 9 pages...despite people calling them out over it.

edit: After reading it all and seeing they put up a video staring two people, I think I may change my opinion from "scam" to "wildly inept".

nin wrote on Mar 12, 2013, 09:29:

I'll just leave this here. I'm up to page 6.

For some weird reason my firewall seems to think that's a malicious page. What's going on over there?

Creston

Verno wrote on Mar 12, 2013, 08:56:
Better late than never.

Yeah, I guess so. It would have been better had it been done from the start. Had people shunned Diablo 3 for its bullshit, and had sites like RPS called Blizzard out for it, SimCity would now have simply had a single player mode that's offline. But the message after D3 was loud and clear: Always-on DRM? NO PROBLEM!

I do agree with his statement that all this must really confuse the fuck out of Ubisoft.

Creston

I'll just leave this here. I'm up to page 6.

Dev wrote on Mar 12, 2013, 03:24:
And all of those together don't amount to anything EA much cares about in terms of money.

The list looks familiar though, I backed many of those same ones

Well, my point was, we don't need them. Whether EA cares about losing what they consider to be a niche amount of sales or not is not my concern. I do find it funny that they think they'd get more sales from pirates that supposedly can't pirate. It's their loss, since there alienating legitimate customers.

Dev wrote on Mar 12, 2013, 03:24:
Anyway, while the kickstarter versions won't have DRM as a reward to backers, the retail release ones WILL most likely have some form of protection. For instance "Malevolence: The Sword of Ahkranox" released a special loader just for kickstarters that has the very light DRM disabled. His DRM is basically just you have a login (like minecraft).

So any of those you didn't back, just realize you may NOT end up getting DRM free, and if that is that important of a feature to you, you should back them while they are KS.

True, I suppose. But I don't think a majority of them will. Most indies know that will squash sales and pirates aren't going to purchase anyway.

I still think that the larger 'studio name' games (not necessarily a large studio), like the ones in my backed list, will be a viable alternative to the big publishers, and I think they will keep coming over time. I also think they will be a better quality because they are crafted from passion for the product, and not some publisher's "market study dictates".

Creston wrote on Mar 11, 2013, 23:12:

ASeven wrote on Mar 11, 2013, 19:31:
RPS really nails this.

"What EA and Maxis have done with SimCity is attempt a year-long PR assault to suggest that the online-only nature of SimCity is designed to offer enhancements for gamers. This is simply not true. It’s utter rubbish. It’s a backward step for a format that seemed to be managing for years to offer single player and multiplayer options for games without the universe cracking in two. The idea that multiplayer-only is an enhancement is such an obvious piece of newspeak, such a ridiculous untruth, that we can only loudly and furiously react against it if we’re to not see it incredulously accepted as fact. I do worry it’s maybe already too late."

"To see anyone defending EA and Maxis for the state of SimCity, even were it in perfect working order on launch, depresses me to my core. This self-flagellation-as-skincare notion, where gamers loudly and proudly defend the destruction of their own rights as consumers, is an Orwellian perversity."

This last paragraph reminds me too much of some people here.

RPS are being giant, giant hypocrites here, though. They were sucking the Diablo3 cock just as hard as everyone else, then after it was a terrible failure at launch as well, they wrote an article in which they said something to the effect of "Well, it doesn't matter that we were all weak-willed assholes and swallowed Blizzard's DRM whole. We just need to stand really strong against the NEXT always-on DRM game that comes out! Protect our rights!"

Kind of hard to take that stance when you willingly bent over for Blizzard. Like I said back then, every publisher in the industry saw that, no matter how hard PC gamers complain, they will happily take whatever a publisher foists on them if the game is cool enough.

So yeah, great way to take a stance now, RPS. Too bad you're about 7 months late.

Better late than never. It's nice to see so many mainstream publications joining sites like RPS in calling out EA for always taking things to extremes and setting themselves apart from every other publisher in the worst ways. They deserve all of the scorn gamers heap on them and examples like this just hammer that home, totally indefensible.

Creston wrote on Mar 11, 2013, 23:12:

ASeven wrote on Mar 11, 2013, 19:31:
RPS really nails this.

"What EA and Maxis have done with SimCity is attempt a year-long PR assault to suggest that the online-only nature of SimCity is designed to offer enhancements for gamers. This is simply not true. It’s utter rubbish. It’s a backward step for a format that seemed to be managing for years to offer single player and multiplayer options for games without the universe cracking in two. The idea that multiplayer-only is an enhancement is such an obvious piece of newspeak, such a ridiculous untruth, that we can only loudly and furiously react against it if we’re to not see it incredulously accepted as fact. I do worry it’s maybe already too late."

"To see anyone defending EA and Maxis for the state of SimCity, even were it in perfect working order on launch, depresses me to my core. This self-flagellation-as-skincare notion, where gamers loudly and proudly defend the destruction of their own rights as consumers, is an Orwellian perversity."

This last paragraph reminds me too much of some people here.

RPS are being giant, giant hypocrites here, though. They were sucking the Diablo3 cock just as hard as everyone else, then after it was a terrible failure at launch as well, they wrote an article in which they said something to the effect of "Well, it doesn't matter that we were all weak-willed assholes and swallowed Blizzard's DRM whole. We just need to stand really strong against the NEXT always-on DRM game that comes out! Protect our rights!"

Kind of hard to take that stance when you willingly bent over for Blizzard. Like I said back then, every publisher in the industry saw that, no matter how hard PC gamers complain, they will happily take whatever a publisher foists on them if the game is cool enough.

So yeah, great way to take a stance now, RPS. Too bad you're about 7 months late.

Creston

It's one thing to be mad at EA for dropping the ball and forcing online DRM needlessly with SimCity. Heck I'm mad and had zero interest in the game to begin with. It's another thing to hate a publisher just because they're said publisher.

I hate a lot of things EA has done, I'd love to play another Origin made Wing Commander, or a Bullfrog made Dungeon Keeper. Though at the end of the day I love the hockey game they put out. I like some of their shooters. I'm not going to not play games just because a publisher's name is on the box if there's something there I'd enjoy.

I just don't share the PC's Master Race's hate of all things EA.

Creston wrote on Mar 11, 2013, 23:12:

ASeven wrote on Mar 11, 2013, 19:31:
RPS really nails this.

"What EA and Maxis have done with SimCity is attempt a year-long PR assault to suggest that the online-only nature of SimCity is designed to offer enhancements for gamers. This is simply not true. It’s utter rubbish. It’s a backward step for a format that seemed to be managing for years to offer single player and multiplayer options for games without the universe cracking in two. The idea that multiplayer-only is an enhancement is such an obvious piece of newspeak, such a ridiculous untruth, that we can only loudly and furiously react against it if we’re to not see it incredulously accepted as fact. I do worry it’s maybe already too late."

"To see anyone defending EA and Maxis for the state of SimCity, even were it in perfect working order on launch, depresses me to my core. This self-flagellation-as-skincare notion, where gamers loudly and proudly defend the destruction of their own rights as consumers, is an Orwellian perversity."

This last paragraph reminds me too much of some people here.

RPS are being giant, giant hypocrites here, though. They were sucking the Diablo3 cock just as hard as everyone else, then after it was a terrible failure at launch as well, they wrote an article in which they said something to the effect of "Well, it doesn't matter that we were all weak-willed assholes and swallowed Blizzard's DRM whole. We just need to stand really strong against the NEXT always-on DRM game that comes out! Protect our rights!"

Kind of hard to take that stance when you willingly bent over for Blizzard. Like I said back then, every publisher in the industry saw that, no matter how hard PC gamers complain, they will happily take whatever a publisher foists on them if the game is cool enough.

So yeah, great way to take a stance now, RPS. Too bad you're about 7 months late.

Creston

It might be hypocritical of RPS because of the D3 fiasco, but those are two very well written paragraphs which I agree with 100%.

Ozmodan wrote on Mar 11, 2013, 19:07:
EA and Maxis two complete loser companies. Anybody purchasing from them needs to go see a head shrink.

You are smoking if you think they are two companies. The old maxis is long gone

I had a great SimCity experience by never buying the game! Thanks EA!

Verno wrote on Mar 11, 2013, 09:27:
EA has brought some quality titles to the market in the past, Mass Effect, Dragon Age Origins, Dead Space, Mirror's Edge, etc. Unfortunately like Hollywood, they've devolved into playing it safe,

compared with the other giants of the videogame publishing world (activion blizzard) i'd say EA takes more risks with new IPs. however they still have they failings at deployment.

nin wrote on Mar 11, 2013, 19:54:

This last paragraph reminds me too much of some people here.

No kidding.

Indeed it does, sadly.