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, 23:49
96.
Re: SimCity: Now With 92% Less Crashing; Maxis Walks Back from Offline Comment Mar 11, 2013, 23:49
Mar 11, 2013, 23:49
 
JohnnyRotten wrote on Mar 11, 2013, 20:53:
Maybe the server is written on a *nix server? That would throw a wrinkle in things.

...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.

EA just doesn't want to lose control. After doing a bit more reading it does seem that the game can continue on with simulating city life for a period of time after losing connection to EA's servers. So is it just the social aspects and economy/interaction between other cities that is being simulated on the server?

While I agree that it wouldn't be a trivial fix, I highly doubt the server-side code is written in anything other than C/C++, C#, or Java. I haven't bought the game yet, so I haven't been able to do any digging first-hand but I'd be surprised if the server-side processes are anything special or esoteric.
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Mar 11, 2013Mar 11 2013
     Re: SimCity: Now With 92% Less Crashing; Maxis Walks Back from Offline Comment