Simcity

Lum

Thing is, WoW is a multiplayer game that you know upfront you are paying a subscription for. Simcity is ultimately a single player game despite EA's efforts to shoehorn social networking aspects into it.

Buyers of single player games expect that once they've bought they game, they own it and as long as they have a computer capable of running it they can carry on playing it.

Simcity 4 is a good example, it's 10 years old, some people are still playing it, and there is still an active community for it developing new mods and upgrades for the game.

Even if you decide the new Simcity is an online game, the traditional approach for online PC games is to give the server software away for free, or at least for the same price as the game. Then anybody who wants to can run a server. This is why games from the 90s such as Quake or Unreal still have active servers out there and people playing them.

EA are like: nope, we run the server and when it shuts down, no online play for you.

Nilrem

I'm actually enjoying SimCity, some of the changes from the older versions are for the better (no more routing the power and water lines, and non straight roads!...).

But, there are bugs, annoyances, and I'm not thrilled about the fact EA do require it to have a connection to their servers.
My guess is, that given you can apparently take it "offline" easily, and only really lose the ability to save and communicate with friends, there will be patches/servers at some point.

It doesn't change my long standing opinion that EA are a bunch of money grabbing idiots...

duggan1

Lum wrote: »

Buyers of single player games expect that once they've bought they game, they own it and as long as they have a computer capable of running it they can carry on playing it.

Simcity 4 is a good example, it's 10 years old, some people are still playing it, and there is still an active community for it developing new mods and upgrades for the game.

Simcity 4 is still excellent.

Simcity on the other hand has never been described as a continuation of that game lineage. They refer to it using the awful term (to somehow legitimise the demolition of established franchises) 'reboot'. It is both single player and multiplayer but neither in the traditional sense.

Even if you decide the new Simcity is an online game, the traditional approach for online PC games is to give the server software away for free, or at least for the same price as the game. Then anybody who wants to can run a server. This is why games from the 90s such as Quake or Unreal still have active servers out there and people playing them.

The vast majority of mainstream software titles now don't give you that option though. Consoles largely killed that with few publishers willing to sanction the extra effort to cater for the 'modding' community etc.

EA are like: nope, we run the server and when it shuts down, no online play for you.

I don't expect it to shut down anytime soon. This is a franchise EA are going to run with, in fact it has more in common with The Sims series than Simcity 1-4 in many ways.

duggan1

Nilrem wrote: »

It doesn't change my long standing opinion that EA are a bunch of money grabbing idiots...

Noone would dispute that

If anyone is up for a bit of MSE region fun feel free to add me on origin:

dugganredstar1

Lum

duggan1 wrote: »

Simcity 4 is still excellent.

Simcity on the other hand has never been described as a continuation of that game lineage. They refer to it using the awful term (to somehow legitimise the demolition of established franchises) 'reboot'. It is both single player and multiplayer but neither in the traditional sense.

Except most reboots are done because the original game that started the story is getting on for 10-20 years old and many of today's crop of gamers wont have ever played it, so it's an excuse to remake the first game with today's technology.

How exactly do you reboot sim city? The game has no story.

duggan1

Lum wrote: »

How exactly do you reboot sim city? The game has no story.

Who knows, but that's what they describe it as. Possibly in an attempt to deflect inevitable comparisons with Simcity 4, which remains easily the best of the bunch.

Still, it's a fun game with a surprising amount of depth to it. EA promise changes so we will see.