www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/18/a-so...to-simcity-5-buyers/
the following games are being handed on on the 25th to all owners of sim city 5 who purchased before the 25th (you only get one of them)
Battlefield 3 (Standard Edition)
Bejeweled 3
Dead Space 3 (Standard Edition)
Mass Effect 3 (Standard Edition)
MOHW (Standard Edition)
NFS Most Wanted (Standard Edition)
Plants vs. Zombies
SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition

Unfortunately despite my love for simcity, I still won't be buying it as I can't stand supporting EA's decisions.

I would but considering that EA has done nothing but rip off and lie to people they dont deserve my money.

what did ea do that has focused the interwebs ire?

I have heard there was some sort of hub bub about the release of sim 5 but I'm not sure about the details entirely. One thing I believe that it is online play only.

People are getting their ePeens bent because SimCity 5 has been designed to be "online only" and played on their servers.

Of course, at launch their servers were completely annihilated by traffic as they were drastically unprepared (lols @ EA still not understanding online demand) and rife with a lot of other little bugs, glitches and failures.

The player community railed against EA bemoaning their Online-Only decision as "DRM Nazis" where folks from Maxis made statements like "it would be too hard to engineer an offline mode" - to which Reddit responded with "CHALLENGE ACCEPTED" and came up with a series of Hacks/Mods that quickly proved that (to some extent) that Sim City 5 could be played offline.

So teh interwebs whine and moan, Maxis continues to make improvements and the game is actually working much better and smoother now.. but it's certainly not as "challenging" as SimCity 4 were. People are now crying that SimCity 5 is not what THEY wanted it to be.. and basically being internet whiners.

My bottom line understanding is that the game itself is going to be a work in progress - new content, new ideas, new functionality, new challenges, etc. Perhaps they'll increase the city sizes too. DLC out the wazoo. It is what it is, but more importantly it is what MAXIS wants it to be.. =)

That said.. if you start playing it and get addicted lemme know

--Micah

Basically sim city 5 was release, with online only, with EA claiming that "some calculations are done server side and offline is impossible without drastic changes"
multiple groups including Minecrafts developer Notch managed to each single handedly modify the game to run offline proving this to be a blatant lie on EA's part, an EA developer also confirmed that it would be "extremely easy" for them to launch an offline mode.

Reason why I wont buy it is because all the EA games I have ever owned gave me crappy service, and two they lied about the online only part claiming it was absolutely necessary for the game but several modders already have proved that its not, but a form of DRM. Second, they still keep having issues with their servers, and it has been what, 2-3 weeks since it launched?

Just google EA's history. Nothing but bad press on every game they release. They're more focused on hyping up games and meeting deadlines for the fast profit instead of putting out quality material.

It's a flawed logic.

Can you play "offline"? Yes. You can break the confines of the game by modding and hacking the game code.

Can that game be saved locally?

No.

So on a technicality, yes Online-only isn't required. I guess by the same logic neither is saving your work, multiplayer or anything else that they marketed as part of what SimCity 5 was to be.

The reality is yes, it would take a massive amount of engineering to allow people to play offline, save locally and somehow not cheat/hack and muddle with cooperative and competitive play. So their statements hold water based on the bigger vision of what they want the product to be.

I also am NOT a fan of EA personally (that said, as I am now discussing another game studio I must mention that while I work in the industry, my views are my own and in no way connected to the company I work for nor its parent organizations). I agree that EA tends to release a lot of games, and a lot of those games have problems. I have bought into SEVERAL EA titles over the years - even back in the Mid 80's when Electronic Arts was the absolute best in the industry.

SimCity had launch issues. They're past those. The game has bugs. They're working on them. The game is fun.. and really despite the launch debacle.. it's a pretty solid product.

--Micah

actually the part they also managed to get working was local saves as well, however the game did still require a ping to a validation server to become usable at all and since it was just a "proof of concept" speed was apparently prioritized over stability by most groups that attempted offline mode, so no local saves aren't difficult and not cheating etc doesn't matter as you could just disallow offline players to interact with online players.

ok thank you for the info, i had no idea that there was this much contention over the game lol.

but yeah no need to get excited just was wondering =)