SimCity

Well on the new EU West 3 server , played for over 5 hours no problem.But now its starting to sink in on the small region size though. Bummer , also started to fiddle with making new regions and starting to plan out a new map to take advantage of that. So actually had fun , just need to figure out the whole density thing. I know roads factor in , but to raise the rating im guessing time is more of a factor more then anything then comes happiness for services it seems like.
 

Warrik

Potato del Grande
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Wish they just took Sim City 4 and gave it the visuals and updated UI of the new title. This blows.
 

LadyVex_sl

shitlord
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If you even get that far. It amazes me that a big company like EA and only 4 servers for north America.
Europe gets 6 servers, how does that math work out?
I am probably missing something, if so correct me
Sims/SimCity are ridiculously big in Europe - a good amount of effort goes into keeping the european fans happy.

Haven't been able to play for longer than about 20 minutes; super awesome launch!
 

meStevo

I think your wife's a bigfoot gus.
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I've played 18 hours since release, 4 of them tonight pretty much error free.

Seem to get a pass through the queue much of the time if you are just re-logging, which is nice.

Can only wonder how much further along my city would be if I was playing on Cheetah still.
 

Jozu

Bronze Baronet of the Realm
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Havnt played Sim City since the days of Windows 98.

Whats so cool about this new one? Do you compete against other players online or something now?
 

Aaron

Goonsquad Officer
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Glad I didn't buy this, but I will still keep on monitoring this and maybe buy it at a later date if things get better.

But you folks should look on the bright side, at least it doesn't have an auction house you *have* to use to buy and sell resources (with a real money version to be implemented later).
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Any word when cheetah will be re enabled , kind of boring sitting there waiting for money to roll in. But made some progress on a new city , went coal mining and it turned out well. But went a little overboard on zoning and now it just keeps asking me to place each one cause one needs workers , one needs jobs and the other needs shoppers. Need to find the sweet spot , but will take too much time with cheetah disabled. Guess ill spy out other peoples regions.
 

Paranoia

Trakanon Raider
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saw this on yahoo this morning
http://games.yahoo.com/blogs/plugged...201105322.html


SimCity's requirement for an always-on Internet connection is backfiring, as the game servers are currently going up and down like a yo-yo. How quickly can EA solve this problem?
by Christopher MacManus, CNET

Good luck trying to move into the new SimCity.
Ever since the city management game launched on Tuesday, countless gamers have found themselves battling error messages and random disconnections that prevent them from experiencing what SimCity was supposed to deliver in the first place -- fun.

In response, publisher Electronic Arts says it's working around the clock to try to fix the problems and add more servers so people can play without worry.
SimCity Senior Producer Kip Katsarelis issued the following statement to frustrated builders last night, hoping to soothe their nerves:

"This has been an exciting and challenging week for the team here at Maxis, the culmination years of planning and development. We have been overwhelmed by the outpouring of support and enthusiasm from our fans which has made it even more upsetting for us that technical issues have become more prominent in the last 24 hours. We are hitting a number of problems with our server architecture, which has seen players encountering bugs, and long wait times to enter servers. This is, obviously, not the situation we wanted for our launch week and we want you to know that we are putting everything we have at resolving these issues.
What we are doing is deploying more servers over the coming two days, which will alleviate many of the ongoing issues. We are also paying close attention to all the bug reports we are receiving from our fans. We've already pushed several updates in the last few days. Our live ops team is working 24/7 to resolve issues and ensure that bug fixes roll into the game as quickly as possible.
This team has put everything into this game and won't stop until things are smooth. We ask our fans to be patient as our team works diligently to fix the issues. We share your passion for SimCity and thank you for your support and understanding."


SimCity's connectivity woes originate from heavy server load caused by a high influx of new users who must log in to play. EA touts multiplayer features such as sharing vital resources with neighbors and saving your game to the cloud (so you can play anywhere), but the requirement also acts as one of the few remaining safeguards against software piracy.
It's frankly absurd that SimCity -- with its previous titles that you could always play offline -- now requires an Internet connection to play and stay in the game, even in single-player mode. However, that's the world we live in these days and it doesn't seem likely to change.
The other issue is that EA hasn't allocated the appropriate resources to handle the surge of gamers coming into the servers during launch week, which seems silly considering the enormous fan base that waited 10 years for a new SimCity game. The bean counters at EA should've known there would be huge traffic, and heck, didn't they learn anything from Activision's messy Diablo III launch?
The solution seems simple: let people play SimCity's single-player mode offline, hence alleviating the server load, and maintain the always-on Internet requirement for multiplayer. That would probably solve this debacle and give most people what they really wanted in the first place.
In the meantime, SimCitians can keep up with a routinely updated forum topic that relays server downtime, hotfixes, and improvements. The latest notification echoes the commitment to fixing server issues, but also indicates the developers issued a hotfix that includes "various improvements" and disables a "few non-critical gameplay features (leaderboards, achievements and region filters)" -- a temporary move likely designed to lessen the load on servers.
(Credit: Maxis/EA)
Be careful if you can log in, as some players report losing significant portions of their cities after hours of work, because SimCity servers would randomly shut down or the game experienced issues saving to EA's cloud save function. I saw dozens of similar complaints with some light searching. Ouch.
Despite the calamity, many SimCity builders found a way into the lagged servers and kicked off an architectural tour de force not seen since the construction of the pyramids. Katsarelis reports that in just a 24-hour period, SimCity gamers created more than 38 million buildings, 4.6 million miles of roads, and laid 40 million pipes "filled up with poop."
The producer also notes that gamers started over 18 million fires in SimCity, but the real fires are occurring in social media. You can easily spot hordes of frustrated SimCity players on Twitter, Reddit, NeoGAF, and many other outlets for gamers. A petition with over 8,000 signatures on Change.org asks EA to abandon always-on DRM in SimCity and future games.
CNET Editor Jeff Bakalar, assigned to review SimCity, ran into problems trying to connect at least twice a day since Tuesday: "I had planned on reviewing the game for launch -- and I'm not joking here -- I've yet to been able to even play the game. Once."
More on CNET:
 

Springbok

Karen
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I got my refund from Amazon this morning of $44.99. Great game, was really engrossing.... for the few hours I was actually able to play - will definitely come back to it at some point in the future, but I play video games after work to relax - not make my life more stressful and last night after attempting to log-in for most of the night I just said fuck it, I'm out.
 

Dioblaire

And now my Watch has ended...
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/sigh Can't join RR region 2, just hangs up at the invite (Thanks Agraza
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). And I lost all the cities I had been able to play... And it won't let me start a new one, get hung up on the claiming process -.- So hoping they fix this before next weekend.
 

hodj

Vox Populi Jihadi
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Anyone else getting a problem where you log in successfully onto a server, start the game, and it just goes to a black screen with music, and nothing else loads?

Its intermittent for me, but happening. Didn't start till the patch that removed the multiplayer aspects of the game. Wondering if I should just delete and redownload.
 

Tuco

I got Tuco'd!
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Shit worked flawlessly last night in Chicagoland on one of the EU servers that me, hatorade, agraza, faille and kegkilla were on. We got the arco halfway done and tonight I'm going to start on the intl airport.

This is going to be a lot of fun when it starts working. Once the servers can get everyone on a single region I think we'll start the first real community region.

edit: If you're tryign to hook up with us be sure to join the IRC. From what I've seen people are in it around the clock. Just set your simcity to windowed mode and throw IRC on a second monitor and you're gtg.
 

Void

Experiencer
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Tried to get into my existing city for hours last night, was unsuccessful. It is entirely possible that I'm remembering things being better than they actually were, but I seem to think that I was able to play Diablo III more than 3 hours the first week. And I thought that was the ultimate in shitty always-online launches. This seems vastly worse to me. Or am I just remembering wrong?
 

Aaron

Goonsquad Officer
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Quick question, how is it when playing on a server located on another continent? Is there noticeable lag? And if so, how does it manifest?
 

Tuco

I got Tuco'd!
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Quick question, how is it when playing on a server located on another continent? Is there noticeable lag? And if so, how does it manifest?
There's no noticeable lag. Basically the communication between the client and the server seems to happen in the background and the game state updates with server info periodically. All the ingame user actions and their results are client side. I think it's entirely possible to unplug your network cable while playing and play for a prolonged period, but I haven't tried that yet.

And so far the d3 launch is worse than simcity for me.
 

Toxxulian_sl

shitlord
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Anyone know how to play it windowed without the edge? I tried playing it last night windowed but my windows bar was covering the bottom row of information. Why do games not have windowed max...