DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Fantasy & Gaming EA server issues - SimCity and Origin

It continues to boggle my mind how companies aren't prepared for day 1 sales of their game.

EA's servers crashed today when people started playing SimCity.
Blizzard's servers crashed when Diablo 3 came out.

WHY ARE THEY NOT PREPARED? Can someone weigh in on this topic? Am I being unreasonable?

UPS just dropped off my copy of SimCity but lo, I cannot even activate it on Origin to DOWNLOAD the game (even though I have a disc sitting right here) because EA's servers crashed.

Please post a review once you're well into the game, I'm interested to see if it's any good. I love Sim City games.

right now it's not looking good

however, i will post an unbiased review of the game once i finally get in and play it for a while. just found out there might be a 3 hour wait list to get INTO your single player game

the game requires a constant connection to the internet, even though you can play a private game, you are always online

That kinda stinks.

I enjoyed the last one, but it seemed like I always had trouble running it. My desktop and my girlfriend's laptop, both times it would not run very smooth.

It's EA. Enough said.

ok i've played it for a couple hours ... this is my initial response and comparison to what other people are saying.

Did I have trouble at first? Oh heck yeah. Server issues, long wait time to get into a game, etc.

However, after the initial craziness, I selected my server as "oceanic" since it was the only server not really busy. I don't know anyone else with the game (i would play with fellow dawgtalkers) so i started a private game. Inside my private game, you get to select your region - lots to chose from.

Then, you select where you want your city to be. They give you choices and different spots have different resources available. From what I've seen, I could start a bunch of cities in my own region - but i haven't tried that yet.

People are complaining the city size is small. I didn't find that to be true, but I am not an expert gamer so it is what it is. I thought the city size was just fine since i am assuming i get to build more than 1 city per region - i.e. i could have a big industrial center, residential center, etc.

You get a lot of customization of your buildings. You still do zones like in the old sim city games, but you also get some specific buildings and most buildings have add-ons. Building parks grants your residential zones bigger houses with bigger incomes, building schools changes your industrial centers from smokestacks to laboratories, etc. Lots of customization there too.

I've found it highly addictive. I keep itching to go back and play with it some more, but it's that time of the night for family and whatnot.

I am really liking it so far. Some people don't like the whole DRM issue or that you need a constant internet connection, but since i am in a private game, it doesn't bother me.

It does bother me that even though I bought the disc, i still had to download it from origin. WTH? The download didn't take too long, but updating the game did.

I thought I had a pretty beefy gaming rig, but with my 1G video card, all I can do is set the graphics to low. It runs smooth, however. i haven't messed with them yet cuz I've just enjoyed playing it. I bet the game looks fantastic with a great system.

Ok those are my initial thoughts. Is the game worth $59? Well, no, but what game really is? My mom bought it for me as my birthday present. I don't normally get release day games because I think that price point is ridiculous. However, I can tell they put a lot of time and effort into this game.

Thanks for the thoughts.

Did you play 4?

I thought it was a very fun game. Although I always had trouble with the rail system/traffic/bus stops. They always said the bus stops were not done right and I could never figure out where exactly they should go.

no, my last experience was simcity 2000 back in the 90s lol

The reviews so far are horrible. I had planned on getting it first day, but I think I am going to wait and see if EA addresses the complaints. I downloaded 4 for 11.95 instead.

KING

This morning i can't play it for more than 5 minutes. it keeps crashing to my desktop. i thought it was my PC, but it's not, it's the auto-save feature on EA's servers that keeps crashing. They are working on it ....

ugh

i think most of the negative reviews are due to the DRM and constant internet connection along with launch day server issues. other than those issues? i think it's a lot of fun

One of the review I heard said if you like The Sims, you will like this game. If you loved SIM CITY 4, you will hate it.

Biggest complaint I heard was the map size.

the map size doesn't bother me at all because within each region, i can have multiple cities. yes, the city sizes are small, but you can have more than 2 in each region so in sense, your region is your map, not your city.

if they are playing on public games, then the city size is a problem. i've only done private maps so far (where i am the only one playing), and so the city size isn't a problem to me.

i have 1 city that has industry, police, fire, ambulance, etc and then i have a 2nd city with just residential. those two cities are linked so i share industry, police, fire, ambulance, waste, power, water, etc.

i actually think it's kind of cool how they did it

jc

EA Responds to SimCity Complaints; Gamers Launch Non-DRM Petition

My favorite comment:
"Just realized the irony that a game focused on building infrastructure is unplayable due to a lack of infrastructure,"


I would have liked to try the game, but the DRM is a deal breaker for me.

i still can't get on. keeps saying ea's servers are down. its friday. game came out on tuesday. how long will we have to wait?

I bought the game last night after work (2nd shift) and had no problems getting on at 1am but so far today (late morning/early afternoon) I've had no luck.

i've been trying since 8 am and have not had any luck yet. not continually since 8, but every half hour or so ...

i actually got on a couple of times, but it wouldnt load my city. kept saying "connection to ea servers lost"

While I admit to buying two FIFA games in the past 5 years....that's the only money EA has got of mine. And in those circumstances, I waited a while before buying them to make sure all was well.

EA screwed me over with a PSP Madden game. There was a bug that all runners would be considered down where ever the first contact was, not where they were tackled. So a RB could run for a 60 yard TD but it would be called a 2 yard run if a defender touched him back on your 42 yard line. And the same goes for a QB. If a defender tried sacking him but couldn't bring him down and then the QB threw a 40 yard bomb....nope, it's a sack.

I couldn't have been more pissed that someone didn't find this bug in testing. Well, I'm sure they found it, but did a cost analysis on fixing it and found out that it was cheaper to ship the game and deal with the backlash. From that day on, I would never buy an EA game without doing loads of research and waiting months after its release (I couldn't bring myself to never buying a game, some of them are too good to deny).

But yes, EA is really lazy.

Speaking of the DTV monopoly of the Ticket, EA still has the monopoly of the NFL license in the video game market. I keep hoping against hope that it would finally die.

As for those that bought this game, I hope they fix this soon. Talk about lame.

I just got a full refund on the game today. I hear quite a number of people have also been able to get refunds.

My refund was a bit more than "I don't like the game" ... I found that once I got a more established city going, my computer would completely freeze up within 10-20 minutes of starting the game. It became pretty unplayable. I spent a full week with Customer Service ... sometimes on hold for over an hour before talking to an agent ... and tried to work through the issue, but to no avail. Finally, I just asked them for a refund, and they were nice enough to help me with that.

What an unmitigated disaster this release has been. Not only were the servers down for a week, but I've read a lot of stories of other people's games crashing for no reason. Plus, the game itself apparently has some major "stupid AI" issues.

I just read that EA fired their CEO a few days ago ... and I would have to believe that this SimCity release was his last nail in the coffin.

I finally purchased a actual disc copy the other day.

I think if I was just someone who bought the game, and had no previous experience with SIM City, it would be an enjoyable game. There are some things I do really like about it. The game play and graphics are pretty fun. From that aspect it is in enjoyable game.

As a hardcore Sim City fan, I think they dumbed it down. Nowhere near the same strategy and details available. I think I read a preview where they said it feels like they made a SIM City add on for the Sims, and I would agree on that.

KING

jc

Just a follow up on
simcity

The article mentions some other disastrous launches, one of them being Final Fantasy XIV. Having played it, that game at least worked. You can log in, no problem and play the game. The problem with FFXIV was a severe lack of content (among other things). But in the face of the game bombing, I like what square enix did as a response. Brought in a whole dev team, dropped the subscription fee fee for a while and worked on revamping the game. It's currently in beta testing for a 2.0 release sometime this year.

I think the 2.0 release will not be as successful as they need it to be (damage was already done). But Square Enix has made a very good effort to correct the mistake they made with the original release.

EA on the other hand, doesn't seem to have learned anything from Simcity. Sadly, it will probably be just a matter of time before they ruin another game instead of learning from their mistakes.

I think in the last 15 years of playing MMOs I have only seen 1 launch that wasn't a complete cluster, Dark Ages of Camelot.

I find it interesting that many games are coming out that are not subscription based, and have real-money item stores to support them. It's an interesting model, that I think is still being hashed out.