SimCity first day bugs

[Collector_Gaming]

Well the thing I think about when I see this is EA monopolizing way too fast and have lack of control over its monopolies. Which is probably why if one game fails they will take epic franchises and take em out back and put them down for good instead of giving them another chance.
Its kinda funny cause wasn't Maxis the first company they bought out before they went ape shit crazy buying every game company they could get their filthy hands on?


But i also wanna say this is from technology growing too fast and publishers force feeding us this new technology going. ITS NEW ITS COOL ITS BETTER THEN EVER BEFORE YOU HAVE TO TRY IT!!!! YEAH!!!!.

[Kitsune Sniper]

EA has been pulling this sort of thing for YEARS. I'm not surprised in the slightest.

Never like this.

They kill multiplayer servers after a while, and stop providing some DLC content too, but nothing has been as bad as this.

And the reason they didn't experience this during the beta testing phase is simple: They only had thousands of players playing the game then. They were simply unprepared for the huge amount of players, and it's all their fault.

[danawhitaker]

I can't recall hearing before of a company suspending marketing for a game, either. It might have happened, but I can't recall it.

http://kotaku.com/5989523/report-ea-...aunch-disaster

[Collector_Gaming]

And the reason they didn't experience this during the beta testing phase is simple: They only had thousands of players playing the game then. They were simply unprepared for the huge amount of players, and it's all their fault.

which i dont understand. what did they expect was going to happen? that people don't play sim city anymore or something?

[wingzrow]

THIS bad though? So bad that Amazon or other retailers actually stopped selling the product? I've played some of the Sims 3 stuff over the years, and never ran into anything this ridiculous.

Sims 3? You mean the game where they purposely didn't fix the bugs just so they could release expansions which ALSO didn't fix the bugs? Oh right, THAT game.

In any case, it seems like they're in full on damage control mode now.

(picture summary of everything surround this mess)

http://postimage.org/image/fdjt2yk5t/full/

[Tupin]

Here's the thing: Even with all of this negative press, even with all of these people frothing at the mouth for EA to burn, they're still going to keep doing it. And they'll still make money. In a month the servers will be fixed and we'll just be bitching about how the cities are so small and that there's no subway systems (have they ever been to a big city before?!) unless they go the route of Ubisoft.

But that's the thing. I don't think they could just pull the DRM like Ubisoft did. The whole game is designed around being always online.

[Griking]

I can't recall hearing before of a company suspending marketing for a game, either. It might have happened, but I can't recall it.

http://kotaku.com/5989523/report-ea-...aunch-disaster

Steam stopped selling WarZ for about a month or so because it was a buggy mess that didn't include many of the advertised features.

Of course its back now. Still a buggy mess and missing many advertised features...

[kupomogli]

EA is sending out emails to those people who have SimCity activated on Origins so they can get a free game from a choice of a few. Dead Space 3 and Need For Speed Most Wanted are two games that are available.

[Gamereviewgod]

EA offering free games is not an apology. It's a marketing tool. Most of the games offered have extensive DLC, so they open up additional avenues of revenue from items that in the end, cost them nothing other than some bandwidth.

The only legit apology is a refund for anyone who requests one.

[Trumpman]

EA offering free games is not an apology. It's a marketing tool. Most of the games offered have extensive DLC, so they open up additional avenues of revenue from items that in the end, cost them nothing other than some bandwidth.

The only legit apology is a refund for anyone who requests one.

Oh come on, the games have DLC available but so does EVERY big-budget game these days. That list of free games seems pretty great to me -- if I owned a copy of SimCity I'd be pretty happy with getting Battlefield 3, Mass Effect 3, or Dead Space 3 for free. Seriously, DS3 only came out a month ago and they're giving it away for free. That's crazy.

I know defending EA is blasphemy, but how can you be mad at them for this?

[kupomogli]

I was just informing those who purchased it so they don't miss the email. Besides. Dead Space 3 and Need For Speed Most Wanted are fairly new games so DLC shouldn't matter given the amount of content both games hold and the fact that most people aren't going to purchase the DLC unless they first complete the games and all the available content to begin with. Sim City 4 Deluxe Edition is also included as one of the available games and that includes what was added to Sim City 4.

Aside from that, atleast EA is doing something for the fanbase. There are a lot of developers have released games that were incomplete or broken and haven't did anything. What about the people who purchased those games and also didn't get a refund? If it wasn't EA that did this, people who have no interest in SimCity at all would have never taken interest. Because it's EA though, everyone talks like they've experienced the issue first hand. More people bash the game because it's EA than have actually played it, I'm sure(meaning that right now there's atleast 600,000 people who have bashed the game.)

The SimCity issue must have been an error that Maxis didn't notice in development or something, because it seems like they got it fixed pretty quickly. This is in comparison to developers who have game breaking issues yet don't get the game fixed for months. Twisted Metal's online was playable, but that's if you could actually get into a room. Aside from the day one patch, this went along for a month before another patch was issued although nothing was resolved. Twisted Metal is finally playable online six months after release, but that's way too late when there's hardly anyone left to play with. Don't forget that fixing this issue has a good chance to crash fat model PS3s on a match start up, so those of us with a 60GB PS3 still can't play online. Both Silent Hill Downpour and HD Collection had frame drops which I've heard have made the games unplayable and weren't patched until six months after the games release. While Downpour was patched for both PS360, Konami cancelled the HD Collection patch for the 360. Though they did offer owners who purchased the HD Collection on 360 prior to August that year the availability to exchange it with another game. Gettysburg Armored Warfare was unplayable at launch, and being an indie dev, I'm sure no one was refunded or offered anything for their troubles. There are many more games, but you get the idea.

EA quickly resolved the issues the game has and that's what's important, although people don't care if the issues it's had were resolved quickly. The fact that there was any issue with EA to begin with just gives more fuel for the hate train to keep on going.

*edit*

Mass Effect 3 and Battlefield 3 are free as well and also have DLC, so edited comment about DLC.

[SOL BADGUY]

Soooo, the EA President stepped down. Good he did.

[Nature Boy]

I think we overreact to most things but most of it is warranted in this case.

(Except the idea that giving away free games was simply a means to get people to spend more on DLC. That's not just a stretch, that's a whole Yoga class).

It's not the idea of always online that matters to me though, it's the fact that they obviously can't pull it of yet but tried anyway that is ridiculous. I don't know how you go about testing something like this prior to launch, but I know where you can ask about how not to test it prior to launch...