By Alexandra Burlacu | Mar 08, 2013 09:56 AM EST
After waiting more than a decade for the highly-anticipated reboot, SimCity fans now face server issues that lock them out of the game.
SimCity is the newest addition to the PC game franchise, and re-envisions the city-simulation game first launched back in 1989. This week, however, server issues, lengthy wait times and other problems plagued the online game and irritated nearly all players.
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The new version of SimCity is the most feature-rich, expansive and detailed SimCity ever made, and the game's creators at Maxis and Electronic Arts (EA) see it as a "live service" with a constant flow of updates. That's when the problems come in. Being a live service means having a constant Internet connection to play, even for those who don't want to deal with the social, multiplayer aspects of the game. Overloaded servers should not be a part of this equation.
EA forums (1, 2) and the Reddit website are full of comments from players complaining that server issues keep them from playing the game or, in some cases, even cause them to lose their cities. Amazon even suspended digital sales of the game as long as the issues persist.
"I am extremely frustrated that, after spending over $50 on what looked like a really cool game, now I can't even play," complains Amazon reviewer Elizabeth Kalbers. "All the servers are either busy, full or 'available' but you can't actually connect to them! The tutorial won't load, I can't create a new city, and I keep getting error messages. This is the worst."
"I find it incredibly mind boggling that I spent $60 on something that I can't even log into to play," adds Amazon reviewer Kyle. "My first city that I spent some time on was lost forever due to server issues at EA."
Games are designed to take the edge off and make users relax? Not in this case. EA apologized for the issues and said it already started to patch things up.
"The 'SimCity' servers are currently inundated with the masses of eager mayors attempting to govern their cities," reads an EA post on Wednesday, March 6, on the company's help page. "Over the next few hours, we'll be deploying a server update which should help to improve game performance..."
EA also announced on Twitter that it opened up two new servers. Meanwhile, a SimCity spokesperson said that a patch to the Oceanic 1 server would take the game offline for a while, but it should help fix some issues. Origin, EA's digital distribution service, promises the issues will get a fix in time for the game's international launch.
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