EA Readies Big SimCity Patch

[Andy Chalk]

EA Readies Big SimCity Patch

SimCity will be offline for about two hours tonight while EA works in a hefty pile of updates and bug fixes.

I've stayed as far as humanly possible away from the whole SimCity fiasco (except to point and laugh) so I have no idea what the state of the game is currently, but I suspect that the best approximation remains something close to "not good." It will therefore likely be welcome news that Electronic Arts will implement a host of updates to the game tonight at 5 pm EDT.

New to the game will be the addition of a Mayor's Mansion, from which the big Simcheese will drive or fly to work, HUD color correction in color-blind mode and a change to data maps that shows the filtered color when a color filter is enabled. Exciting stuff!

The list of fixes and updates is much beefier, covering technical issues that were causing cities not to process (and which EA is "continuing to work on and improve," presumably even beyond this update), fixes to region filters and invites, tourism, casinos, education, water, air pollution, recycling, disasters, trade, transit and other features. "Everything" might be an unfortunately appropriate term for it.

The bad news is that the servers will have to be taken offline to make the magic happen and that means, given the always-on demands of SimCity, that you won't be able to play the game while it's happening. "Choosing a time to issue a major Update is never easy, but after looking our peak player time, we've concluded 9pm GMT is the best window for us to make these improvements," Community Manager Michael Donahoe explained on the SimCity blog. The update is expected to take roughly two hours to complete.

The full list of bug fixes and updates is available at simcity.com [http://www.simcity.com/en_GB/blog/article/simcity-update-2-point-0-uk].


Permalink

 

[Chessrook44]

No offline mode then?

Right, still not buying then.

 

[Rainboq]

Sadly, I doubt this will save the games dwindling playerbase. As much as I love the franchise, this one has just been one massive disappointment.

 

[DataSnake]

Hey, planned server downtime is a completely NEW downside to always-on DRM! I wasn't sure there were any of those left to find, but EA proved me wrong.

 

[Pandalisk]

"The bad news is that the servers will have to be taken offline to make the magic happen and that means, given the always-on demands of SimCity, that you won't be able to play the game while it's happening"

Into the trash it goes.

They need to fix the clipping errors with those damn buses as well, its horrid to watch, truly.

 

[Tar Palantir]

EA Readies Out Big SimCity Patch

SimCity will be offline

YAAAAAYYYYYYY!

for about two hours tonight while EA works in a hefty pile of updates and bug fixes.

http://rlv.zcache.com/okay_guy_rage_face_meme_poster-re27ee977bead42a4b6f8b2b479f0041d_a21y_8byvr_512.jpg

 

[SadisticFire]

Wait we can't play our game with always on DRM when the servers are down and being updated? There's no way to have seen this when they thought of DRM, thank god they have the balls to still update it, AND keep the DRM. These people are brave.

**Looks at her sarcasm meter* Well that was too much
Anyways, sarcasm aside, these problems shoulda been addressed when the game come out, not what, a month after sim city came out? It's kinda sickening

 

[Blachman201_v1legacy]

So far every single patch to that game have been blundering failures that have caused the threads in various forums I follow to flare up with several new complaints.

I really don't expect this one to break the trend.

 

[Slash2x]

**Looks at her sarcasm meter* Well that was too much
Anyways, sarcasm aside, these problems shoulda been addressed when the game come out, not what, a month after sim city came out? It's kinda sickening

This^

And also no offline mode huh? And you are taking the servers off to patch at a time no one is playing? So any time then?


captcha skynet watches

Indeed captcha EA is watching

 

[Ironside]

Unless this patch adds an offline mode I will still be keeping my money.

 

[Formica Archonis]

It will therefore likely be welcome news that Electronic Arts will implement a host of updates to the game tonight at 5 pm EDT.

Right in the middle of my day off. Wow. If I had bought this game I'd be so pissed right now.

The update is expected to take roughly two hours to complete.

So, if anything at all goes wrong and it goes over the two hours, they'll start crashing head-on into TotalBiscuit's archetypal after-work gamer.

And yet they still haven't commented on the mountains of evidence that the servers do basically nothing, and that the game can be (and has been) run offline,

Who knows, maybe this patch will fix that so the offline mode hack no longer works! (They must improve "server security" to protect against "hackers". After all, it's an MMO and no one complains when WoW knocks off exploits, right? Snicker.)

 

[kajinking]

So who thinks the severs will crash with all those people trying to play the "new and improved" game after the patch goes live.

I'm almost betting about 75% chance we'll be seeing a story soon that reads

"EA severs can't handle strain of players coming back, crashes....again"

 

[darthzew]

The point of playing SimCity is to make an entire city of fake friends to make up for the fact that I don't have any real friends. So, why the hell would I want to play my people simulator with real people?

I pretty much guarantee you that anyone who clicked this news article was hoping for an offline mode. I know I was. I didn't buy the game, but honestly might have if I could play offline. Back to SimCity 2000, I guess.

 

[Ne1butme]

So, if the player is the mayor of the city and the mayor can ride in a helicopter from the Mayor's Mansion. Does that mean that the player is in the helicopter? And if that helicopter crashes (can they crash?) does that mean that the game just killed off the player?

These are the questions i ponder when the observant player in a god-game are personified as a fragile mortal.

 

[GAunderrated]

Unless this patch comes with an offline mode AND fixes some of the major broken mechanics, it will do little good to the game's already plummeting reputation

 

[fix-the-spade]

Who knows, maybe this patch will fix that so the offline mode hack no longer works! (They must improve "server security" to protect against "hackers". After all, it's an MMO and no one complains when WoW knocks off exploits, right? Snicker.)

So another two lines of code then? One to check for the two lines of codes from before and another to stop the game if the first line can't find the other two.

Problem solved, everybody wins!

 

[Clovus]

Wow, how much toothpaste do I have to buy in order to get the helicopter?

Seriously, part of me still wishes that they can somehow fix the broken aspects of this game. I'd really like to play a modern SimCity that looks as good as this game does.

captcha: like a boss

 

[Madman Muntz]

Man I am so glad I made the decision to avoid Maxis, and every other EA unberella studio game, years ago. It has saved me so much pain and suffering.