How are you surprised by this?!
How did you not see this coming?
As far as I can see it, games that have a release online have 2 options.
1)invest money in extra servers, so that the sudden wave of day-1 players can log in. This will, of course, cost extra money and once the sudden rush has died down those servers might not be needed.
2)Let the rush come, let it settle itself like it always does and within a few days everything will run smoothly.
I use to try and log in at the 0:00 mark of WoW's new expansion, but lag, log-in issues and overcrowded zones taught me that I might as well wait until tomorrow when most of the dust had settled.
Same thing with Diablo 3's release.
I left it in the box for 2 days. My friend who bought it kept complaining on how he could not log in. I waited, patiently for the rush to calm down and had no issues.
Many major Online games these days can't handle the rush.
"Well, then don't make it online."
But they did, and you knew that. You might not like it, but SimCity is now a multiplayer game, NOT a single player game.
Somehow, this all reminds me at one of those stores that have a sale and people are waiting at the door. When they finally open everyone struggles to get in, except now we complain that the store didn't have enough doors.