f13.net

Cities XL (http://www.citiesxl.com) seems basically to be what Sim City would be if they made an online version. Build your city on a planet with other cities built by other players, and link up with them to trade.

You can also wander around other people’s cities as an avatar, and take part in mini games. For example, if you build a ski slope in your city, other people can go skiing on it.

It looks fun if it all works, and I wish EA was doing this type of thing instead of Sim City Societies (http://simcitysocieties.ea.com).

It’s not clear from the website if there’s any element of competition. For example, if it works like the Sim City games (not Societies) you might be able to lure your neighbour’s high-tech industries away by lowering your tax rates. I’d like there to be some competition, but not to the extent that you can PK your neighbours.

The developers, Monte Cristo (http://www.citiesxl.com/index.php?/content/view/23/46/lang,en/), are the people behind single-player Sim City clone City Life, which I haven’t played. I played their online game Star Peace some years ago, which was a tycoon game where different players all ran businesses in the same city. That was good fun, although it was very basic. They at least have experience of producing an online game which works.

If it's as annoying and boring as their City Life game, then I'll pass. The idea in itself is nice.

Yeah, Schild pointed this out to me a few weeks back. It's still pretty far out from release and could turn out any which way.

However, Monte Cristo (a) produced City Life, which was shit - and this is technically a sequel to that and (b) loves Starforce.

Hopefully neither (a) nor (b) torpedo this title, but I'm not holding my breath.

This :(

The only way I would play this is if you could build a giant cock building.

I played an "M"MO like this a veeeery long time ago - a decade, perhaps? - which I believe is still going in some limited, anaemic way.  I didn't stay with it beyond the trial.

Lets refer to this one as "Sim Shitty Online".

Maybe you're thinking of Legacy Online (http://pc.ign.com/articles/434/434626p1.html). The graphics look a lot better here, but the gameplay looks similar. Legacy Online should have been fun, but somehow it just didn't do it for me. I think there was too big a gap between the levers and the outcomes. One day you'd log on and find the market price of whatever you were selling had plummeted, and it was impossible to figure out why. Generally it was hard to find a profitable niche in a server full of vets who had everything locked up.

Nice work: I think that's the one.  Though as you say, they've updated their graphics...

Turns out Legacy Online and Star Peace, the Monte Cristo game, are the same game.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/2808/postmortem_oceanus_.php

I'm sure it was called Star Peace when I played it.

Man, those people are persistent.

Nice one: it was Star Peace when I played it, too.  I knew that Legacy Online sounded wrong, somehow.

Today, I dance the dance of bump.

Beta registration has begun.

http://jointhebeta.citiesxl.com/register.php

I'm not installing anything from Monte Cristo until someone else has thoroughly vetted it for Starforce.

I believe the release date was set today as Sept. 3.  But, lawl, it's only in French and German.
What's even funnier is the majority of their support in the forums is from English-speakers.... even considering the Europeans, yet they dont have a planned release date in English.

Now I see why their previous titles didnt carry enough subs to pay for the servers.  Unless you're in the Asian market, your game will fail hard if there's no English support for a Euro MMO.
(sigh)

Did America just get totally abandoned this Summer for games or what??  wth is goin on here?
y'know, I'm tempted just to play this thing in French.  Might be kinda fun making an online city ruled by a God that vaguely understands its people, in a world where all the other Gods may or may not know wth you're saying.

Maybe design some kind of School in the city that magically makes the citizens able to speak English.

I'm watching you.

The beta started yet?

yes, just now.  
Get an FP sub to do it.

I'm a bit confused at the sudden english beta test.  It's not supposed to be out 'cept for German/French.  I'm DLing now, so I'll verify the language.
They're going to have English sites going up later today, so I'm betting they did a quick English translation but are still only releasing the game in Europe.

p.s.
perhaps change name of thread now that this went beta

One question I have had, do you have an avatar in this game? can you go paint the town red?

A better question:  can you go paint other people's towns red?   :drill:

Despite the free publicity I gave them, these people haven't given me a beta invite.

Fileplanet is asking $15 for a beta key. Fuck that.

I got a beta key, but can someone be a doll and install it to see if it has Starforce? ;)

A little Starforce has never killed anyone. I think.

Yeah, but the way people cry about it, you would think it's serial killed everyone's mother.

Looks like it doesn't! Unfortunately gonna find out the hard way.

US Demo available.

This game sucks so much I can't even play it to figure out if it sucks.  Had to go through Emulation/Run As shenanigans to even get it running in Vista (some people are forumclaiming they can only run it if they set one executable to run in XP compat mode and another to run in 98 compat  :awesome_for_real:), then it says I need a key and registration to even play it.  Help page says I need to go to some of their 'partner sites' who 'may' have a key.  Sphincter says what?  Turns out that's an out of date page and really you get one just by registering.  But in learning this, I read through the gnashing and wailing of my compatriots who are telling me that the game has a crash bug every 10 minutes or so.

So yeah, no.

I got a beta key. The installer fucked up on three different downloads due to corruption. I then heard that this was the worst piece of shit imaginable. Then I forgot about it.

I hate strings of ambiguous posts which don't help me decide if I should try a game or not.

There's a demo, apparently.

Is it in the bottom of a sarchasm? :awesome_for_real:

Well we don't color our text anymore. :(

Hm. The game is out, and I'm terribly tempted for some unknown reason.

Word of mouth is not very favorable.   Read the SA thread before purchasing.

I got a review copy but I haven't been able to get it to install. It needs .net framework. The version it shipped with won't install on Vista 64 and I can't figure out why. My installed version of .net isn't even recognized by it.

And it's dead, or at least the multiplayer aspect.

From an e-mail I received (as someone who bought the game and played for one month):

Looks like I don't need to review it!