SimCity is back, gaming is dead, RIP gaming.

[Sky]

I hope every executive in the world sees this and takes a big dump in their pants every time someone says 'the cloud'.

[tgr]

Kinda sad, some friends were thinking of getting this and making a region together, but this is all sorts of silly.

If only there had been some way for your friends to make their own server.

[kildorn]

I hope every executive in the world sees this and takes a big dump in their pants every time someone says 'the cloud'.

Please, that's not how executives work. They see this and think "cloud could have fixed that."

[Strazos]

Everquest 2 had a pretty spectacular failure upon launch - practically everyone I know jumped ship to WoW when EQ2 died for a week or whatever.

[Megrim]

So far this week, I thought that me buying Legend of Grimrock was the best thing that was going to happen. Then I read this thread.

[Fabricated]

IGN Sim City Review:

Good:

• Loading screen is pretty cool
• Also the music is pretty relaxing
• EA paid us a shitload of money

Bad:

• We can't actually play the game
• Game randomly deletes files from hard drive, sends inappropriate messages to relatives over facebook

IGN Score: 8.4 - GOTY

[Modern Angel]

Everquest 2 had a pretty spectacular failure upon launch - practically everyone I know jumped ship to WoW when EQ2 died for a week or whatever.

Non-MMO launch. I should have qualified but didn't feel it was necessary. Of COURSE MMO launches are comparable.

Although I'm trying to come up with another title this revered with this many copies out the door and I'm drawing a blank. Anyone?

[sickrubik]

Everquest 2 had a pretty spectacular failure upon launch - practically everyone I know jumped ship to WoW when EQ2 died for a week or whatever.

Everquest 2 came out before WoW.

Non-MMO launch. I should have qualified but didn't feel it was necessary. Of COURSE MMO launches are comparable.

Although I'm trying to come up with another title this revered with this many copies out the door and I'm drawing a blank. Anyone?

Diablo 3.

[Modern Angel]

Oh, it feels like we're way, way past the D3 level when the largest online retailer in the world is stopping sales of your product.

[tgr]

Although I'm trying to come up with another title this revered with this many copies out the door and I'm drawing a blank. Anyone?

Diablo 3.

Starcraft 2?

[sickrubik]

Oh, it feels like we're way, way past the D3 level when the largest online retailer in the world is stopping sales of your product.

That didn't seem like it was your question. I thought you were just asking for examples of cluster-fuck releases of major titles.

[sickrubik]

Although I'm trying to come up with another title this revered with this many copies out the door and I'm drawing a blank. Anyone?

Diablo 3.

Starcraft 2?

I honestly do not remember that many issues with SC2 on release, but then Diablo 3 was a lot more of a "MUST PLAY NOW" kinda thing to me.

[Merusk]

Please tell me the screen shot on the prior page is someone's facebook avatar in game and EA didn't REALLY steal the artwork of Milkman Dan from Red Meat.

[Xuri]

I haven't bought the game yet, but I'm contemplating asking for a refund anyway, in the hopes that they'll permanently ban my (unused) Origin account.

[koro]

The most insane thing about all of this is that it's looking more and more like much of the simulation that people thought  was handled by the server is actually client-side. The simulation of the city you're currently actively tinkering with is wholly client-side, while the server itself only handles the regional city-to-city interactions, which explains why there are so many instances of stuff working completely fine in your city, but when you choose to send something like a payment to another city in the region, you lose the money properly, but the other city never receives it. It's even being speculated that the regional stuff could even have been done client-side with only a slight increase in system requirements.

So regional stuff and cloud saves, the only shit EA handles on their end, and the things that keep breaking everything, are pretty much there solely as anti-piracy measures.

[tgr]

I honestly do not remember that many issues with SC2 on release, but then Diablo 3 was a lot more of a "MUST PLAY NOW" kinda thing to me.

I'm thinking there's been an increasing progression in fuckups from Spore, to AC2, to SC2, to D3 and now, Sim City. It's almost as if they're trying to one-up eachother's fuckups.

Or, it could just be that the public is getting more and more fed up with the DRM fuckups as time goes on (and yet they don't seem to do due diligence and check which DRM system the publisher has decided upon this time, to make the experience as shit as possible for legal users, while probably not even inconveniencing pirates one whit).

[tgr]

Please tell me the screen shot on the prior page is someone's facebook avatar in game and EA didn't REALLY steal the artwork of Milkman Dan from Red Meat.

Considering the fact he's called "Dantooine", and that his two cities are Dan Francisco and Dan Jose ... I think that's just a client-chosen avatar.

[Modern Angel]

That didn't seem like it was your question. I thought you were just asking for examples of cluster-fuck releases of major titles.

That's because I conveniently left part out! It should've read a series so revered and that pushed this many copies out the door falling down this hard.

[K9]

Was SC2 bad on launch? I don't remember anything particularly dreadful.

[Ceryse]

Starcraft 2?

Granted that I never really got into the 'playing with others' part of SC2, but I got it on launch and had no issues with it that I can recall. Not that it mattered as there was an offline mode for SC2.

[sickrubik]

That didn't seem like it was your question. I thought you were just asking for examples of cluster-fuck releases of major titles.

That's because I conveniently left part out! It should've read a series so revered and that pushed this many copies out the door falling down this hard.

Uh, so... Yeah, Diablo 3, then.

[Mrbloodworth]

Kinda sad, some friends were thinking of getting this and making a region together, but this is all sorts of silly.

If only there had been some way for your friends to make their own server.

That would have been cool. The multiplayer part of this did internist me, a cool feature for the series. The small sized areas were somewhat of a put off and, well all this shenanigans.

[tgr]

Kinda sad, some friends were thinking of getting this and making a region together, but this is all sorts of silly.

If only there had been some way for your friends to make their own server.

That would have been cool. The multiplayer part of this did internist me, a cool feature for the series. The small sized areas were somewhat of a put off and, well all this shenanigans.

Yes, it would've, and 5+ years ago it would've been made in this fashion. And 5+ years ago I would be completely and utterly *lost* in this game, because it wouldn't be literally sucking every dick on the way to the parking lot.

[Samprimary]

still the best review of sim city

[tgr]

I see what he did there

[DevilsAdvocate25]

Everquest 2 had a pretty spectacular failure upon launch - practically everyone I know jumped ship to WoW when EQ2 died for a week or whatever.

Everquest 2 came out before WoW.

EQ 2 came out on 4 Nov 2004 according to Wikipedia. WoW came out on 23 Nov 2004. So, while technically correct, that it did come out first, his point still stands that everyone jumped ship and went to WoW essentially 3 weeks after EQ 2 came out.

[Segoris]

SC2 launch was really good actually. Very few issues, latency, and some (iirc) was fixed somewhat quickly.

Best poll on EA's sites, only surprise is it was not done as a serious poll by an EA employee

Poll
[should] EA give refunds?
No I don't think they should       25%    [ 3 ]
Absolutley not!!       8%    [ 1 ]
People just have to deal with it and read ToS next time       33%    [ 4 ]
I don't care.       33%    [ 4 ]

[Fabricated]

Polygon lowered their score from 9.5, to 8, and now 4. lol.

I'm not linking to it because Polygon fucking sucks, but still.

[Segoris]

That polygon link has something kind of interesting [emphasis mine]:

We called the EA support line ourselves and were on hold for approximately 55 minutes before a support rep answered and said, "We are not offering any refunds due to server issues right now." Asked if that could change, the rep told us, "It's hard to say," and added that Maxis is "working 24/7" to fix the server issues. She also reiterated Origin's general policy, which is to deny refunds "except for special mitigating circumstances," like a buyer realizing their computer doesn't meet a game's system requirements.

So if a user's computer does not meet the requirements, a refund is okay. If EA's servers do not meet the requirements, refunds are not ok...

[Paelos]

This whole thing fills my heart with much joy.

[Sir T]

That didn't seem like it was your question. I thought you were just asking for examples of cluster-fuck releases of major titles.

That's because I conveniently left part out! It should've read a series so revered and that pushed this many copies out the door falling down this hard.

Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight was the first game to have this bullshit Always online DRM and it had EXACTLY the same issues on launch day. I know, I was one of the suckers that bought it and I couldn't play it for a week. And when I did my lousy internet dropped in the middle of a mission, so it didn't save my progress :D

Pity the game was pretty... uh... yeah. Oddly I never finished it. 

But that does allow me to sit back and laugh at all the clowns that were still caught by this despite that foreshadowing. SUCKERS!! 

[luckton]

MN Vikings Punter goes on Twitter tirade RE:SimFail

http://kotaku.com/5989350/nfl-punter-kicks-the-crap-out-of-ea-and-simcity

 

[Segoris]

Normally i would be upset at someone not only linking to Twitter, but to Kotaku - especially in the same damn post - but Kluwe is awesome and his tweet is even better



Also -

Chris Kluwe ‏@ChrisWarcraft

I reeeeeeaaaaally hope Maxis does a comparison of refunds demanded versus typical projected losses to piracy. It would be enlightening.

Mother fucker, Kluwe is going to be the reason why I finally actually give a shit about twitter. Wtf, divisional rival and all...damn him.

[Phred]

What's kind of funny is that I know numerous people (at least 5) who went to Full Sail...none of them work on games, though at least some of them work in other programming fields.

School always seemed like a massively-overpriced mill school to me, like a glorified ITT Tech or something.

What do you expect from a school that got it's start bilking people with dreams of getting into the music business. The music business is even worse than game programming in terms of people who are willing to work for free doing your job for your boss.

[Samprimary]

there's also this tweet, by a Maxis public face