I thought I would try a different type of post today, compared to my usual news posts. As many people probably noticed, I am a Maxis fanboy and I am normally the one to post all the SimCity and Sims gossip. SimCity, a reboot of the SimCity franchise, is coming our way in February 2013 and the more I learn about the game, the more worried I am getting about what this will be for the franchise.

While the SimCity development team have many veteran developers from previous SimCity titles such as SimCity 4 and SimCity 2000, many people feel reassured that this will not be similar to SimCity Societies, a game developed by Tilted Mill Entertainment which moved away from original SimCity game mechanics and received mixed reviews. I personally disliked this game because of the lack of goals. Societies caused instant negativity from fans as soon as it was announced Maxis were not developing the game. This time around, the negativity are for different reasons which some are down to EA and other things we are not getting a response about.

The new SimCity title will require a constant internet connection. Everything is stored in the cloud, with public and private regions. Public regions are multiplayer, and private are single player. This means that there is no offline single player which has sparked a lot of negative comments, even from myself. EA said months ago that all their games will go online in some form, and this is probably a result of that. The main reason, much like Diablo III, is probably to stop piracy. Maxis say this allows easier updating. My main concern here is the fact that EA close their online services after several years when the product declines in popularity, which means several years into the games lifetime you will not be able to play the game once the SimCity servers are closed, which worries me – I want to be able to play SimCity for many years to come just like I do with SimCity 4 (which is almost 10 years old) and SimCity 3000. While this does allow multiplayer, I would love that to be a separate feature and if EA want to stop piracy then just require Origin activation on first launch.

The second thing I have recently noticed is that there will be no Terraforming/God Mode in the new SimCity. This allows you to move terrain to how you want. This is being removed and has caused a lot of people saying how they are cancelling pre-orders and think the new SimCity will be a fail. Older features are being sacrificed for new simulation features. I never cared for this feature, but it’s very important to a lot of people. It saddens me to see core fans ditching the new game without giving it a chance – I think it’ll be a matter of reviews. I do trust Maxis and the developers working on the game.

I hope you enjoyed this small ramble about two things which are causing a lot of concern for me at the moment with SimCity. Hopefully I’ll be able to do an article about why I am excited about the game too, yet cautious at the same time. SimCity is in stores in February 2013.

For all the latest SimCity news, check out Zero1Gaming.