SimCity Launch Woes - This Week In MMO EP135 (VIDEO)

Written by: QuintLyn Bowers (@QuintLyn) | March 9, 2013 11:27 am

34 Comments

In this weeks TWIMMO, EA struggles to recover from the SimCity launch debacle, Smedley teases us about permadeath in EQNext and Lord British decides to return to his gaming roots.

Some of you may have noticed that the most recent SimCity launched this week. If you haven’t… Well then, welcome back to the internet. We missed you.

Yes, we know SimCity isn’t an MMO. It is, however, an online game — at least this version is. And, to say that the online aspect isn’t going quite as EA had hoped would be a bit of an understatement. Since the US SimCity launch on Tuesday, players have been having issues logging into servers, finding friends and a variety of other things.

In response, EA cut back on several “non-essential” features of the game — including Cheetah mode in order to make things smoother.

But, there have been other problems with the SimCity launch related to customer service. Mixed messages have been sent to players regarding the possibility of refunds for the game.

Permadeath in EQNext? Just kidding…

Yeah. I made that face too. John Smedley had my attention there for a minute and then BOOM he pulled it all out from under me, leaving me shaking my fist at him shouting “Damn you, Smedley!”

Of course, our hosts may have a different opinion about how good or bad it would have been to add permadeath to the next EverQuest title.

Lord British’s Shroud of the Avatar

Richard Garriott announced his new project from SXSW yesterday and it looks interesting — especially if you’re a fan of old-school medieval fantasy games. Like many well known devs, Garriott is electing to stay away from a publisher and has gone to Kickstarter.

All that and more plus your viewer questions!

We also have some details on TESO‘s beta, and a launch date for Age of Wushu .

And don’t forget, we love your viewer questions — especially video ones. If you have a question you’d like answered on the show, send them to submit@gamebreaker.tv. Remember to make video questions 30 seconds long and upload them to YouTube. Then send us the link via email.

As always, if you missed last week’s episode you can check it out here.

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25 comments

http://twitter.com/LiamRdsn Talos

EA is the Devil
shadydog66

ummm all I can say about EA and this launch is “Working as intended–buy DLC to fix it”
- http://twitter.com/Luke_Malcolm Luke Malcolm
  
  I can confirm this, I got a buddy who bought the 80 dollar version and he only had problems logging in on Release night, since than he been able to log in easy sometimes he has to wait 10 – 15 mins but thats all basically. 80 dollar version comes with the dlc. Now myself who bought the cheaper version hasn’t been able to log on at all since Wednesday .
http://twitter.com/JerryWheatfield Jerry Wheatfield

Some years ago I played an EA game, “Darkspore”. The engine felt gimped, as if it was made that way to lessen server load.
http://twitter.com/Luke_Malcolm Luke Malcolm

Diablo 3 may not be the greatest game or had a terrible launch, but atleast you could log into the game after 6-8 hours (Still terrible, but way better than 4 days) EA as also disable alot of features. I feel its just EA being EA.
nia,,

the guy in the bottom left sounds like kermit the frog…
http://twitter.com/LiamRdsn Talos

I sent a question in about “Repopulation” thought that would of come up this week, considering the amount of discussion about the sims.
http://www.facebook.com/jason.jenkins.73 Jason Jenkins

to me always online is the worst idea the gaming companies have come up with so far, even worse then DLC and pay to win. my reasons for this are that not everyone can be online all the time, there are a constant flow of power outages, storms of varying kinds, and a slew of other weather aliments that keep people from being online. And what do some people in these weather aliments do, go outside and shoot some hoops? heck no we stay inside and play video games as long as we got electricity to play them.
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Jim-Bergevin-Jr/1393526370 Jim Bergevin Jr
  
  Heck – you don’t even need electricity (from the power company anyway)! I lost power the last two years for days a time due to the East Coast Hurricanes and the combination of my UPS and Laptop, I was able to get through most of the outage with no problems.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Robert-Caliolo/100003765889295 Robert Caliolo

For EQN the NEXT thing in MMO would for them to make repercussions from dying, Maybe lose a hand or arm or eye or leg etc and have the ability to get a prostetic replacement. Be it a peg leg or bionic arm etc…
http://www.facebook.com/people/Robert-Caliolo/100003765889295 Robert Caliolo

Oh if only vangard could have been made today instead of 10 years ago
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Jim-Bergevin-Jr/1393526370 Jim Bergevin Jr
  
  Actually, it probably would have been finally ready for release right about now! ;P
  
  I still have the game installed and pop in every now and again to complete a quest or two. Still looks good after all these years.
http://twitter.com/Deadalon Deadalon

There is a reason why EAstore name was changed to Origin name. The rep of the EAstore was soo bad and had soo bad support service that it was just beyond believe. Origin is going the exact same route now. So just wait for the next name.

Im not a EA hater as such. I have just had such horribly bad experience with both their games and their support services that I do not trust them with my Credit Card any more. Its that simple.

These issues we are seeing now are very serious and much worse than for example with D3. These issues are causing whole big cities to get lost cause they dont get saved on the servers. Main issue with D3 was just login issues.

Can Maxis get this right in next few days ? And will it matter now if they manage to fix it? The damage to the rep of the game is already there. It might be a good game but I think big part of the playerbase knows by now that the entire development of the game has been focused on DRM rather than focusing on what would make the game the very best it could be.

What we can safely say is that EA does not have the fanboys that BLizzard had with D3 launch to keep voting up the game on metacritic. So maybe there wont be a second chance for SimCity.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Jason-Quinn/504633100 Jason Quinn

“Really knowledged”
http://www.facebook.com/people/Jim-Bergevin-Jr/1393526370 Jim Bergevin Jr

Gary – City on City rage … Stronghold Kingdoms. Played the Alphas a couple of years ago and it was pretty neat – always on and means you can be attacked while off-line and your towns razed to the ground.
Sharuko

lol Gary thinks every non-MMO game is an MMO.
http://twitter.com/phasra Phasra

I’m not EA hater, I do like some of the games they release. But I’m not buying and definitely not pre-ordering anything from Origin. My experience with Mass Effect 3 was (and still is) so horrible I’ve no words… So, unless EA start releasing games on Steam (or other services that actually work) – I’m not buying their games.
http://twitter.com/Xbuster231 Justin

You cant call a game a MMO just cause there’s lots of people waiting in line to play in a 8 player lobby based game, its only a MMO if there’s a persistent game world with massive amount of players in it (1000-3000 players) at once

Thats like calling Call of Duty a MMO, just because there’s 3 million players siting in a lobby waiting for a 4 vs 4 match to start doesnt make it an MMO
Saboteur Sweden

+1 to Pokket for a sane respons to Garys QQ
- Lottery_in_babylon
  
  Hah.. Pokket is the QQ’er – constantly whining (and rightfully) that “MMOs need more hardcore realism” and then flippantly dismisses two promising hardcore games in Camelot Unchained and LB. Pokket pouted like a 4year old at the REALISTIC Camelot feature of making males physically stronger. I’m a female too – wake up sister … men got more muscles, dummy
http://www.facebook.com/patrikules.vunderbar Patrikules Vunderbar

EA doesn’t care two poodoos about whether or not a game is ready to launch. They amp advertising for their games up so much, they only care about how popular the game is and how much initial cash flow from sales they can get at launch. How many SimCity ads did you see these last 3 months? Or how many people screamed and begged for SWTOR to not launch as soon as it did because it wasn’t ready? How many people were totally turned off to dragon age after playing through the second one. EA knows they can sell products even if they are just 5 pictures in a photo shop ap and half a story.

They
Don’t
Care
Jado Cast

Will not Buy EA games, period!
- http://twitter.com/tordr86 Tor-Sigurd
  
  hear hear !
theunwarshed

tbh, the vast majority of people (gamers included) are apathetic, undiscerning mouth-breathers with no respect for the money they throw away on low quality crap. that’s why EA (and those like them) can get away with shoveling manure to the masses over the protests of the “vocal minority”.
- DoctorOverlord
  
  People do need to learn to vote with their pocketbooks. I haven’t bought an Activision game in 10 years and that will continue into the future.
http://twitter.com/AmythielOMG Kamil

The new SimCity is but a shadow of SimCity4. Sure some things are streamlined and improved, but a lot of things are just botched. The always online play is terrible. The city sizes are terrible. I used to spend 100′s of hours on SC4 building entire regions, SC5 you fill out the entire city plot in 3 hours, at which point the city can only grow taller or you have to move to another city plot.

To anyone wanting to buy SC5 and not having played the previous iterations of the series, don’t. Get the deluxe edition of SC4 instead, it’s way superior simulation wise (what this game is about).
Dekin

Pokket was on FIRE this episode. Somebody get that girl a glass of water.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Kyle-Eggers/100000868131517 Kyle Eggers

Simcity’s issue is EA somewhat, unless it is on Xbox’s or Sony’s networks I haven’t seen much work really great online for EA. I mean really Origin sucks no one I’ve talked to has ever liked it, and their MMOs Warhammer Online, and SWTOR are both fail (SWTOR players are going to love that one). EA I sometimes feel would be better off hiring Companies like Valve or Blizzard to handle online for them. EA would ever do that, but isn’t there another company they could hire or buy and have them run their online.
EA did also release this game before it was ready. The game it’s self maybe ready (and great from all that I’ve heard), but since it can only be played online and they dropped the ball there, I would say EA pushed the game out too soon. There should of been more testing of the servers like say how GW2 did. I’m not a fan of EA really, but I have Simcity 4 which I still play, is a great game, and I don’t have to be online for, I’ll stick with that one.
http://twitter.com/tordr86 Tor-Sigurd

God. Please EA, can you just die?!
http://twitter.com/Zedris Zedris

lol Gary got mad at pocket qqing about having bad her being owned in mmos. Gary = the voice of the hardcore player!
Olav Borge Bondal

Both the other commentators have bad audio btw, the buzzing sound made me stop the video =/
Olav Borge Bondal

Also, smedley is a troll ;P
Jfluffy

Sim City is the same as Diablo 3, a Non-single player/Non-mmo game!
DoctorOverlord

Good episode. I sympathize with Hilary’s decision to never touch the Sims. I can’t install any version of Civilization on my computer. If I do I know I will collapse in a week from lack of sleep.

SimCity Launch Woes - This Week In MMO EP135 (VIDEO)

In this weeks TWIMMO, EA struggles to recover from the SimCity launch debacle, Smedley teases us about permadeath in EQNext and Lord British decides to return to his gaming roots.

Permadeath in EQNext? Just kidding…

Lord British’s Shroud of the Avatar

All that and more plus your viewer questions!

Patch 5.3: Blizzard’s First Ever Live Video Interview!

This Week in MMO Ep 144:
WildStar, Rift, Dust 514

Legendary Ep126:
Raiding Ra-Den Revelations!

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