EA has announced the list of games that anyone who bought SimCity will be able to choose from as an apology for the messy launch. During its first week online, many gamers were unable to log in to EA’s servers, meaning they couldn’t play this ‘always online’ game.
Here’s the list of games you can choose from
- Battlefield 3 (Standard Edition)
- Bejeweled 3
- Dead Space 3 (Standard Edition)
- Mass Effect 3 (Standard Edition)
- Medal of Honor Warfighter (Standard Edition)
- Need For Speed Most Wanted (Standard Edition)
- Plants vs. Zombies
- SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition
SimCity’s troubles are unlikely to end with this gift. An official blog post has attempted to calm the online storm about why there was no offline mode. However, as many pointed out, EA and developers Maxis seemed to have changed their story.
In development blog posts running up to the release, they claimed ‘always online’ was necessary as the servers would handle a portion of the simulation software, and that would be too much for home PCs to manage. This has been proven to be untrue. Now EA are claiming that always online is because the game is designed to be multiplayer and social.
Its clear that there are advantages to online play, but there is nothing that’s a deal breaker, or that makes an offline single player mode look impossible.
If that had been made clear before, fans might have been angry, but they would not have felt lied to. It’s unfortunate Maxis decided to make the case that it was the technically brilliant Glass Box engine that required the power of online servers. Mods have shown the game can indeed be played offline, and to make matters worse, not all of Glass Box is so intelligent after all.
