EU release of SimCity officially bombs (who would have thunk it!)

[raankh]

For your information. Not that I'm surprised.

The game went online half an hour ago, but would-be players are reporting the same slew of errors that US users are currently experiencing-- no matter the server load on the chosen server. Errors include not being able to log in, not being able to create/claim cities and not being able to install the game.

Personally I'm affected by the second of these, I can't claim my first city (thus, I can't play the game) regardless of what server I choose.

So, despite EAs hollow assurances, the game has bombed at the EU release just as bad as it did two days ago in the US.

Considering previous examples of these problems, such as D3 or just about any MMORPG, I doubt the game will be playable until next week. The coming weekend is likely to be worse than the current situation. Perhaps they'll get their act together, but I've seen nothing to indicate they are even capable of doing that.

With all the claims of EA having so many smart guys around (cf. CliffyB or whatever), I'm really wondering how they figured this one.

I'll take myself as an example. I'm pretty big money for gaming companies-- I spend several hundred dollars per year on computer and video games. Some years I've spent upwards of a thousand dollars on game software alone. However, I'm now very unlikely to be buying anything more from Origin/EA/Maxis, given that the quality of the software and the service is obviously absolute shite.

I very much doubt I'm alone in that stance among the mid-high spenders in the gaming market. How did they figure this was going to work? Any takers, other than "EA is EVIL" or "they don't give a shit/suit yourself/blahdiblah". I'm talking about these so-called smart-guys. How did they figure this would work?

EDIT: Now the authentication servers went down too. Oh joy.

 

[Xarathox]

Well, it's obvious no one in the gaming industry does any large scale testing anymore. This is why I never play a new game (especially online games) during the month of release.

 

[TheCommanders]

Doesn't a game bombing mean that it doesn't sell well? I was under the impression that SimCity sold pretty damn well, despite being horse crap. Either way, this shit just isn't acceptable. If a company insists on having a purportedly single player game nailed to a server, the least they could do is have the fucking thing working. Also, this sort of thing is kind of sneaky, because during a press beta, there won't be anywhere near the amount of users on the servers as there would be at release, explaining why few to none of the review mentioned that this might be an issue. I do find it suspicious that this crap game is rated so well, even if the reviewers were unaware of the server issues.

 

[Genocidicles]

Doesn't a game bombing mean that it doesn't sell well?

Yeah, saying that got my hopes up. You should be ashamed of yourself OP!

 

[lRookiel]

More dissatisfied customers that will not be giving EA their money you say?

YAAAAY

 

[raankh]

Ah, well, locally where I am, "bomb" rather implies "so stupid they blew themselves up" etc

 

[Comocat]

The weird part to me is people still pre-order these games in droves. I don't thinnk there has been a smooth "always online game" in the history of gaming. It's hard for companies to change their ways when people are throwing fistfuls of money at them. Why spend money to fix something consumers obviously dont care about?

 

[sneakypenguin]

Just give it about 12-24 hours and it should be fine. The US release was janky for a while but made worse as everyone tried to hit east 1-2 ignoring the 6 other servers(judging how they were open all day tuesday). As far as online games go its pretty good, as you can drop your connection for pretty much ever, and it acts as a cloud save more than online mp. The only thing you miss when you drop is anything live going on in your region.

 

[Carnagath]

Considering previous examples of these problems, such as D3 or just about any MMORPG

Actually, that's incorrect. Unless we are talking about something like Path Of Exile, where you can blame the inexperience of the developers.

Honestly, I cannot remember the last time I had my WoW server crash or lag, or seen the login server cause any problems. And yes, that includes launch nights for new expansions. To my recollection, the Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria launches were pretty much flawless, with close to zero problems of any kind reported. And yeah, while hating on WoW might be the cool thing to do these days, it certainly did have a LOT more players waiting for the expansion, than Simcity did for its launch.

The reason why Simcity (or Diablo 3) had terrible launches, was not the fact that those giant corporations were OMG-SURPRISED! by the number of people trying to log in on launch. They weren't. They just don't care. Addind server capacity is extremely expensive, and for a game that has no subscription, and whose number of active players will plateau quite heavily within the following month, there is no reason for them to do it. There is no reason to spend some money to prepare you launch day for 2 million logins, when only 30,000 of those will actually be playing concurrently in a few days.

WoW does, because the number of players at launch is pretty close to the final number. Yes, people come and go, and some don't play that much, but most of the people who buy a subscription based MMO expansion are most likely to actually play it, several hours a day, so investing in server capacity is mandatory.

 

[Evilpigeon]

I just can't believe this is a sustainable way for companies to release games. Surely people are going to start 'equating always online' with 'won't be playable for the first few weeks' and stop buying into this.

 

[Antari]

For your information. Not that I'm surprised.

The game went online half an hour ago, but would-be players are reporting the same slew of errors that US users are currently experiencing-- no matter the server load on the chosen server. Errors include not being able to log in, not being able to create/claim cities and not being able to install the game.

Personally I'm affected by the second of these, I can't claim my first city (thus, I can't play the game) regardless of what server I choose.

So, despite EAs hollow assurances, the game has bombed at the EU release just as bad as it did two days ago in the US.

Considering previous examples of these problems, such as D3 or just about any MMORPG, I doubt the game will be playable until next week. The coming weekend is likely to be worse than the current situation. Perhaps they'll get their act together, but I've seen nothing to indicate they are even capable of doing that.

With all the claims of EA having so many smart guys around (cf. CliffyB or whatever), I'm really wondering how they figured this one.

I'll take myself as an example. I'm pretty big money for gaming companies-- I spend several hundred dollars per year on computer and video games. Some years I've spent upwards of a thousand dollars on game software alone. However, I'm now very unlikely to be buying anything more from Origin/EA/Maxis, given that the quality of the software and the service is obviously absolute shite.

I very much doubt I'm alone in that stance among the mid-high spenders in the gaming market. How did they figure this was going to work? Any takers, other than "EA is EVIL" or "they don't give a shit/suit yourself/blahdiblah". I'm talking about these so-called smart-guys. How did they figure this would work?

EDIT: Now the authentication servers went down too. Oh joy.

Here's the real wake up call however. You no longer matter to them. They have your money. About the only thing they care about is the next game and the next scammed customer. Will it get fixed? Maybe if they feel like getting around to it. As for smart guys. They have your money, that was the goal. Mission Accomplished. If you don't want to say EA is evil or generally incompetent after what you've just been through, then I suggest taking a long hard look in the mirror.

 

[rapidoud]

Doesn't a game bombing mean that it doesn't sell well? I was under the impression that SimCity sold pretty damn well, despite being horse crap. Either way, this shit just isn't acceptable. If a company insists on having a purportedly single player game nailed to a server, the least they could do is have the fucking thing working. Also, this sort of thing is kind of sneaky, because during a press beta, there won't be anywhere near the amount of users on the servers as there would be at release, explaining why few to none of the review mentioned that this might be an issue. I do find it suspicious that this crap game is rated so well, even if the reviewers were unaware of the server issues.

To you too Antari, they did extensive patching since release, and even upgraded server capacity. But derp logic!

http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/12/20/maxis-explains-the-use-of-simcity-always-online-drm/

?GlassBox is the engine that drives the entire game?the buildings, the economics, trading, and also the overall simulation that can track data for up to 100,000 individual Sims inside each city. There is a massive amount of computing that goes into all of this, and GlassBox works by attributing portions of the computing to EA servers (the cloud) and some on the player?s local computer,? Bradshaw writes.

If I?m understanding that correctly, Bradshaw?s saying that offloading certain aspects of the simulation to SimCity servers is not only the way the game is designed, but a technical requirement. Bradshaw reflects this again in a later paragraph: ?Trades between cities, simulation effects that cause change across the region like pollution or crime, as well as depletion of resources, are all processed on the servers and then data is sent back to your city on your PC. Every city in the region is updated every three minutes, which keeps the overall region in sync and makes your decisions in your city relevant to any changes that have taken place in the region.?

tl;dr Servers are required so people's computers don't spaz out due to the amount of regional play at hand and the amount of processing required, especially for pathfinding, where routes between cities is calculated on server then you're sent what you need to know i.e. they just say 'take X, turn right at Y' and the rest, whilst your game just renders the vehicle.

 

[Friendly Lich]

Pre-order now for allot of money and get three days of launch day stress and frustration!!!!

 

[Davroth]

How come big developers are not able to set up enough servers to prevent that kind of stuff? Diablo 3 already baffled me to no end, how it was barely functional at the start, and now freaking Sim City? Would it kill EA to buy some extra servers at the start and then phase them out down the line, when they are not needed anymore? This is ridiculous.

 

[Andrew_C]

To you too Antari, they did extensive patching since release, and even upgraded server capacity. But derp logic!

http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/12/20/maxis-explains-the-use-of-simcity-always-online-drm/

?GlassBox is the engine that drives the entire game?the buildings, the economics, trading, and also the overall simulation that can track data for up to 100,000 individual Sims inside each city. There is a massive amount of computing that goes into all of this, and GlassBox works by attributing portions of the computing to EA servers (the cloud) and some on the player?s local computer,? Bradshaw writes.

If I?m understanding that correctly, Bradshaw?s saying that offloading certain aspects of the simulation to SimCity servers is not only the way the game is designed, but a technical requirement. Bradshaw reflects this again in a later paragraph: ?Trades between cities, simulation effects that cause change across the region like pollution or crime, as well as depletion of resources, are all processed on the servers and then data is sent back to your city on your PC. Every city in the region is updated every three minutes, which keeps the overall region in sync and makes your decisions in your city relevant to any changes that have taken place in the region.?

tl;dr Servers are required so people's computers don't spaz out due to the amount of regional play at hand and the amount of processing required, especially for pathfinding, where routes between cities is calculated on server then you're sent what you need to know i.e. they just say 'take X, turn right at Y' and the rest, whilst your game just renders the vehicle.

If Glassbox was capable of using multiple cores (see https://twitter.com/moskow23/status/296355832998801408) they actually wouldn't have an excuse to offload stuff onto EA's servers. And considering the vast majority of computers these days have at least 2 cores (even your dad's computer, which this is allegedly designed for) there is absolutely no excuse for a simulation engine not to be multithreaded. Thus I am lead to believe they didn't bother because they knew stuff would be offloaded onto EA's servers.

 

[fix-the-spade]

EDIT: Now the authentication servers went down too. Oh joy.

It took over a month for Battlefield 3 (Origin+Battlelog+BF3 itself) to all get to a state of working reliably and not dieing under load at random intervals.

Enjoy the wait.

 

[idarkphoenixi]

I can't believe I'm even saying this but I'm amazed that with all the money EA has they keep proving once again that they are absolute incompetents.

 

[N3squ1ck]

I only preordered the game, after I got it for 40 euros instead of 60. The launch this morning was horrible, but this morning it ran pretty well, and just sometimes lost the connection to the server >_>

EDIT: Just tried to start it again, I take it back, the authentification servers are down again

 

[9thRequiem]

I can't believe I'm even saying this but I'm amazed that with all the money EA has they keep proving once again that they are absolute incompetents.

Same, but what amazes me even more is lack of pattern recognition in the games-buying market.
Always-On DRM is always problematic at launch - doubly so when the servers aren't just for authentication; not even Blizzard could get it to work right. And yet "Pre-order and play on launch day" is still a thing for these kind of games on a massive scale, and people are still surprised when it blows up.
Basically, I guess we get the service we deserve.