Just say NO to onerous DRM.

Go to hell EA, I will not reward you asshats for shitting all over my favorite game of all time. (No matter how sexy the actual game may be, I will maintain this principled stance. And furthermore attempt at all chances to actively dissuade others from rewarding your stupendous idiocy. Again, go to hell EA, you slugs.)

I don’t have to call search and rescue when I’m lost on a mountain in Skyrim.

Yes, but plenty of sedentary people call ambulances for heart disease, that’s for sure. ;)

Heh, I have to admit I do like Skyrim because of the graphics. I haven’t played it except to roam around and check out the visuals and kill a monster or two on a higher level that someone else saved.

What makes these games so annoying (and potentially impossible) to pirate is that someone would have to write a server emulator.

Turns out little kids like computer games.  Who knew?  Now imagine playing SimCity, where all the neighbor cities are a small random jumble with names like poop and fart. And you can’t delete them.  And they’ve been abandoned for a year, but you still can’t delete them.

Maybe an offline option would have been a good idea.  Except pirates.

What I’ve heard about the supply chain systems and traffic systems suggests that while the cities may be smaller, the simulation is much more detailed. It sounds like you actually have to connect specific industries together, a la Transport Tycoon, not just vague “industry”. That’s a really interesting direction to take the game in, if they have actually done it and not just faked it with awful “Social” mechanics.

I have my fingers and toes crossed.

As for feeling like you will be thrown in the deep-end with everyone., if you look at the details from the SimCity website, you do NOT have to take part in the ‘Whole world online community’.  You can setup yourself in your own region and not take part.  You can also create a ‘neighbourhood’.  Yourself and some friends.  It will just mean that you can’t have yourself ranked against the rest of the world, for those competitive people.

Even if it didn’t require an always-on connection, the other aspects of this game that all seem to be downgrades from what a “real” SimCity game should be, make it a strong No-Sale for me.

“Oh, gee, sales have tapered off and now we don’t have enough game sales revenue to pay for these big expensive servers.  Everyone will have to start paying a subscription fee.”
I can also imagine that there will be lots of “DLC” (how is it downloadable content if the content is all hosted on EA servers?) that you have to buy or your city will be at a disadvantage to anyone who has paid for it.And some day EA will just shut down the servers because they don’t make enough money on it, or there is a new version out and they want everyone to upgrade instead of just playing the game they already bought.

It’s been Zynga-ed.

It’s not a Sim-City, it’s a Farmvile.

- Tiny city area: just 2kmx2km.  Forget those giant regions you had in Sim City 4.

- No terraforming.  Unlike in every other Sim City game.

- No save/reload: forget smashing your city with disasters and then reloading from an old save.

- No subways.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/10/11/under-construction-simcity-in-game-footage-shown/#more-127546