UPDATE – Maybe we spoke too soon, as the evening goes on, more and more players are reporting server issues rendering the game unplayable, according to user of Boards.ie, Twitter and EA Forums to name a few.
Also, an internal Maxis memo has leaked which highlights the severity of the situation, but also that Maxis are trying their hardest to fix the problems – a lot of overtime will be done in those offices this weekend.
Maxis’ general manager Lucy Bradshaw wrote:
“I’ll start by saying that I couldn’t be more proud of SimCity and the Maxis team that made it and are supporting it,” Maxis general manager Lucy Bradshaw wrote in an email sent to staffers at the studio. “The game launched with great reviews from both new critics and the veterans who have loved this franchise for so many years. SimCity is a software achievement that everyone at Maxis is extremely proud of. I am also thankful for all of the hard work put in by our marketing, EA Global Publishing and Origin teams, which drove very strong Day One performance around world.
“Then we launched it.”
Eeks, hopefully these issues can be resolved fast because server issues notwithstanding, SimCity is getting really high praise and review scores.
Memo via: Polygon
After an absolutely disastrous launch in North America earlier this week, SimCity has launched in Europe and Asia today and so far it seems to be going a lot smoother than our friends across the pond – not that it would be hard to beat the US Launch mind you, but still.
Reports from Twitter and Forums across Europe and Ireland seem to be good thus far, but Asian gamers are apparently having a worse time than us.
EA tweeted that they had added an extra European server to cope with demand, but the US servers are still acting badly.
Amazon.com has stopped selling digital copies of the game for the time being, warning gamers that EA were having problems while stating:
“Many customers are having issues connecting to the SimCity servers. EA is actively working to resolve these issues, but at this time we do not know when the issue will be fixed.”
Rumours also circulated yesterday that EA would not be accepting refund requests for customers and that they were even going so far as to ban anyone from Origin who protested.
As expected, these aren’t true and EA have stated that they won’t ban anyone for requesting a refund, but that customers couldn’t get a refund for digitally sold items – a common condition with most digital items.
As of tonight, our review copy is working fine, albeit the server load times were a bit long but overall not too bad. Our review will be live early next week, after the servers have settled down for a fair verdict.
We reached out to EA to comment on the European launch and they got back to us with the following statement:
Lucy Bradshaw, SVP and GM, Maxis said of the recent SimCity server issues: “Thousands of players across the world are playing and having a good experience – in fact, more than 700,000 cities have been built by our players in just 24 hours. But many are experiencing server instability and consequently, the rollout in North America has been challenging. It’s also now evident that players across Europe and Asia are experiencing the same frustration. Our priority now is to quickly and dramatically increase the number and stability of our servers and, with that, the number of players who can simultaneously access the game. We added servers today, and there will be several more added over the weekend. We’re working as hard as possible to make sure everyone gets to experience the amazing game we built in SimCity.”
