14 DAY TRIAL // SimCity is set to receive update 4.0 today, May 23, which will bring quite a few new features, like a Launch Park.
It will also enable some older things that were taken offline to reduce strain on servers, like leaderboards.
SimCity came out earlier this year and, while developer Maxis and publisher Electronic Arts hoped for a smooth release considering the game required a constant online connection, things went awry really fast and outages affected the game.
EA and Maxis have fixed many problems since then, and things have become much more stable.
Now, the two companies are getting ready to release SimCity update 4.0 that brings quite a few new things, including a Launch Park available for early adopters, but also a new region called Edgewater Bay that has seven new potential city sites.
Older features, like leaderboards, dynamic global market prices, or region filters, will be re-enabled, after they had been taken offline to reduce server strain at the game's launch.
Check out the full changelog, via the official website, below.
- New: SimCity Launch Park, an exclusive new park just for our dedicated fans who were early adopters. - New: Region: Edgewater Bay. Seven city sites in one cluster around a beautiful bay with one great work site. - New: Your current server will now be shown in the options menu. - New: More detailed rollover information on buildings telling player's if their Sims received happiness from a park or from shopping. Previous to this fix, this information was generic. - Re-Enabled Feature: Global Market prices now dynamically change during gameplay. - Re-Enabled Feature: Leaderboards will be active on EU West 3, Pacific 1 and Pacific 2 at the release. We will enable them on additional servers throughout the day. - Re-Enabled Feature: Region filters are now enabled on all SimCity servers. Players will be able to search for open games by Map Name, Sandbox Mode, and Abandoned Cities. - Rain Clouds: Fixed an issue where some cities would not have rain clouds to replenish their water table. If you had a city with this issue, you will start seeing clouds again within a game day. - Fire: Improved response time of fire trucks to fires. Improved the time it takes for a fire signal to reach a fire station. - Mission updates: Tuned Metals HQ and Community College missions. These were appearing too early, making them difficult to complete. They now appear later in a city's development. - Solar Farm Great Work: Reduced fire risk at the Solar Farm Great work. Local fire engines were spending too much time at the Solar Farm. - Messaging: Improved pre-requisite messaging for Trade Port, Casinos, Smelting Factory and Oil Refinery. It should be clearer on how to unlock these buildings. - Graphics: Fix for flickering low wealth buildings on NVIDIA graphics cards. - Education: Fix for an issue some cities experienced where commuting students did not return from a neighbor's city. This was causing a problem where students would disappear from a city in some cases. - Tuning: Sims will lose a small amount of happiness if they don't have a place to shop. Cities without places to shop will see complaints and feel the effect of unhappy Sims. This will emphasize the importance of commercial zones.
SimCity receives patch 4.0 later today, May 23, via the Origin digital distribution service.