14 DAY TRIAL // Lucy Bradshaw, the general manager of the team that created the rebooted SimCity, says that the much discussed always-on nature of the game and its connected social gameplay have many fans, although a group of core players criticize them.
She writes on an official Electronic Arts blog that, "Could we have built a subset offline mode? Yes. But we rejected that idea because it didn’t fit with our vision."
The team no longer wanted players to exist isolated from one another, but she acknowledges that there are gamers who might reject this vision of the game and its implications.
SimCity had big server-related issues on launch, but Maxis and EA have worked on them and the game is currently perfectly playable.
The team has long-term plans for the city builder, which is in many ways an ever improving MMO experience.