14 DAY TRIAL // Azzer, the modder who first tweaked the time limit for offline play for SimCity, says that he believes an offline mode can be implemented in the city building title with relative ease, as long as Maxis is interested in creating it.
The gamer tells Rock, Paper, Shotgun that, “I’ve analyzed all of the data calls to and from EA servers – all of the APIs, every request for data, and all of the data that comes back.”
“The SimCity servers are not doing any calculations that could not be done on your PC, even for an entire region single player offline mode, let alone just the city you are in.”
His claims are at odds with the statements from Lucy Bradshaw, the leader of Maxis, who claims that the MMO-like nature of the game is central to the experience her team is aiming for and it would take a lot of engineering work to be offered entirely offline.
Azzer adds, “The servers are terrible, the MySQL set-up sloppy, and they are trying to handle all of the saving server side (“the cloud”) which is bogging them down constantly - they aren’t optimized for how many simultaneous cities are connected at once.”
The modder does not say whether a team of intrepid fans could be able to turn SimCity into an offline experience on their own.
Electronic Arts has recently taken a hard line against mods of any kind and is banning threads that seek to discuss the subject on the official forums.
SimCity had significant server problems on launch but since then, the Maxis team has upgraded its infrastructure and gamers seem to be able to connect without a hitch at the moment.
Gamers have also started to report problems with the simulation, including made-up citizen numbers and disappearing city gifts.