The SimCity Launch Troubles

I know I am late, making a post about the server issues for SimCity. The reason for this is I have actually been able to connect to the game since the 8th so I have been busy playing!

But that doesn't mean I didn't have any of the login issues which means that as a gamer I feel justified to rant a little bit about SimCity.
Because it should be possible to do better!



At the launch here in Europe, the only server I found available was the Oceanic one.  All the European ones were full. When I say all I mean the 4 that were originally available at launch, not the ones that has since been set up by EA after they realized that people actually want to play the game Maxis has developed. GASP!

And here is where I get confused. I get that servers cost money and that companies prefer to earn money rather than spend them, but it seems that each time a new game with DRM launches the people behind the game face the same surprise. "People want to play the game they bought from us". Even with big launch issues for other games in the past, it seems noone in the gaming industry is learning from this. (even though they may say they do.) In fact EA commented on the D3 launch trouble, promising that because of all the experience EA has with online games they would make sure not to prepare properly and that no similar issues woud arise with the launch of SimCity. Fast forward until today and unfortunately it turns out that they actually ended up doing a much worse job than Blizzard.

So why is it that with numbers available about pre-orders, sales and seeing the engagement of the fan base on the official and unofficial sites, EA (and other gaming companies) can not make a better estimate for server capacity.

Why not go big at first and then downsize? I am sure a company as big as EA could find something else to use the server capacity for should SimCity not need it in the future.

Instead they did a launch where I gave up on logging in on release day after having sat in queues for hours and continously being told that there was a network error when finally thought I was getting in.
This gave me a bit of a laugh though as I was told by the servers I had been playing for 1 hour. Yeah sure, if staring at the countdown timer qualifies for playing then I sure was a hardcore gamer on release day.

Then on the next day I spent half and hour trying to get the same servers to show up as the friends I wanted to play with. (The servers showing as available for them showed as full to me and some of the servers they were seeing didn't even appear on my list.)

Funny thing is though now that the issues has mainly disappeared, gamers will forgive (if not forget) as long as Maxis and EA fixes the next biggest issue with the game: The Traffic AI!  After all, we are getting a free game out of it!