After a few promises and false starts, SimCity players can from today, finally enjoy a game of city-building offline. An update to SimCity allows for offline play, without the need for a persistent online connection. Or as EA puts it “unplug, build, and destroy their cities from anywhere in the world”. Next time you log into SimCity, the update will be automatically applied for all PC and Mac players.
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Here’s what will happen: after logging into SimCity, the game offers the option of Single Player (offline mode), or Multiplayer (online mode). This is what Single Player offers:
Players who choose to play Single-Player Mode will not have access to Online-only features such as Multiplayer, SimCity World, Leaderboards, Achievements, dynamic pricing of resources in the Global Market and Cloud Saves. I also want to point out that saved Regions cannot be transferred between Modes. This means that if you play a Region in Single-Player Mode, you will not be able to play it in Multiplayer. We want to keep the competitive aspects of the Online game intact.
Maxis head Patrick Buechner was listing to our demands. “We’ve listened to our players and today we are delivering against their most direct feedback with the release of the new Single-Player Mode. Player feedback has helped us deliver 10 major gameplay Updates that have improved the experience with better tuning, new features and free content. This is the most definitive SimCity experience whether you choose to play Online or Offline.”
The latest SimCity was designed as an always-online game, but this was met with the ire of millions of players, understandably pissed off from having to ensure a stable connection for what is essentially an offline game, mimicking an online world.
According to EA and Maxis, the update has effectively reengineered the GlassBox engine so that SimCity can accomodate for local (offline) players. GlassBox is the simulation engine which drives SimCity, and used to require the EA gaming cloud to operate.
