EA's 'SimCity', which launched on Tuesday, requires a constant internet connection to play, even in single-player mode. As anyone who followed the news of the Blizzard's "Diablo III" launch knows, the number of servers needed to handle day one demand is always underestimated.
EA joins the rest of the universe in now knowing this. After an outcry over players being unable to log in to the city building game or being disconnected once playing EA issued the following statement:
"Some players may currently be experiencing issues or delays when attempting to join a game server or region - or may be unable to create a city at this time. Additionally, there are intermittent reports of friends list, invite, and tutorial delays and errors. We are working to clear traffic from the roads and hope to have all players managing their cities as soon as possible.
We're sorry for any inconvenience this may cause and appreciate your patience while we work on a resolution to this issue."
The issue became so bad that Polygon lowered its review score from a 9.5 out of 10 to 8.0.
The game launched first in North America and is set to release internationally later this week. For those worried that the same thing will happen again, EA says:
"We’re making changes to prevent further issues, and are confident that Origin will be stable for international launches later this week."
Let's hope so.