SimCity arrived for PC earlier this year and gave publisher EA a few headaches at launch, mainly due to its online only interface which ran into a number of login issues. Many fans have since asked for the game to feature some sort of off-line mode. Now it looks like EA and developer Maxis might just be considering it.
Patrick Beuchner, general manager of Maxis, stated, “Right now we have a team specifically focused on exploring the possibility of an offline mode.”
He continued, “I can’t make any promises on when we will have more information, but we know this is something that many of our players have been asking for. While the server connectivity issues are behind us, we would like to give our players the ability to play even if they choose not to connect. An offline mode would have the additional benefit of providing room to the modding community to experiment without interfering or breaking the multiplayer experience.”
Unfortunately, another popular player request, bigger cities, won’t be happening in SimCity. “After months of testing, I confirm that we will not be providing bigger city sizes,” said Buechner. “The system performance challenges we encountered would mean that the vast majority of our players wouldn’t be able to load, much less play with bigger cities.”
SimCity is available now for PC.
Source: Computer and Video Games
