Sacralidge.... The end of Sim City as we know it...

It has been reported that the guys from Maxis are too busy with Spore to do Sim City 5. Too bad Tilted Mill is going to ruin Sim City permanently.

Perhaps after they utterly destroy the Sim City name, a new company with fresh ideas will start a new "clone" series where Sim City 4 left off and revitalize the concept?

R.I.P. Sim City. We will miss you.

bye bye sim city, my lovly city building game..

Well, if they took the graphical engine and redesigned the game to be good old fashioned SimCity (I do love building subways, I don't know why, I just do) it would be the BEST SIM GAME EVER! Save perhaps for Spore.

Lets pray Tilted Mill listen to the voices on the forums and go back and rebuild from scratch.

Ah EA strikes again.

No matter. i will just keep on playing Sim Citys 1-4. All things must end i suppose.

I would guess that nothing will be changed despite all the user uproar over it (maybe the name as a longshot). It's probably not even in Tilted Mill's hands but EA/Maxis. Depending on their schedule, any major changes would be out of the question because they'd miss their ship date.

Yeah what was reported is to be... No changes, and any input given so far by the fans has been brushed aside...

*Looks at IC staff* and *gives them all a big hug for listening to us*

Maxis is gone, incase you guys missed it EA bought them out and then forgot about the name completely the last SIMS 2 game didn't even mention Maxis...

The horror of it all! SimCity is one of the pillars of modern PC gaming; best of all it was truly an educational game to boot. To callously handle such divine property as if it was a mere commodity subject to the whims of the corporate machine and all the associated evil that comes with such a situation is utterly appalling, disgraceful and reprehensible. What is the world coming to?

Here are a few quick points to help get a handle on where SimCity Societies is headed:

#1 -- For the first time in the franchise's history, an in-house team at Maxis/EA isn't developing the game. At the helm of SimCity Societies is Tilted Mill, the folks behind Caesar IV and the sleeper society-builder Immortal Cities: Children of the Nile. Why isn't Maxis working on it? The answer's simple: Will Wright and his team are busy with Spore. But Rod Humble, the head of EA's Sims division, handpicked the Tilted Mill guys, and its previous city-building successes makes the developer an inspired choice.

#2 -- By SimCity creator Will Wright's own admission, previous SimCity games had become too complex for most. Tilted Mill is focusing on scaling back the complexity and micromanagement of latter entries like SimCity 4 -- no pipes to lay, no power grids, no manual emergency-response funds to disperse, no individual building-funding. The series' hardcore fans shouldn't worry that the game will no longer be recognizable or too easy. "We are not out to fix something that's broken," promises lead designer Chris Beatrice.

#3 -- As the working title implies, Societies adds a new layer of emphasis on the city's citizens. The game introduces six "social energies" (such as Wealth or Obedience) that influence your city's look and feel. Buildings and aesthetics change depending on how these six values develop. Focus on Obedience, for example, and your buildings will start automatically adding security cameras to monitor your citizens' movements, Orwellian-style. Different energy balances unlock different building types, too.

#4 -- The standard SimCity "adviser" system is gone. Societies aims to communicate your city's well-being through goals and the city's overall atmosphere -- and your citizens' behavior. Sims (yes, they're using that term) will skip work if they're in a bad mood or start engaging in criminal activity (such as vandalization). Your actions in the game -- what you choose to build -- will also influence the kinds of goals the game presents. Head down an Obedience path, for example, and the game will start giving you goals to usher your progress in that direction.

#5 -- Goal-oriented sandbox gameplay: Instead of giving you a handful of typical scenarios, this SimCity awards new buildings and bonuses for meeting certain goals during the course of normal gameplay. With only about 15 percent of the buildings unlocked from the get-go, that's a lot of game to wade through.

from : http://www.1up.com/do/previewPage?cI...1&sec=PREVIEWS
*******

Number 2 , made me cry.....

Hehe. How much do you wanna bet that this will be a good game and that Spore will be a flop?
----

Wow, I've been waiting for over 2 years for Spore now. OMFG WILL WRIGHT, CURSE YOU!!!!!

@Lord - my eyes teared up when I read that one. The complexity was what I loved most about SC. I figured it was a game that was made for bean counter egg heads like me by a bean counter egg head. I always looked at it as a simulation for nerds that was approachable by everyone in the forum of a game.

I must also commend the President of TM for getting directly involved in the communities pain and sorrow threads (I guess he is taking a page out of Brad's book) and addressing things head on.

Additionally in all fairness I dont mind the addition of the social spheres as I think it is a good thing because the social interaction in the game has been its biggest week point from a city perspective. But to remove the power, lights and sewers systems as well as allow direct building placement is at the moment shocking to me. I see it as replacing one level of complexity for another one and I'm the kind of guy that likes to simply add-on and not end up with a zero sum gain.

Yay!



Uh-oh



No...



NO



NO!!!!!!!!!!!!  

Well, I think it will be just another game that got overhauled in order to "appeal to more players". In most of the cases it's translated into a "casual friendly" game.


From the sound of it if anyone had played City Life, Tycoon New York, combine those '2 games together I think we'll get a good idea how this new Sim City will be shaped, at least to me they're sound so damn familiar.


I'll save my judgement on whether the game is good or bad until it's release since it's not like I don't like city life and Tycoon New York, but right now it's probably safe to say it won't be like a Sim City game. Did any played Tycoon New York? So many things they talked about here sound just sooooo similar to that game.

I played both the Demos..... and they sucked..... Were the full games better?

I too did not find CL or TNY worthy after being spoiled on SC for over a decade.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!



Though console owners will have a cornucopia of titles to choose from this fall, PC gamers were looking forward to one in particular. Spore, the hugely ambitious new project from Sims creator Will Wright, was slated to be out later this year and was presumed by many to be one of Electronic Arts' tentpole holiday releases.

Well, presume no longer. Today during a post-earnings report conference call with analysts, newly reinstalled EA CEO John Riccitiello shattered many gamers' dreams by announcing that Spore is no longer on the publisher's 2008 fiscal year calendar, which ends on March 31, 2008.

"Spore is a title we have enormous confidence in," Riccitiello told analysts. "I've had the chance to review the title three times in my short return to the EA, and it looks fantastic. I will also tell you that its release will be right up [to] the bubble in Q4 [of fiscal '08], if not sometime in early fiscal '09, so we don't feel comfortable in forecasting it." No specific mention was made of the DS version of the game.

As is often the case with high-profile titles, quality control concerns were behind the delay. "We're focusing on quality to make sure we build a franchise that feels more like The Sims, a franchise that we hope...to see around for some time in the future." Riccitiello promised, hinting the publisher has big plans for the property.



OMG I HATE YOU WILL WRIGHT!!!

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/spore/news.html?sid=6170303

EDIT: Hey, by then I actually might have a decent computer...

I just got this bad taste i my mouth.. I think spore might become a MMO
If its gonna be a MMO or with monthly fee, im not gonna buy it ever

They are giving the game one and a half extra year? for what? ill be close to 30 to its new release date.

....


edit:
oh wait... its TWO AND A HALF years of extra production time

No, WW is always saying you'll just download other people's stuff. If it was an MMO then players could get wiped out really early. I don't think WW would do that.

4...years...too...long...to wait.... FOR ONE VIDEO GAME!!! CURSE YOU WILL WRIGHT!

This board should have sigs. CURSE YOU WILL WRIGHT would be mine.

Understandable, because both of them are stupidly easy. It's ok if you play the game just to see a bustling city and some interesting things happen, but none of them require you to take out a piece of paper, a pencil and a calculator to plan your city.


That's why I said I think this will be an overhaul to gear toward the casual players, in which I'm not surprise because it has been happening too frequently

With over 4 years in the development cycle I expect Spore when released to be all spit and polish without any bugs at all. It should hit the market on day one with a Star Craft level of refinement.

All this pales in comparison to the fact that I just stepped in a puddle.

And Spore will outdo both those games.

AAAARGH! WHY?! WHY!!!!

another great game DOOMED TO HELL. Is it me, or is PC gaming growing worse and worse?

The trend certainly seems to be to dumb it down dramatically in order to hit the mass market.

Bah! Mass Market Schmash Schmarket. Make PC games require a Quantum Physics degree I say, the more complex the better.






Just not so complex as to make my brain melt...

Another thing that worries me is transportation, in all the screens I've seen only one type of road, where are the elevated railways, subways, monorails, railroads, freeways and avenues we've grown to love?

And you thought it couldn't get any worse......

http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=77692


"There's more than 350 buildings to construct, each with the flexibility to combine, connect or be re-arranged with others; including a weird and wonderful world of structures like gingerbread houses and chocolate factories."

Gingerbread Houses FTW!!