Gaming companies just need to face the truth... We are not ready for always online single player DRM.
But it's not. This is not news to me. As an old Silent Hunter series fan and modder, I had to put up with franchises being destroyed before. You get one awesome game (Silent Hunter 3 and 4 and Sim City 4), you get a splendid modding community which keeps the game alive and thriving for years upon years, then you get a new game which ignores all progress and requests, makes it fuzzy and arcade, and slams it with the DRM hammer (Silent Hunter 5, Sim City). At least Silent Hunter 5 WAS playable at launch and is still improved by mods. What you end up with is a quick patch to solve online issues, and then weeks later you see the cracked game on pirate sites. The only people who are hurt are legitimate buyers. And it's high time companies finally look and listen.
But wait, there's more. EA's DRM launch problem is just a passing nuisance. Launch day DLC is not. Sim City is an unfinished game, not just with the bugs, but the rest. The most important missing features will be included, but who here is so innocent to believe that they won't be payed DLCs? This is up in your face stealing. Diablo 3 had problems at launch, fair enough, but at least what you bought was all you bought. EA doesn't work that way. We can forgive bugs and connection problems, because we want to play the game in the first place. We can forgive some missing features, confident that soon they will include them in a patch. But not payed DLC with essential features to the game. This is Sims 3 all over again. I'm not expecting EA to change their act. Not in a million years. EA is dead to me... I still love Battlefield and will probably continue to buy it, but not other titles, and not preorder, and not DLC, and never again before a review, no matter how much I want to play the thing. But at least let this be a lesson for all the other companies, and players for that matter. Take note EA, our wallets will start to do the talking from now on.
Why did I give this a 5 then? Because it will be worth a solid 5 when most problems are gone. Which is not much, to be honest. The only way they can fix this is make a single-player mode, and release terraforming, bigger zones and subways for free. I can deal with DLC that just make different age cities, such as 1940, Wild West or future cities.