Update: The UK servers are now suffering exactly the same connection issues as the US servers. Players are unable to log in or are asked to wait in a queue of 20 minutes to attempt a fresh login.
SimCity’s release in the US on Tuesday was an unmitigated disaster – a ship-launching turned awry by an iceberg which had been visible to its passengers for months, yet seemed to remain all but invisible to its captains. EA have since disabled “non-critical game elements” to temper the server strain that saw a significant minority of players locked out of the game, and remained “confident” of smoother European and UK launches yesterday and today – even as Amazon temporarily withdrew SimCity from their store.
Thursday came, and the European and Nordic launch wasn’t so smooth as all that. But SimCity unlocked for UK Origin users this morning. And you know what? It totally works.
That’s grim consolation to players elsewhere in Europe, of course, who have had to suffer the worst of our continent’s server woes in a shonky sort of dry run for the past day. Maxis patched a number of European servers overnight, and added another to the game, Europe East 3, early this morning.
“We are working on the servers 24/7,” tweeted the developers. “Expect performance fluctuations. Our fans are our number one priority.
“We are continuing to upgrade servers and more people are playing across the world. Thank you for your patience.”
PCGamesN editor Tim has been hopping in and out of the game all morning. Apparently he’s set up a region, and called it ‘N’d of the World’.
Where are you, and are you managing to play SimCity okay?
Thanks, Eurogamer.