It may be a small grace but it is a genuinely useful one, the SimCity website now shows live information on which servers are up, down, accepting new players, closed to rookies, etc, etc. et cetera. Previously you had to boot up the game’s client and even then the information it was supplying seemed to be out of sync with other players.
While Maxis still haven’t managed to prevent server issues (I had to wait 40 minutes over lunch time to try and get into a server) they are at least setting up systems that let us monitor their servers a little better. Namely, we now have site where we can view a live feed of which servers are currently running.
This addresses one of the issues that Rob raised during his early time with the game. Others, though, which remain unchanged are the game’s ridiculous response to finding a server is down, it waits 20 minutes before giving you the option to try and reconnect, it doesn’t do it for you, it just makes the connect button clickable once 20 minutes are up.
Hopefully all these problems will be sorted soon because currently, when I am in the game, I’m absolutely loving my time with SimCity. I just saw my first fire breathing lizard today and I’ve so many other disasters left to see. yet.