Maxis Is 'Exploring The Possibility' Of An Offline Mode For 'SimCity'

Score another one for those of us who aren’t fans of intrusive, controlling, always-on bullcrap — not long after Diablo III finally did away with their auction houses, Maxis says they’re “exploring the possibility” of an offline mode for SimCity. Probably because an offline mode would be preferable to the “don’t play the game at all mode” most people have opted for since the game’s embarrassing launch.

Hit the jump for the some more information and quotes from Maxis…

Maxis general manager Patrick Buechner recently posted a lengthy “State of SimCity” address on the game’s website. The piece was mainly designed to hype SimCity’s first major expansion, “Cities of Tomorrow”, but the real headline-grabbing quote was this…

“Right now we have a team specifically focused on exploring the possibility of an offline mode, 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.”

It should be mentioned that according to modders, SimCity could be made into a mostly-functional offline game with the removal of a single line of code, so when Maxis says they’re “exploring offline possibilities”, what they actually mean is, “We’re begging EA every day to let us take out that line of code”.

You know, as ridiculous as this whole SimCity ride has been, if they make the game playable offline and continue to fix its issues, I could still see myself buying it someday. I just have too many good memories wrapped up in the series to completely give up on it.

via Polygon

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