So...yeah... I may not be playing my iPad games, like Real Racing 3, nearly as often in the next few weeks as my attention continues to be sucked in by Sim City. If you are in a similar situation, feel free to add me to your Origin friend list (my name there is volcanopele there too...) and maybe we get a TA region going... Now off to build another city in my small region because my main city needs nuclear power...
I would have been interested if EA hadn't, upon the release of Dead Space 3, stated that they would be incorporating microtransactions into every game. I dunno if Simcity has them (and I guess The Sims have ALWAYS had them, what with furniture sets and whatnot) because it might have been in development before EA decided to go that route. Having said that, what's in it that makes it better (if indeed it is) than Simcity 2000?
No micro-transactions yet, but like all AAA PC titles, it did have a digital deluxe version, that I of course, like a sucker, bought. It includes a few building packs (British, French, and German themed buildings, like a double decker bus terminal, a German train station, etc.) and a "Heroes and Villains" pack, which adds a superhero and villain mini-game to your cities (build a HQ for MaxisMan, have him go around your city and fight crime, fires, etc.) I imagine that those, and similar mini-packs, will be sold for a few bucks by EA to those who didn't get the digital deluxe pack. Other than updated graphics and the fact that it runs on my laptop without additional hoops, it isn't really. They added missions and goals that you can complete for cash. The regions are more interconnected, so you don't have to have each city trying to do it all. There is also more interaction and variations in map types. So for example, some cities have deposits of oil under the ground, that you can drill for cash and to fuel your oil power plant. Same goes for "ore" and coal. These deposits again can influence what type of city you have (a city richer in coal and ore maybe more industrial while one that is poorer in those may focus on being a residential or commercial hub for the region). Negatives include no local saves, everything is tied to a remote server. Your games are also tied to a specific server. So if you start a game in America East, come back to find that America East is busy and has a queue, when you switch to America West (or America East 2), you will have to start a new game (and even redo the tutorial if you haven't been to that server). Also if you get disconnected from a server long enough that you are booted, you may lose your progress in a city. There is one city size... though the devs promise to add multiple size lots in a future update (probably some form of DLC).
