Electronic Arts has been throwing lots of servers at its connectivity problem for SimCity players, and it now sees light at the end of the suburban sprawl.
Lucy Bradshaw, the general manager of the Maxis label at EA, has become a prolific blogger lately. She said in a post on Sunday that the core problems with getting into the always-connected single-player game are “almost behind us.”
“Our players have been able to connect to their cities in the game for nearly 8 million hours of gameplay time, and we’ve reduced game crashes by 92 percent from day one,” Bradshaw wrote about the city-builder, which is the first major SimCity for the PC in a decade. She said server response time has been improved 40 percent and server capacity has grown 120 percent since launch.
“A combination of optimizing our server architecture and response times, deploying these enhancements on both a series of new and the original servers and issuing a few critical client updates has achieved getting virtually everyone into the game and, once in, having a great time building cities and sharing regions,” she added. “I had hoped to issue an ‘All-Clear’ tonight, but there are still some elements coming together. Tonight and tomorrow we’ll be monitoring each server and gameplay metrics to ensure that the service remains strong and game is playing great. We need a few more days of data before we can assure you that the problem is completely solved and the game is running at 100 percent.”
Bradshaw said that tens of thousands of new players are getting into SimCity every day.
She said the fans have remained confident and that is humbling. It’s taken about six days for EA to show such progress.
“I can’t begin to explain the way a development team feels when something you’re proud of is threatened at launch. Our biggest fear was that people who love this franchise would be scared off by bad reviews about the connectivity issues,” Bradshaw said. “But you put your faith in us. You bought the game with the understanding that we’d quickly fix the server issues. For that support – that incredible commitment from our fans — we are deeply grateful. As the general manager of Maxis, I want you to know that we cherish your faith in us, and the love you’ve shown for this franchise.”