It's been a little over a month since the troubled launch of SimCity, with servers crashing and always-online problems popping up regularly. One of the first casualties of developer Maxis' plan to fix SimCity's various problems was to remove the game's 'Cheetah' speed -- the highest tier for game speed.
Now that most of the issues have calmed down, and Electronic Arts has doled out their free game, Maxis has put the cheetah speed back into the game. Now, gamers can watch their cities grow (or collapse) without tapping their fingers impatiently on the mouse.
In addition to the return of cheetah speed, Maxis also announced that a 2.0 update is in the pipeline. What exactly the update might include is unclear, but we're hopeful that some of the many knocks against the game early on will be addressed. Granted, we don't expect the game to have an offline mode, but perhaps some general improvements to network connectivity, and how various systems (roads especially) work could use some touching up.
The update will come just in time for the launch of SimCity on the Mac, which we just learned will launch on June 11th. Now, Apple aficionados can get their hands on the city-building action, albeit with a much better launch experience (hopefully).
Maxis also announced that any gamers that purchase SimCity for the Mac would also net themselves the PC version as well. One purchase will unlock two copies. And don't fret PC players; anyone that has already picked up a copy of SimCity for PC will get a Mac download code for Origin on the 11th. Looks like EA is learning how to place nice after being named the 'Worst Company in America.'
So, after a month of bad news for SimCity players, there's finally a few reasons to get excited again; that is, if you haven't already given up on the title altogether. We imagine that update 2.0 is only the beginning, and Maxis has plenty more content in the works. And it starts first with a major title update.
Will you be returning to SimCity now that cheetah speed is back? What do you hope to see addressed in update 2.0?
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Source: EA, SimCity - Facebook