new beta

There's a second beta for SimCity this weekend.

I think I'm getting a little obsessed with the game actually as I've been checking the website and searching for news just about every day.  I guess part of it is that it's been donkey's years since I last played SimCity (even longer if you set aside the abomination that was societies), but also I finished (well, ish) Anno 1404, which is to say I built a world with both cathedral and mosque and the maximum number of citizens.  I then started Anno 2070 and I have to say it put me off a little.

There was no big reason for that, it was a combination of tiny things, but where I first played Anno 1404 and loved it I played 2070 and felt a bit lost somehow.  I dunno, I only really played it for a little while and haven't been back to it yet so I may like it more when I play it properly.

Anyway, the new SimCity beta is apparently designed to test the servers.  I'm guessing they want to avoid something like the Diablo III fiasco as much as they can.  They've said that the game actually runs on the EA servers and you're almost just logging into it when you play.  I've no idea quite how true this is but it suggests that in the first few weeks of play there's going to be a lot of demand on the servers as everyone starts new games all at the same time.

I believe the launch date is actually staggered around the world so I'm guessing they're hoping that will alleviate it a bit, but also they're intending this beta to be a stress test.

As such I'm guessing lots of people will get passes and the beta is compressed into 24 hours to ensure everyone is playing at the same time.  No idea if I'll get one, though - I was surprised I got in the last time and have certainly seen that some people didn't get in so it wasn't quite just a big demo.

It will, apparently, be a different build of the game.  I moaned quite a bit last time that some of the stuff wasn't intuitive on nice to use.  Roads and zoning were a bit frustrating in particular.  What was most weird about those was actually that they've posted a couple of "how to play" videos on YouTube and it looked far better to use zoning and road layouts on that video.

I'm hoping that the beta was actually a very early version of the game and that they'd actually worked on it quite a lot since that version and used the newer version for the video.  Whether this new beta will be the final version or what I'm not sure, but I hope it's closer - and I get on it, obviously!

All that remains now is to decide what version to buy.  There's a digital deluxe version which is download only and has several European building sets, but I've always steered clear of digital-only versions as I prefer to have the DVD.  There's also going to be an in-game store system.  This seems to have caused much ire, but I don't know why - I don't mind that sort of thing at all, so I guess there's the possibility you may be able to buy the European building sets online anyway.