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"SimCity's servers are mostly back to normal, according to updates posted online, but fans will still have to wait a bit for smooth performance.\nIt's been six days since the city building simulation was released, and server crowding has rendered SimCity unplayable for many of its potential mayors. Players took to Reddit, social media and EA's forums to express outrage over the inability to play the PC game, which retails for $60.\nThis version of SimCity is an online-only game, and requires players to hop on one of the servers connected to EA's proprietary platform, Origin, to play any portion of the game, including single player.\n\"I'm happy to report that the core problem with getting in and having a great SimCity experience is almost behind us,\" said Lucy Bradshaw, general manager of Maxis, the developers of SimCity. Bradshaw's blog post Sunday night said she was hoping EA would be able to issue \"an all-clear\" for players, but there were still plenty of problems to resolve.\nBradshaw blames the server problems on a volume of players that the company was unprepared for. She said 8 million of hours of gameplay had been logged by players from Tuesday's launch until Sunday night. But she admitted in another blog post that EA's inability to calculate for that much demand \"was dumb\".\nEA isn't offering refunds for customers upset about the SimCity connection issues, though some customers reported on Reddit they were able to receive one.  Instead, Bradshaw posted customers who activated by March 18 will receive a free game from Origin. \nBradshaw says the team is going to continue working on server optimization through the day Monday.\nWhat have your experiences been like playing SimCity? Please share in the comments.\nImage courtesy of Electronic Arts."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2013/03/11/simcity-server-problems/>