So, who else is tentatively excited for this? I'm mainly happy that it seems to be a true evolution to the franchise and not a free to play game or based off Facebook for social interactions or something like that, as has been pointed out by the reveals up on so many websites now. I'll point to Joystiq but there are plenty everywhere.

I've been a SimCity fan since the original and 4 was certainly quite the experience - was it really almost 10 years ago now?? Geez... but it's nice that they are announcing features that I wanted to see in 4, like a full 3D engine and curved roads. Also they've taken the multiplayer that was in 4 to a new level as well, which sounds pretty neat. Maybe we can get a GDNet SimCity group together to hook up our metropolises.

Still not enough info for me to pre-order on Origin but I'm liking what I see so far...

I am very excited about this!
I just hope that Maxis won't fuck it up. I lost my faith in Maxis after DarkSpore. :\

Not excited at all. 3d graphics? Curved roads? Those are the last things sim city needs, and I dont mean that in antipathy to good graphics.

Ive played countless hours of simcity2000. The follow up promised more depth to the game dynamics. I looked hard, but I didnt see it. The game mechanics are still a black box; and a fairly stupid one, in many instances. Why is nobody using the highway that runs right through the busiest part of your city, while the streets parallel to it are still clogged? I want infographics to make these things clear; and not in a 'yeah, the game is just kindof stupid' kind of way.

Curved roads? Why not implement a realistic traffic traffic algorithm on the manhattan streets first, before you are going to obfuscate what is actually happening to your city by a (probably) dysfunctional 3d camera system?

The only SimCity I've ever played is SimCity 3000. It was a really fun game, and I sank many hours into it.
I think one thing that it lacked was some kind of end-game purpose, after you've researched all the technology and expanded your city and are out of dept. Even a Rollercoaster Tycoon style, "You won, but go ahead and keep playing anyway" message would do it for me.

Ive played countless hours of simcity2000. The follow up promised more depth to the game dynamics. I looked hard, but I didnt see it. The game mechanics are still a black box; and a fairly stupid one, in many instances. Why is nobody using the highway that runs right through the busiest part of your city, while the streets parallel to it are still clogged?

Well, on-ramps typically help.
The first dozen times I tried to build a highway, I was really confused why nobody used it. I eventually found out that you have to build on-ramps connecting the highways to the roads, and then they'd be used just fine. Maybe you just didn't discover that? Building on-ramps wasn't really intuitive or consistent with building other objects in the game.

The only SimCity I've ever played is SimCity 3000. It was a really fun game, and I sank many hours into it.
I think one thing that it lacked was some kind of end-game purpose, after you've researched all the technology and expanded your city and are out of dept. Even a Rollercoaster Tycoon style, "You won, but go ahead and keep playing anyway" message would do it for me.

[quote name='Eelco' timestamp='1331161447' post='4920238']
Ive played countless hours of simcity2000. The follow up promised more depth to the game dynamics. I looked hard, but I didnt see it. The game mechanics are still a black box; and a fairly stupid one, in many instances. Why is nobody using the highway that runs right through the busiest part of your city, while the streets parallel to it are still clogged?

Well, on-ramps typically help.
The first dozen times I tried to build a highway, I was really confused why nobody used it. I eventually found out that you have to build on-ramps connecting the highways to the roads, and then they'd be used just fine. Maybe you just didn't discover that? Building on-ramps wasn't really intuitive or consistent with building other objects in the game.
[/quote]
Yes, I did use on ramps. And maybe they even worked in simcity 3000 and onwards, because I didnt play it that much, so I wouldnt really remember.

Generally speaking, my point about the black-boxness of the game dynamics applies, however. That always bothered me. d rather have they set a decade or two in increasing computing resources to work on fixing that, rather than fixing the graphics.

I'm quite excited about it; I hope the system requirements will be adeguate, I'd love to play it on midrange desktop Llano. I look forward for the graphical improvements, hopefully they will match them with adeguate logic.

Misunderstand me correctly, I like the fact that Maxis is doing this, as opposed to some third-party developer (Sim City Societies was a complete hax), I just hope they're going to do it justice.
Experimentation usually isn't a bad thing, and something Will Wright was infamous for, but DarkSpore (made after Will left Maxis) was like Blizzard doing "Warcraft City".

I remember the days of playing plain ol' Simcity on my SNES. Those were the days.....

I can't wait. The trailer brought up so many memories.

I think there have been weeks where I spend more time in my SimCity 2000 metropolis than in outside in the real life city. I'm not familiar with the later versions, but as far as I'm concerned, the more CPU and GPU processing will be dedicated to the actual simulation rather than improved graphics, the better. Two and a half dimensions ought to be enough for anybody. Although I have to say the trailer looks really cool.

Perhaps it would be interesting if they would connect the online SimCity world with real events happening at the same time, like fluctuations in oil prices, financial crises, political tensions, pandemics etc. I would find that more challenging than the spawning of the occasional mutant velociraptor in some random location.