SimCity & Skylines: Mayor VS Mayor | WHITE LIGHTNING HQ

SimCity Part 2

So over the past couple of days the servers had stabilized and I was seriously intending to updated with many a screenshots, showing my various cities progress, anecdotes while playing, and a general review of the game. Despite its flaws, it has been an overall enjoyable game, though for me the jury is still out.

Unfortunately, I can't do any of that. Upon trying to load my cities today (any of them) after Patch 1.5 had been implemented, I was greeted with massive, massive lag (gameplay lag, not internet related) making the game nigh unplayable.  This is after two days of relatively smooth building.

But how can this be with Patch 1.5 having such promising notes as this?:

Update: 03/12/2013
SimCity Update 1.5
This update to SimCity contains the following updates and fixes:
General
• This patch fixes an issue that was causing the game to crash.
Server Improvements:
• Optimizations to improve latency. Region wall and city to city trading will be more responsive.
• Database optimizations that will improve the success rate for connections.
• Fixed an issue with rollbacks. Higher chance of success and less chance of getting in a rollback loop. 

Apparently 'fixed' means 'broke' in EA lingo. So this venture will be put off to another day. In its stead, more Skyrim, a solid, wonderful game that has worked for me since launch and is still enjoyable over a year later.

There Are No Words

This is why always on DRM is going to drive EA out of business:

That said, I did get a couple hours of play time in before this debacle. And I'll say, initial impression? It was glorious. The best city simulator I've played in years. 

But it doesn't mean a thing if you can't actually play.

I might be more positive with a more thorough review tomorrow, but today I hope EA is losing cash by the tens of thousands in refunds. 

I guess I should have gone for the new ME3 DLC instead...