Maxis continues to refine the way servers handle traffic as they work to improve response time and server load for their always-online game SimCity, general manager Lucy Bradshaw wrote early this morning.
Response time for the game's newer servers are now 40 times as fast, but now they have to take the original servers offline to implement some fixes to bring them up to speed as well, she wrote.
"Maxis continues to make huge progress in addressing the lag and server-capacity issues we experienced at launch," Bradshaw wrote in her second open letter to the SimCity community. "We've improved our server response time by 40x, we've doubled the number of players in the game at the same time and reduced server down times.
"The situation is good, but not good enough. And since my boss is one of the negatively affected (!) - we're still driving hard to get everyone online, playing together, and no hitches."
The news comes after a day of work at Maxis and Electronic Arts that included adding eight servers for the game, bringing the total to 20, and starting to roll out the fix to the older servers.
Yesterday Brawdshaw took to Twitter to address gamer feedback, concerns and complaints. Friday night, after announcing that those impacted by the server outages would receive a free EA games, Bradshaw spoke with Polygon about how exactly SimCity's launch was rocked by server issues and what caused them. She also explained why offline mode, while something they now say they will examine, is likely impossible to add to the game.
Here's Bradshaw's full SimCity update from this morning:
I'll keep this short since almost everyone who cares is busy building cities and making friends in SimCity.
Maxis continues to make huge progress in addressing the lag and server-capacity issues we experienced at launch. We've improved our server response time by 40x, we've doubled the number of players in the game at the same time and reduced server down times.
The situation is good, but not good enough. And since my boss is one of the negatively affected (!) - we're still driving hard to get everyone online, playing together, and no hitches.
Tens of thousands of new players are logging in every day. For that support - that commitment from our fans -- we are deeply grateful. More than anything, we know that information is important to our players. Our Twitter chat today made that especially clear, and I want to say thank you sharing your ideas, your issues and for being, well, nicer than I thought you would be, given everything you've been through. Thank you.
The new servers we rolled out have a new faster set up. We are now dedicated to updating our original servers so that those of you who have been playing these past few days can get the benefits on servers where your cities are played. To do this, we will have to take the original servers down one by one to upgrade them. The improvements will be worth the downtime, and thanks for hanging with us as we do this. We'll also be adding more tonight as well. We'll be sending out detailed info shortly through our community forums and launcher.
That's it for today. We'll keep you updated on what's to come. Expect the first of our server upgrades to start this evening.
Update: Maxis added a new server this afternoon called Antarctica 1, according to a tweet from the game's official account. The server will initially display as "????," but should be correctly labeled by the end of today. Servers are not geographically locked and all players should be able to access it.
