But again, what do you expect from EA? They destroy the companies they purchase, and by extension the franchises created by those companies (EA never had any meaningful franchises of their own).
I'm quite sad that Maxis ended up in the hands of someone else. SimCity was a spectacular series, as were most of all of the other Sim-[thing] games. But now they're simply corporate whoring, paid DLC, and beyond draconian DRM. Games are rushed, destroyed, and dumbed-down for what is called the "casual gaming" market, with no regard to their actual possibilities.
SimCity 3000 was my last real experience with the SimCity franchise, and I played some CitiesXL2011/2/3 while waiting for the newest SimCity (CitiesXL is an okay game, at least), but…
Is there a demo of this new SimCity one could try?