Maxis Exploring Offline Mode with SimCity 2013

Maxis has posted a state of SimCity update on its official blog to provide fans of the game with an in-depth look at what's been happening at the studio since they announced Cities of Tomorrow expansion pack, which is—apropos to nothing—not to be confused with the Infected Mushroom song, Cities of the Future.

"We're listening," states Maxis GM Patrick Buechner, who goes on to say that the company is actively looking into implementing an offline mode for SimCity.

"Right now we have a team specifically focused on exploring the possibility of an offline mode," he writes. "I can’t make any promises on when we will have more information, but we know this is something that many of our players have been asking for. While the server connectivity issues are behind us, we would like to give our players the ability to play even if they choose not to connect.

"An offline mode would have the additional benefit of providing room to the modding community to experiment without interfering or breaking the multiplayer experience."

Additionally, Buechner states that the developers have looked into developing larger cities for the game, but have found that they are unable to do so without creating some very serious problems for the game.

"We’ve tried a number of different approaches to bring performance into an acceptable range, but we just couldn’t achieve it within the confines of the engine," explains Buechner. "We’ve chosen to cease work on bigger city sizes and put that effort into continuing to evolve the core game and explore an offline mode. Some of the experiments we conducted to improve performance on bigger cities will be rolled into future updates to improve overall game performance."

We may not be getting the bigger cities we want, but if offline mode is on the table, it's still better than nothing.