SimCity 4000 was a huge hit with the modding community when it was released. Modders and other would-be architects and city planners flocked to the title to add their own structures into the highly versatile and modifiable game.
While SimCity 4 was marred with a number of balance issues, these issues were eventually remedied by Maxis with the release of the Rush Hour expansion pack. Players themselves applied fixes liberally to the game, tweaking and toning it to their preference.
With the announcement of a new SimCity, the community is ready to move on and sets its sights on the next game. Unfortunately, EA and Maxis have disclosed that modding support will be unavailable for the title upon its release in 2013.
EA Maxis's creative director Ocean Quigley says that despite the lack of mod support upon its release, the possibility of modding is in the cards. Apparently, the game's engine—GlassBox—already contains support for mods, so adding official support for it is something the studio plans to do after the game's release.
"Right now, we've got our work cut out for us to build the product up to the quality level it deserves as a SimCity. Then after we ship, we'll make decisions about how we can and when exactly we'll support mods," he said to Joystiq.
"But it's worth pointing out that the reason people are still playing SimCity 4 almost ten years later is because the modding community essentially re-created it and filled it with new content and fixed bugs and made it as much of a hobby as it is a game."
