Always-online SimCity burns to the ground | 10 Years Ago This Month

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It's finally happened. 10 Years Ago This Month has grown so extensive, so bloated, so shamelessly self-indulgent that it has been suggested we need a Table of Contents to help people navigate it.

I just want you all to know I consider this a tremendous achievement, and my next goal is to add an index.

I loved the original SimCity, planning out my eventual metropolis from its humble village beginnings, building it meticulously and planning out the roads, trainlines, and power grid with an eye for where the nuclear power plants and airports would be.

And when I had grown the city as large as it would get (or simply started to lose interest in it), I would reach into the pulldown menu and unleash an array of disasters upon my unwitting SimCitizens.

In March of 2013, EA did basically the same thing with all the good will the SimCity franchise had built up over the years, launching the first mainline SimCity game in a decade, but doing it with an ill-advised always-online requirement, having apparently learned nothing from seeing Blizzard gleefully run full steam into the same sliding glass door with Diablo 3 just the year before.

Naturally, EA's servers fell down straight away. Two days later, the problems had only gotten worse, with plenty of bugs and lengthy wait times for players to get into a server. The Origin service was so hammered that people who purchased other EA games from Origin were unable to play them, either.

Confusion reigned supreme, with Amazon posting a warning on the product page and pulling the digital version of the game from sale, while EA spokespeople telling affected customers that they could request a refund, only for