SimCity "situation is good, but not good enough", says Maxis

SimCity developer EA Maxis claims to have improved server response time by a factor of 40, and warned of rolling downtimes as it applies fixes to each server.

In an update on the EA blog, Maxis boss Lucy Bradshaw said the team has achieved plenty so far but will continue to improve performance.

"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," she said.

"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."

Maxis has begun launching new servers to help ease the load, including a new Antarctica one; servers aren't region-locked so feel free to get on board if your local servers are full - especially as the new ones come pre-patched.

"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," Bradshaw explained.

"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."

Bradshaw said the game is now welcoming "tens of thousands" of new players every day, and thanked players for continuing to support the game - and keep their tempers - during a more than rocky launch.

EA will award a free game to those affected by the downtimes during SimCity's launch window. Those of us who are online are having a pretty good time - although Sam's struggling a bit.