Those are cheap, disposable Foxconn crap boxes.

Today I realized I'll never buy this game - it couldn't get cheap enough.

Scenario:

Player - "Oh boy! A demo! I really love (or hate) what I'm seeing and hearing; I can't wait to get an early taste (or gloat about how right I was about EA's huge fuck-ups)!!!
*Everyone who cares logs in immediately*
*Services crash and burn*
*People who only kinda care, try to explore all the features and can't.*
*People who decry it go, "See?! TOLD YOU it was a piece of shit!!!"*
*EA reputation further ruined*
*Screams of "Oh god, it's SimCity all over again!" fill the air.*
*Nobody wants to buy, not even people who were happy until this point.*

I think after everything they've put themselves through in the last few weeks, they REALLY want to be careful not to drop the ball again. At least not in a huge way.

Then you're not trying hard enough.

I'm forced to agree with you

lol.

Sign up for CAS Demo Early Access http://www.thesims.com/

I'm glad to see some sort of disagreeing here with their tactics. There is no legitimate reason for there needing testing, two rounds of it at that, a demo. Which Grant claimed has been worked on for months. Of a game that will come out in <6 weeks.

Now they want us to enter a lottery. What's next, write an essay stating why you deserve the demo? Post a Let's Play video? Solve riddles?

I just want to know what they're testing, honestly. If they were testing servers, wouldn't they just do an open beta (like, oh, other games) to accurately tweak things? Is there even a feedback system in place for people to report graphical errors or glitches or failures? The more I think about it, the more obvious it is that this first "round" of handouts was actually for popular simmers to "test" whether or not it and fraps could run simultaneously, with other people thrown in to make it less obvious.

After the roll-out of SimCity 2013, saying there is "no legitimate reason" to stagger and test is just flat wrong and once again edging towards histrionics.

What's next? Show a bit of nip in that tit-pic you're posting.

I'm sorry, the whole situation is something that you either have to laugh or cry at.
At the moment, my sobs of laughter can be heard for miles.
What can I say, I'm a very emotional person.

If they wanted to test the servers they should let more people try the demo. The day of the first wave of invites, there were only 200 people online, according to some youtube videos I watched. That's really not enough

I think it's very likely they're testing the servers and also how the Gallery does under pressure, but it seems to me like they're afraid to admit that those are the tests they're running. This is what happens when you try and disguise necessary tests in a SHINY HYPE DEMO, especially for a game that still hasn't even released gameplay footage at 6 weeks to launch. Can't face stability issues head-on if you're also trying to keep people happy on twitter.

So why not do like Wedry said and have an open beta like other games? And if they truly needed to handle TS4 like this, why not release the demo a bit earlier? I don't know much about game development, but this seems disorganized.

Either they don't give two flying fucks about this game, which could be true since they use it as a hole filler, or they are just too confident about this franchise and think that it will sell itself just because it has a sims name slaped on it.

We're one and a half month from the release, only a few lucky people tested a limited version of cas and we haven't even seen an unscripted live gameplay video! Please think about that. NO game play video! One and a half month....................................

worst company ever

It just sounds so horrible, y'know? I mean, no game play trailer? Under 6 weeks to launch?
What the frick do they do over at EA? No, like, seriously - do they just sit on Twitter all day?

You say "other games" like every game does a beta and a demo. They do not - in fact a relatively small portion of games have a demo/beta before launch. Moreover, an open beta almost invariably follows a closed beta which is (stop me if you've heard this before): by invitation/application only. So no, EA is not going above and beyond the call of douchebaggery, it is doing what nearly ever publisher that does a demo/beta does.

People thinking this community is being singled out for mistreatment does not make it true.

I think it's pretty obvious they're testing servers plus there are some issues on the demo itself.
Yesterday there was notifications announcing a maintenance and that server would go offline in 30 min(then 10, then 5...that sort of thing).

It was the first time I saw such notifications, what about you guys? I'm not obviously online 100% of day, so I can't be sure it was the first one. I thought it was odd 'cause I went offline as soon as I saw it but they kept notifying me.
Why there wasn't a proper beta? Well, let's always remember Graham words(maybe not his words, but what I understand from his sayings): limited budget/resources/whatever they decide to call it.
Simmers happy or sad about CAS tweeting, posting at facebook, etc don't really matter... good or bad, just talk about the game; and so they have a chance to trend. Some damage control here and there(TS2)...these guys are walking on eggshells, they're trying not to make things worse.

ETA: Yeah, not all games have betas, but Simcity made they learn a lesson or two, I think.


Actually at first day the biggest number of people online I've seen was 356. And still servers would go offline multiple times.
At third day, the average was about 800 something. And these days there are usually 200, but I guess it's because people just decided to go offline(and some just got tired of it). Right now just 86. About 30k households.

I neither explicitly stated nor implied that every game or even most games do so. Come to think of it, it isn't wise for either of us to compare TS4 to other games. The gaming industry period has its level of douchebaggery period, EA the main culprit. It's like saying EA is in the right to have such amounts of DLC because it is the norm. But, that's another topic for another day.

It still doesn't explain why the demo wasn't released a bit earlier. Comparing them to other gaming comps, they did a horrendous job marketing this game. CAS was what they shoved down our throats since the very beginning last year. Giving us the demo a la Bodyshop could have started solving Gallery/server issues while improving their marketing early on.

.

Well, I really don't want that and it would be very unwise to show that, because potential players want to see more of the everyday life of a typical TS4 Sim and not some freak show, but you know... it's EA!

The thing that confuses me about this series of "demo tests" is... why do we need an online version of the thing in the first place?

Maybe I missed something, but isn't the final TS4 an offline-compatible experience? I understand worries about the gallery crashing from overload, but this is kind of like that TS3 Pets demo that came out. Didn't it just save all your creations on your hard drive, in a place where the final release could find them? Do you really need to get off the game when they try to fix something, a la MMO server standards, or is it just a warning saying "Hey, don't post anything right now," cause something exploded on their side of the internet?

They said you would need to be online to activate the game but not after that unless you want the gallery. Thing is if everyone rushes to activate their game at once they still might have the same problems that simcity had.

Well this was all a surprise to wake up to! I 100% agree with the guys that said its a bad marketing/pacifying strategy and I think they're going to sign up the same number of people they always intended to, but just pull names from the list instead. That said, I totally signed up anyway. What can I say - I'm a sucker EA's perfect customer, most likely

Though I also think its a good (but, again, badly marketed) decision on their part to release the demo in waves like this, if they're truly worried about the server crashing. Its not an essential part of the game, but they should test it. Its getting late though - by the time this wave of demo rolls out, it'll only be 2 weeks before the demo goes public and 4 weeks before the game!

I wondered about this, I don't know about servers or how it works but do the activation and game play share the same server system, or do those downloading and installing have a dedicated server that is different from the ones using the gallery? Might help me understand this thing better because I know playing Sims 3 while connected to the servers will crash the game if they go down. More crashes happen on weekends, I would get CTD at least 2 times over Friday night to Sunday. One of the reasons I don't connect TS3 while playing, the other is too much chatting.

Zdravei, MissPipsi. I live in Bulgaria too, but since I am brazilian, I chose Brazil when I signed up for the demo (I am not entirely lying after all...). But in the end, I don't think it matters what country you choose. EA really don't pay attention to their costumers, specially those that don't live in rich countries. I don't plan to buy TS4 now either, the game looks a mess, and the prices I've see here so far are absurd. And that for a game that won't even be translated in bulgarian, and will probably come in russian, romenian, or whatever language EA thinks people around here speak.

Everytime I sign up for this stupid Newsletter, giving them the chance to send me a lot of stuff, that i normally hate to receive, just to get that demo, they send me a link to reconfirm and that damn thing is never working.
Oh well, if you don't want to influence a potential buyer, that's fine!