EA took a bold move with SC 2013, making it online-only. Players have had mixed feelings about the concept, but the general consensus is that it was a mistake. Personally, I don't mind it, as long as it is done well. Online-only play in this particular case has resulted in various bugs in gameplay, small city sizes, no single player mode, only 16 cities per region, and notorious connection issues. On the other hand, it introduces multiplayer, an interesting new concept not seen in previous Simcity releases.

EA claims that the primary reason for the online-only play is so that their servers can take some of the processing load off the player's computer, which is understandable considering that glassbox is known to be highly CPU intensive. So, what is your opinion of the online/multiplayer setup of SC2013? Obviously connection problems have been the predominating complaint, but aside from that, is the concept itself a move forward, or is it two steps backward for the series?