A few things have occurred in succession that piqued my interest about SC 2013, which I'd bought at launch, and like practically everyone else, quickly became very unhappy with.

But:

--Offline mode implemented
--Maxis continuing to release fixes and updates (I'm not saying the back-end simulation doesn't have problems, but I think some of the more egregious ones have been addressed)
--Cities of Tomorrow xpac (didn't buy it at the time, but was tempted)
--Discovering that there is an active modding community. After the spectacular launch fail I didn't really think anyone would bother.
--And finally: this mod here: UniDirectional Networks (UDON). Basically, it vastly, VASTLY expands traffic/road/highway functionality.

So I finally reloaded the game and bought the xpac (I had a $10 BB GC so I paid ten bucks for it), and have now been...dare I say it...having a pretty good and addictive time and so far (at 100,000 pop with no cheats), my city hasn't broken in any overly egregious ways.

This guy has a lot of good videos, howtos, and mod reviews, and his enthusiasm is pretty infectious (not affiliated/do not know the guy):

http://skyestorme.com/

Here's another site with a lot of mods:

http://community.simtropolis.com/fi...y/19-game-mods/

Note: I'm not specifically advising anyone to rush out and buy SimCity 2013 or CoT, but if, like me, you bought it and then shelved it, I think it *may* be at a state where it's worth playing casually. And some of the Cities of Tomorrow stuff is pretty slick, like the Megatowers.

I tried it, bought it and played it... and I haven't come to enjoy it. It's small, too small for my tastes. I don't feel the city flair. It's more like being the major of a pseudo-city, a village with pseudo-sky-scrappers. >.>
The variety of buildings is... fantastic-ly... sh**y. >.<

I love the graphics tho! ^^

I bought the game after the price had dropped. This was after the servers were fixed and before Cities of Tomorrow was released. I played 3 regions. I had to stop for a while because I was busy with Spring Quarter.

--Ocram

I can see this. Sometimes I convince myself that the 'region' play and synergy between cities made up for it, but while a lot of that stuff is fixed now (like sending gifts to other cities), it still doesn't feel all that organic and I can't make much sense of why certain things are unlocked in the region once one city has them, and others aren't.

The Cities of Tomorrow did add some cool new buildings though.

I think someone on reddit summed it up pretty well: it's enjoyable if you think of it as a Bonsai city and get more into the micromanagement than in trying to make a vast metropolis.

More like SimTown.

I was psyched EA finally decided to enable singleplayer... But then I played it, and realized just how boring it is.

Here's a cool video of the larger city sizes and other things capable with the mods made in the last month or so:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbeC1KG-ZWE

And for those with less patience, a fairly breathtaking photo gallery:

https://imgur.com/a/0r4yH

Free trial here:

http://www.simcity.com/free-trial

I addicted over SC like a maniac a few weeks ago, but the broken education system finally had me stop. I had built this amazing cash cow city, earning ~400K /SC hour, everyone was educated, everyone was happy. Then the game breaking bug hit my game, and students just disappeared, quit attending schools. From having had 6 000 students /day, I went down to 1 500 / 6 000, and then rage-quit.