Warll's Blog ワロウのブログ » Cities XL http://blog.warll.com カナダじんです。 Wed, 18 Aug 2010 11:06:04 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 Cities XL is dead, long live Cities XL! http://blog.warll.com/2010/cities-xl-is-dead-long-live-cities-xl/ http://blog.warll.com/2010/cities-xl-is-dead-long-live-cities-xl/#comments Sat, 20 Feb 2010 07:11:39 +0000 Warll http://blog.warll.com/?p=281 I am very fond of the city building genre. Sim City 2000 was the first video game I ever bought and I enjoyed I thoroughly. A very surprising fact considering that my cities always ran deficits thus IMACHEAT found much use in my economic disasters.

Sim City 3000 kicked this trend and by the time Sim City 4 came around I had finally mastered the game.

Sim City 4 is now five years old and the genre is in dire need of an update.

Cities XL is the best hope to fill that spot. Unfortunately Cities ZL has already been released. This is unforunate because Cities XL has two critical flaws which stop it from ever taking the crown.

  1. Somehow Monte Cristo managed to make Cities XL linear through overly restriction population requirements. You don’t so much as plan a city as you grow it and this lack of control kills re-playability.
  2. Effectively no custom content. There is a massive community producing new buildings and concepts for Sim City 4, Monte Cristo’s “We’ll make new content ourselves and sell it to you” strategy is foolish in comparison.

Monte Cristo says that the ability to make custom assets, modding, is on the to-do list. Fallout 3 also had delayed modding tools, fans had to wait three months for the Fallout tools while it has already been four months since Cities Xl’s release.

I had all but given up on Cities XL, until recently.

Two weeks ago Monte Cristo released some news, they were going to close the online portion of Cities Xl, a service they called ‘The Planet Offer’ and marketed as an MMO.  They cited lower than expected subscription rates.

The news could well be a sign of financial trouble for a company that invested somewhere in the range of ten million dollars to bring their passion to the market. At least a portion of that funding would have been based off of the possibility to create an MMO niche devoid of competition.

For what ever finacle harm it may cause the silver lining better be that they get their act together. They plan on releasing ‘Cities XL 2011′ which if they have taken the correct lesson to heart should focus on the single player experience as well as offer modification abilities. It is after all what their target market demands.

]]> http://blog.warll.com/2010/cities-xl-is-dead-long-live-cities-xl/feed/ 1 Cities XL crack, hack, torrent or leak, just not possible. http://blog.warll.com/2009/cities-xl-crack-hack-torrent-or-leak-just-not-possible/ http://blog.warll.com/2009/cities-xl-crack-hack-torrent-or-leak-just-not-possible/#comments Wed, 24 Jun 2009 03:26:03 +0000 Warll http://blog.warll.com/?p=215

Big news! A crack is out and  it works!  Thanks to Nob Ody for alerting me to it. You can get it on isohunt here are the instructions:

  1. Install game.
  2. Edit the Updater.bat file so that each line points towards your game’s installation directory
  3. Launch Updater.bat
  4. Close the launcher once updates complete
  5. Your game is now up to date to the latest version
  6. Copy the crack to the game’s install folder
  7. Launch game using CitiesXL.exe, select language, and enter any random login credential
  8. Enjoy

I can tested it and it is virus free and works perfectly, the author has even included all the current patches.[Older update]

JDMans over at the Pirate Bay posted instructions on how to use the torrent with the Cities XL trial

There is like no way anyone is going to crack this because the security is just to hard, but if you downloaded this already you can make a 7 day trial account for it and play online for the time.

1. Go to citiesxl.com and click on the sign up button in the menu. it should bring you to a registration screen.

Ignore the cd key button and just fill in all the information for your online account and click the send registration button.

On the next screen it will ask for a cd key but just scroll down and there is something that says activate 7 day trial.

There, now you have a user name to log in with for the next 7 days and you have access to all the multiplayer stuff. Until someone gets a better idea il be playing for the next 7 days :D
[/update]

[Older update:] Forget it. There will not be a crack for Cities XL. There simply is no reason for crackers to go to the effort. The protection used effectively turns even the single player version of the game into an MMO as far as crackablity is concerned.  If you have a Cities XL torrent running at the moment, cancel it. You can either buy a legal copy or move on, yes yes I know “civil piracy is not illegal”, what else would you have me call it? I would suggest moving on, there is not much in regards to re-playability to Cities Xl as it is now, maybe they’ll revamp much of it, doubt it. Right now Monte Cristo has let their dreams of MMOhood get in the way of making what they should have, a fun and challenging city builder. Instead you get a giant ad for the “planet offer” also known as Xbox live style “online services”, really all it is good for is the global chat and trading “goods” . Oh I guess you also get a pretty map which is a bit exciting, until you realize that it is no more than a picture and has no effect on game play. Weep a bit and then move on and do something more productive, like say learning Japanese, or exploring the other side of the world. [/update]

I know that when I had troubles finding a key I check out the The Pirate Bay and Google to see if Cities XL had been cracked and released, that did me no good since there is no Cities XL crack even still I really wanted to play it.  Well looking at the web searches that lead people to this site I can see that there are some other unfortunate souls willing to hit the torrents just to play Cities XL.  Well I have some news for you, its not going to happen until a street release at least and liekly never for the planet offer. The current Cities XL requires not only net access to login but also a constant internet connection to play online. There is no offline so no hope of getting past the beta key requirement.  If you do want to play the game I would suggest downloading the client while you are searching for beta keys. That way you are ready to go when you do get a beta key and you can also check out the in-game music which is stored in “Monte Cristo\Cities XL\Data\Sound\Music\XL”, I know this because before I got my key I searched the game’s files and found the music.  So yeah stop searching for a cities xl crack, hack or leak and get back to looking for a beta key.  Oh and any Cities XL Torrent you happen to run across will either be a repost of the same client you can already get from Monte Cristo or it will contain spyware/malware.

]]> http://blog.warll.com/2009/cities-xl-crack-hack-torrent-or-leak-just-not-possible/feed/ 36 My new site project: Cities XL http://blog.warll.com/2009/my-new-site-project-cities-xl/ http://blog.warll.com/2009/my-new-site-project-cities-xl/#comments Mon, 22 Jun 2009 01:56:39 +0000 Warll http://blog.warll.com/?p=91 So while SMRsimple.com is not even feature complete yet I have gotten myself addicted to another game, Cities XL. The new fansite is not surprisingly citiesxlsimple.com Right now the game is still in closed bata and as a tester I’m under a NDA so there really isn’t much to do for the site. I may write up some things and then set it to release after the NDA lapses. I may also add a passworded section so that me and some other beta players can have some place of our own.

]]> http://blog.warll.com/2009/my-new-site-project-cities-xl/feed/ 0 Cities XL the future of the city builder genre http://blog.warll.com/2009/cities-xl-the-future-of-the-city-builder-genre/ http://blog.warll.com/2009/cities-xl-the-future-of-the-city-builder-genre/#comments Fri, 12 Jun 2009 03:30:45 +0000 Warll http://blog.warll.com/?p=219

The history of city builders is dominated by one name Will Wright, he and his studio Maxis made the staples of the city building genre, Sim city, Sim city 2000, Sim city 3000 and Sim city 4 something happened though and there is has been a true sequel to the series yet.  What happened was Spore, a monster sized game which took up Maxis’s time and resources until its release in 2008.   Along comes Monte Cristo and their attempt at a city builder, City Life, they experimented with “classes” and “races” making it a bit more of a society manager unfortunately this was not the dirrention fans wanted the game to go in and City life replace Sim city 4 at the top of the city builder genre.  Meanwhile EA still owned the Sim City trademark and they were not about to let it depreciate so used another studio,  Tilted Wind Mills, to create “Sim City”: Societies.  Societies was aimed at the casual market and played very much like City life, it too did not topple Sim City 4.  In case Sim city 4’s popularity is in doubt I’ll just make one point, the torrent “SimCity 4 Deluxe w/ Crack & Serial” is still even after two years, in the top one hundred active torrents of the popular torrent tracker The Pirate Bay.org.

All this makes the city builder genre very ripe, even a  ten year old player that started on Sim City 4 when it came out in 2003 will be nearly 17 once Cities XL hits the streets.  The age ranges just go up from there meaning that Monte Cristo has the potential to capture a mature  market without any competition.  This financial incentive is what the genre need since without it we would never see a city builder of the scale the genre demands.  Cities XL is set to be the giant game the fans are asking for and dreaming about.  The engine is full 3d, you can play online in a sort of MMO environment, the buildings can be placed at angles and bridges can be built at arbitrary locations.  The fact that it will be MMO means that Monte Cristo can and will continue to develop the game over time.

In short Cities XL is going to be the standard of the city builder genre for quite a while.

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