Electronic Arts says that it has "a team specifically focused on exploring the possibility of an offline mode" for the latest version of SimCity, nearly seven months after the online-only game launched to widespread server congestion and connectivity problems.

In a blog post discussing the "State of SimCity," Maxis Emeryville General Manager Patrick Buechner notes that while server stability and connectivity issues are "behind us," the company "would like to give our players the ability to play even if they choose not to connect." While he says he "can't make any promises" regarding a possible offline mode, Buechner noted that offline play would provide a safe space for players to use upcoming mod tools without impacting the experience of other players.

Following the game's troubled launch, EA said that it would take "significant engineering work" to transform SimCity from an always-connected, mostly passively multiplayer game to an offline single-player experience due to the simulation work done on the server side. That official line started to look a little thin as fans uncovered the ability to play for up to 20 minutes without a server connection alongside reports from insiders that the gameplay servers didn't contribute significantly to the underlying simulation. Hackers later managed to turn off the periodic server checks in the game with seemingly no effect on the game's simulation.

The possibility of an offline mode comes as EA is denying the feasibility of another feature heavily requested by SimCity players: larger cities. After what Buechner calls "months of investigation" into the issue, he says that the feature will not be coming to the game at any point. "The system performance challenges we encountered would mean that the vast majority of our players wouldn’t be able to load, much less play with bigger cities," he said.

That's likely to be a major disappointment to people (including people here at Ars) who enjoyed the massive, sprawling metropolises and regions of SimCity 4, but Buechner said "we just couldn’t achieve [an expansion] within the confines of the [new] engine." Some of the work on trying to make those larger cities function will be "rolled into future updates to improve overall game performance," he added.