Last week EA and its subsidiary Maxis were up to their eyeballs in complaints from gamers who purchased SimCity and then were unable to play it due to widespread server problems. Amid the furor were cries from customers who wanted to do away with the “always-on” DRM feature. While EA has been busy apologizing and offering free games, it sounds like that offline mode is going to remain but a dream.

An EA/Maxis executive issued another update to the SimCity saga last night on the company blog, announcing that the amount of game crashes since day one has been reduced by 92%.

She says although there could be no “All-Clear” last night, the company will be monitoring the servers in its attempt to get the game running at 100%.

The good news is that tens of thousands of new players are streaming into the game every day and the confidence our fans have shown is truly humbling. I can’t begin to explain the way a development team feels when something you’re proud of is threatened at launch. Our biggest fear was that people who love this franchise would be scared off by bad reviews about the connectivity issues.

We’re sure a few people were scared off by bad reviews, ahem, but others are still peeved by the lack of offline mode. By the sounds of this tweet from the SimCity account, it doesn’t sound like EA is changing that:

That’s not a resounding “no way, never,” but it’s also a less than encouraging response. At least it’s some kind of answer to one of the most common complaints we’ve been hearing from customers. So, yay…?

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