I think the game has been designed around the online scheme, so that they have a lame excuse for forcing players online. No longer follow security and online schemes the developement of games - it's the other way around: games' content get designed so that they follow said schemes, making them appear as if they were a necessary part of gaming.
Saw the same happening to chess programs by chessbase recently, the latest GUIs. The opening books are mandatorily accessed now at an online database. Before, the database was copied to the harddrive. They excuse it with how great it is that the database keeps track of how long people have analysed a given position so that players climb in a highscore list on how much time they have analysed a given position. Laughable. I'll stay with older Chessbase GUI, and if the need would arise, I would use free GUIs now. Chessbase is history for me. Which is a shame, visually their GUIs and boards are the most beautiful of all there are.
Anyway, I'm out of Sim City, of course. Every love affair must end one day.
EA also gets a full broadside here:
http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2012/0...deo-expensive/