I said this earlier, but EA ALWAYS cheap out on servers.
SW:TOR - Not enough servers at launch. Server disconnects, etc.
Battlefield 3 - Not enough servers at launch. DICE commented that they were adding servers as fast as they could, particularly on Xbox 360 I think. Later, when the Rent-A-Server patch went live, they rented out ALL the official servers, so they had to go back and add more servers to make sure that at least 10% of the servers were "official" DICE servers.
SimCity - ...I don't even need to comment here.
This doesn't include the list of other EA and non EA games that have given me trouble. Dragon Age (EA) and Splinter Cell (Ubisoft) both have given me trouble before when trying to enter codes to download pre-order items. The DA servers were down for a day or two, and Uplay was down for a week or two once (pc users felt this as well). D3...well, no need to discuss that fully. Then, Microsoft did not have enough Xbox Live servers ready for TWO Christmases in a row. Remember at Christmas how Xbox Live went down two years in a row? -- All these things considered, I am not a big fan of cloud gaming, always online DRM, or any other practice that prohibits me from playing my games without an internet connection. The cloud, to me, is just another form of DRM that puts me at the mercy of publishers. Granted, it's nice for save games and stuff, but overall, I feel like it gives publishers waaaaaay too much power over my ability to play my games. I see no reason to believe that they have infrastructures built that can handle their ambitions. This year, during the Summer Sale, even the Steam store was unavailable for hours at a time for me (and for a few others, based on the forums). So even Valve don't have a full grasp on things (but at least the actual gameplay side of Valve servers has worked well for years now).
But anyway, with Battlefield 3 and with SWTOR, EA should have had more than enough experience launch high-demand games to know that there would be a hellish demand for servers when SimCity launched. They've been cheaping out on servers for years, which is one of their excuses for shutting down "low player count" game servers early, and it is finally catching up with them.
I actually used to own a bunch of EA stock, but sold it all off after they kept mismanaging their servers, shutting games down early, and trying to "mainstream" all of their games for a wider audience. When a game gets the "mainstream" treatment (Dead Space 3, Dragon Age 2, etc) I always feel like it is a step back from the experience that I love. So, I couldn't hold stock in a company that I felt like was making games that seemed to be becoming less fun to the hardcore gamer (me).
But anyway, I pre-ordered Simcity with the intention of not playing it much until this weekend...so far, the wait is still 30 minutes long for me. I still hold out hope that I can play this weekend. If they had just included a regular old single player game in there with the multiplayer, this wouldn't have been nearly as huge of an issue.
...but anyway, my main point... EA has had TONS of experience with online game launches (SWTOR and BF3) and both times, they didn't have enough servers. You would think, that at some point they would just quadruple their server estimates just to be safe, but nope, they just keep on being cheap.
In my opinion as well, EA has had more than ample experience with games not having enough servers at launch. My critique would be that EA should have had a Plan B if and when there were not enough servers for SimCity. If they are currently using Plan B, then they should have had a Plan C! I would be satisfied if they at least had published a road map that stated when they plan to have this mess sorted out by. Of course, that kind of honesty might not be in their corporate best interests. Still, I will never pre order a game from them again.
