Me too. I had the chance to play the beta last weekend and even with reduced functionality the game was quite a lot of fun.

I rarely if ever play games and I'm certain this will be a terrible time suck.

I agree, its simulation has depth that rivals Civilization V. And even better, the game's simulation is run on the Maxis servers so it doesn't lose speed with larger cities. Sim City 4 and Civ 5 both have problems with processing large maps. Totally worth the DRM for me.