The way handled this game is really quite sad. I was excited for it, the previews looked promising ... but the fact that the server performance was newsworthy, and the small-city problem, meant that I never bothered buying it. I imagine I'm not alone.
Not having actually bought the game I can't say for sure, but I wonder if the much-touted online features haven't been as popular as they hoped ... which means that this now 7-month old game is probably quite expensive for them to keep running into perpetuity. Ripping the online features out, and allowing offline only, could allow them to save on running costs?