Well, well, well, here we are; Maxis' chief, Lucy Bradshaw, has come out and admitted what we all thought - SimCity was capable of an offline mode, but it conflicted with the vision that the developer had for the game. Bradshaw said Maxis had:

Rejected that idea because it didn't fit with our vision. We did not focus on the "single city in isolation" that we have delivered in past SimCities. We recognize that there are fans - people who love the original SimCity - who want that. But we're also hearing from thousands of people who are playing across regions, trading, communicating and loving the Always-Connected functionality. The SimCity we delivered captures the magic of its heritage but catches up with ever-improving technology.

Bradshaw also added:

Always-Connected is a big change from SimCities of the past. It didn't come down as an order from corporate and it isn't a clandestine strategy to control players. It's fundamental to the vision we had for this SimCity. From the ground up, we designed this game with multiplayer in mind - using new technology to realize a vision of players connected in regions to create a SimCity that captured the dynamism of the world we live in; a global, ever-changing, social world.

So, Maxis, what are your next steps? Changing your colossal stuff up and enabling offline mode and admitting your mistake in pushing SimCity to an always-connected world, when it never needed to be?