Gaming news is full of Sim City talk lately, and again, today we bring you more shenanigans from Maxis. But this time it’s all hopeful, no talk of broken servers, upset customers and tales of customer service woe. This time it’s all about the positive.

First up, today people who have registered their game should be receiving an email offering them a free game from the Origin catalogue. Exactly what game this will be, or if there’s a choice or how limited that choice is remains unclear but we shall soon know as those emails start rolling in. Keep an eye on your inboxes and your spam folder to see what wonderful surprises await you.

Secondly, there’s good news on the inner workings of the game. Lead designer, Stone Liberande has detailed on his blog a major improvement to the game in traffic management.  Soon the clogged up streets will be a thing of the past, but he has said that the non-consistent sims in the city will stay that way due to that kind of micromanagement not making the game experience any richer. But the road improvements will not only make for better looking traffic but should in theory make your emergency services do their job and save many a sim’s life.

Other features were pointed out including some of the disabled ingame features. Some of these are slowly returning to the game including regional achievements on a select few servers and now leaderboards which are active on the test server. Liberande has also stated that he’d like willin players to join the test server in order to speed up the leaderboard process. 

No timeline has been announced for the patch rollout, but it looks likely to be soon(ish), as ever we'll let you know as soon as we find out, if we can stop playig the game that is.