I’ve managed to pull myself away from Sim City for long enough to bring you today’s news. The things I go through for you guys…

• Speaking of Sim City, the controversy surrounding its launch and always online requirement continue. Rock Paper Shotgun have an interview with Azzer, the modder who revealed the game’s debug mode earlier this week. In the interview, Azzer mentions that it would be trivial to add an offline mode to the game. He also believes that the claims made by EA and Maxis regarding the game doing some of its simulation processing on the server are untrue, making a mockery of posts made earlier this week on the game’s website by Maxis staff.
• Last week it was Donkey Kong. This week it’s The Legend of Zelda getting hacked to put its damsel in distress into the starring role, and finally making the game an actual legend of Zelda. I have to admit, it always bugged me as a kid that Zelda wasn’t really about, well, Zelda.
• EverQuest is a thing that, somehow, still exists. It’s celebrating its 14th (!) birthday this weekend, and adding some new content and loosening up its free-to-play requirements to celebrate. They also announced some interesting statistics, such as the fact that there are over 340000 NPCs in the game now. With the return of Brad McQuaid to the fold, and new content on the way, the future is looking good for EverQuest. At least, it looks a lot better than the game’s graphics, anyway.