It appears they make it painful as possible

first email I got was after requesting to cancel my account, no way to do it yourself as of 3 months ago.

Dear XXXXX,
first of all thanks for your interest in Cities XL.
We would like to know the reason why you want to cancel your account, also for improving our service.
Thanks for your feedback,
the Cities XL team

Than after sending back a reply and many many many days later they claim the account was canceled.  or did they  check out the word they use "SUPPRESSED"?

Dear XXXX,
thank you very much for your feedback.
We inform you that your account has been correctly suppressed.
We just remind you that according to our policy you will not be able to sell to a third party the game, as the serial number cannot be unlocked for other players (you can check the EULA for Ciites XL at https://www.citiesxl.com/component/option,com_virtuemart/page,shop.tos/pop,1/vmcchk,1/Itemid,28/lang,en/) and the game sold separately from its cd key.
Best regards,
the Cities XL team

Another month goes by and they  charge me again .I disupted the charge with my CC company and got a full refund. Than another  month roles around  and they charged me again. I'm now disputing that charge and having them blocked

01/13/2010 PURCHASE CITIES-XL 01/12 $9.25

I've sent a follow up email to their support team to see how they respond this time :)

The games isn't that great, so my adivse stay away far away :)

That's terrible customer support.  Sorry to hear it Wulvgar.  Fight the good fight.

From what I've seen, MC has tried to "prop up" their server numbers with dead cities from cancelled (or, in this case, supposed to be cancelled) cities.  They had announced that there was a deletion process for cancelled subs, cancelled trial accounts, and the like, but, several players report cancelled cities REMAINING on the servers long after MC says they were supposed to be removed.

How widespread the "false city" situation has become isn't really known, but even doing it a little bit is a bad sign...and bad practice.

It's a shame that such an innovative concept has come to this.  Hopefully the dream of a citysim mmo doesn't die here. 

Again, good luck Wulvgar...and buyer's beware.

 Bad news,I can not understand why companies go through the whole "to help us improve our service" thing when they turn around and treat people like a number anyway and charge them for a cancelled account.

Keeping cities from expired accounts around in some form isn't necessarily a bad thing. They are the equivalent of your Avatar in other online games. How inclined would you be to return to a game you played after taking a break to find your Avatar in which you have likely invested a considerable amount of time to be gone? What if Blizzard trashed your chars if you dropped subscription, or CCP,  for all I care? I know I certainly wouldn't bother coming back if I am forced to start over from scratch every time.

Now I may be with the minority in this one, and there are of course good reasons to purge inactive cities in CXL, as they take up plots with are in limited supply on each planet. Still, I wouldn't diss MC for keeping inactive cities around as an incentive for returning customers.

Originally posted by Maltese

Keeping cities from expired accounts around in some form isn't necessarily a bad thing. They are the equivalent of your Avatar in other online games. How inclined would you be to return to a game you played after taking a break to find your Avatar in which you have likely invested a considerable amount of time to be gone? What if Blizzard trashed your chars if you dropped subscription, or CCP,  for all I care? I know I certainly wouldn't bother coming back if I am forced to start over from scratch every time.

Now I may be with the minority in this one, and there are of course good reasons to purge inactive cities in CXL, as they take up plots with are in limited supply on each planet. Still, I wouldn't diss MC for keeping inactive cities around as an incentive for returning customers.

While it is true that the cities act as avatars would in mmo's, and you wouldn't want to immediately delete an avatar that isn't in use, there are still several reasons to more regularly "purge" the cities.

Besides the access to resources issue, there's the fact that MC announced a purging plan that says cities would be purged after two months of inactivity.  By not following through with that, they are either misleading players (falsely presenting full planets), or are not active enough to follow through with their plan.

Remeber, many of those cities are from 7 day trials that players did NOT extend with a subscription.  They were supposed to be purged after two months.  Instead, they sit, taking up resource maps, and making the planet look full.  On top of that, MC opened up THREE MORE PLANETS for players, due to a lack of space, instead of purging accounts that were cancelled or never opened to begin with.  Either that's a waste of their own resources, a poorly thought out plan, or an another attempt to mask low populations.

I agree that a slow, drawn out plan to purge cities is better than a quick deletion process.  The problem right now, though, is that MC has either stopped following their own plan, didn't have one to begin with, or are trying to be tricky.  Players should consider that before buying.

We are basicly in agreement, I think. Yes, it is good to be aware of these things if you consider signing up with CXL. And yes, inactive cities could be handled better.

Since this is the first online citysim of its kind, or at least the first that I'm aware of that attempts to do things on that scale, I'm perfectly willing to cut them some slack before I accuse them of malignant intent. Be aware that CXL is somewhat different from the vast bulk of online games. It's hard to go by the book on this one, because there is no book yet. In fact I would say that they and their customers are contributing to the writing of said book.

On the city purge issue, there seems to be a certain level of confusion. For example I was told by a returning player that his cities were gone after he took a month break. The post above mentions that your cities are meant to stay around for two months. If someone can supply a link to an official statement on that matter, I would appreciate it, since I am admittedly ignorant of MC supposed handling of this.

Of course everyone has a slightly different idea on the best course of action here. My personal favorite being that inactive cities are moved from the planets to some sort of limbo, where they can stay until the player decides to return. This could free up plots and contribute to the transparency of activity on the planet in question. Should a player decide to return, it would be nice to be given the option to revive an old city on a free plot, probably giving it a new name also, thus saving yourself the hassle of starting your work of art from scratch. But that's not likely to ever be, I suppose.

Originally posted by Maltese

We are basicly in agreement, I think. Yes, it is good to be aware of these things if you consider signing up with CXL. And yes, inactive cities could be handled better.

Since this is the first online citysim of its kind, or at least the first that I'm aware of that attempts to do things on that scale, I'm perfectly willing to cut them some slack before I accuse them of malignant intent. Be aware that CXL is somewhat different from the vast bulk of online games. It's hard to go by the book on this one, because there is no book yet. In fact I would say that they and their customers are contributing to the writing of said book.

On the city purge issue, there seems to be a certain level of confusion. For example I was told by a returning player that his cities were gone after he took a month break. The post above mentions that your cities are meant to stay around for two months. If someone can supply a link to an official statement on that matter, I would appreciate it, since I am admittedly ignorant of MC supposed handling of this.

Of course everyone has a slightly different idea on the best course of action here. My personal favorite being that inactive cities are moved from the planets to some sort of limbo, where they can stay until the player decides to return. This could free up plots and contribute to the transparency of activity on the planet in question. Should a player decide to return, it would be nice to be given the option to revive an old city on a free plot, probably giving it a new name also, thus saving yourself the hassle of starting your work of art from scratch. But that's not likely to ever be, I suppose.

In this thread called "thousads of cities dropped" on Simtropolis:  http://www.simtropolis.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=370&threadid=111453&highlight_key=y  Matthew from Monte Cristo details the city deletion "rules".  Trial accounts stay for a week, 7 day free tryout for a month, subscribers for 6 months.  The subscribers are fine, but plenty of trial account and 7 day folks report their cities are still on there.

And I would give them a break as a NEW type of mmo...if their official forums and beta forums hadn't discussed the city deletion issue for almost TWO YEARS prior to release.  It was a topic from day one after the announcement that the game would have an mmo component. 

One of the BEST ideas the posters had was called "slow death".  Basically, inactive cities would slowly lose citizens to the surrounding cities, over time, until finally, they disbanded.  That would allow citizens, resources, and eventually maps, to be freed up in the game.

Of course, once they announced that planets had unlimited populations...meaning that the addition or subtraction of citizens from your city means NOTHING to the game world, they basically signalled that the deletion plan wouldn't be that important.

From where I sit, they just occassionally wipe the servers of some cities, at their own pace.  Is it purposefully an attempt to mask their low pop. numbers?  Maybe not.  But, if that's what it does, is anyone at MC going to complain (or do it differently)?  I doubt it.

Funny that you can't cancel subscription manually lol, i went to the support tab and clicked on "How do i cancel my subscription?" and it just took me to the front page.

That in itself is inexcuseable, im not accusing them of being thieves or anything, but no company should make it hard for customers to cancel their subscription if they should want to, i have just send an email cancelling my subscrption just because of this.

and second, the game doesnt really offer much more than the single player does, not anything i'd like to pay monthly for atleast.-

We will see how it goes.

Beazt