SimCity 5: How not to design a single player game.

choke writes: Players attempting to play EA/Maxis' new SimCity game are finding that their save games are tied to a particular server, are facing problems with disconnects, inability to track friends or search for specific coop games online and failures to load game, and wait times of 20 minutes per login attempt.

The question is, why the online restriction? Does this possibly indicate future micro-transactions in game?