So yesterday Maxis general manager Lucy Bredshaw made a blog post. I guess she had to answer to all the new information that popped up lately…
 

So, could we have built a subset offline mode? Yes. But we 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.

Ok, so they don’t care about their long-time fans… That’s cool though, cause they thought of the people who love always always DRM instead. That’s nice :)
And also, there’s apparently tons of advantages with always-online DRM, compared to offer both a social online experience and a solid single player experience. She names just a few in her blog post:

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