1) There is no expansion option yet not even by paying. According to the Game designer, the limit was set to make the game function equally in different types of PC's. A Low end pc could not simulate a City more than 2km size, coz of the animations and amount of processing needed.
If there is an option to select the size of city before the game (based on the users pc) still some cities would be bigger and more self-sufficient than others, causing balance issues.
However you can create mutiple cities in a Region.
2) EA F***** up with the servers, they say that they didnt expect so much traffic which is non-sense considering the fact that Simcity the biggest games played by wider demographic. This happened with their games previously (Sims tapped-out etc) but they were still lazy.
3) DLCs are good, especially for hardcore fans, I know many people who play Simcity only (mostly due to the attention this genre got due to This game and Farmville). They would have nothing to play after an year if no DLC was released.
The publisher funds the games and not the Developer(Also Maxis is a subsidary of EA, like many of the studios), they pay everything from pre-production to distribution. If you dont like DLCs you dont have to purchase them. EA is the tag under which they sell the games, people from EA Digital Illusions Creative Entertainment (or DICE), BIOWARE, MAXIS or The Sims Studio are part of EA and they work for EA.
Also please tell me which other major franchise is selling DLC for less the $15 and by DLC I mean poper stuff not skins and sh**
Agree with this. EA's DLCs are mostly old-school expansions, rather than some idiotic stuffs. Here's my take on DLCs: you have a favorite genre or game, you will spend as much as you can. For others, you can just stick with the base game.
I am not a fan of DRM, let alone always online, but there's little we can do.