Not only was Simcity's dial home unnecessary but their servers were extremely underprovisioned for the load[1]. For the first few weeks pirates actually got a significantly better game experience since they could play the game while legitimate players were generally unable to even play in single player.
Simcity was an excellent example of DRM providing no benefits and actively lowering the user's experience - that's almost always the case but it's rarely this extreme and obvious.
I'm a city builder fanatic. I played the original simcity, 2000 and 3000. But 4 wasn't very fun and sim city origin was a dumpster fire.
Luckily we have better options now. cities skylines is a worthy successor to the original franchise and the (optional) dlcs only make the experience better.
