According to EA's forums, they are doing everything they can to help alleviate the server problems that has plagued SimCity players over the last few days. As a result, they are "deploying a hotfix to all servers," meaning that they are going to disable a few "non-critical" features of the game, including leaderboards, achievements, and region filters.
Obviously these won't grossly affect anyone's game, but they fact that they have to do this at all (not to mention, who knows if it will even help), doesn't bode well for EA's image. It especially doesn't help that it's these features that are part of the justification for the always-online DRM in the first place.
