I have to say I'm extremely wary. Extremely, extremely so. From being forced into online mode to the smell of socialized gameplay, there are so many negatives things I'm infering that the game would extremely surprise me if it were good.
First of all, we have the designer talking about how the game now has goals and objectives because gamers today don't want a sandbox:
http://www.vg247.com/2012/03/28/maxis-s ... -of-games/
And EA is quite pushing the idea of online leaderboards and rewards, which makes me think their heart is not in the right place:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3oFKhftK88
There has been a lot of talk about several resources and focus on special buildings like casinos, which will probably be the focus of the game. We know that there are going to be touristic cities, research cities and so on, and while I welcome the idea, I don't think the execution will be interesting after seeing the gameplay trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvpjZkAzXKQ
And then you have the confirmed lack of features like no terraforming and no regional networks, which just seem bad. And when the series was already ruined once, pardon me for not being optimisic

But there's one thing I like and thats the removal of pipe systems. It was always kind of pointless, gameplay-wise.