Well, it's possible that EA and the Lucy gal weren't lying when they talked about "server-side computation." It may be a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing.
The scenario to explain this that I imagine is EA suits and the actual SC2013 developers from Maxis sitting in a room 3 or 4 years ago. EA says, "We need this puppy to be online all the time, so's we can sell digital bullshit to people." Maxis grunts accept it, and an up-and-comer in the Maxis ranks says, "Sure, that will even allow us to offload some of the local processing to the servers! Think about it, it'll be awesome!" Putting a happy face on it, a bit of spin...
And from the EA/suits POV, that's the last update they ever received on SC2013. They had no idea if any of the ideas discussed in that meeting were actually implemented, all they cared about was the fact that it had always-on so they could use it to sell DLC.
Again, I'm not excusing EA, but we're nearly two months out from release and the simulation is still very bad. I'm not talking about server issues -- lost saves, crashes, weak chat, you name it -- I'm talking about the actual game simulation itself. Sewage, pollution, traffic, tourism, crime, fire control, etc. There's crippling bugs throughout the simulation, and if you read the Maxis comments to bugs on twitter or reddit, it's clear that these guys are lost, they're in a genuine panic. They're just bug squashing and hoping to survive, and in blindly squashing bugs, they're only creating more problems because
they don't understand the simulation.
EDIT:
Some guy at Tom's Hardware got a chance to revisit the game.