Maxis and EA Playfish’s SimCity Social is now live on Facebook.

The game is a new social citybuilder based on the popular brand of Maxis games that began in 1989. SimCity Social was officially announced earlier this month during EA’s E3 press conference; the developer shared a hands-off demo with us last week. As you’d expect, gameplay centers on building a personalized city that will dynamically change and grow as the chapter-based storyline progresses. The key differences between SimCity Social and Zynga’s CityVille are the former’s good vs. evil dichotomy, brand recognition and loose affiliation with upcoming PC game SimCity.

SimCity Social is EA’s highest-profile social game to launch in the past year and could provide a significant traffic boost for the company on Facebook. EA’s last “Sim” game to hit the social network was The Sims Social, which peaked in September 2011 with 11.1 million daily active users, though traffic has now dropped to 2.9 million.