This guy is ridiculous if he's complaining about Stardock DRM and update procedures.

Thanx for getting it, pal If that's how it works, then it's ok. But, you'll have to hand it to me that it's not very clearly stated anywhere (actually the opposite is).

As I said, the issue is mostly psychological. I'm a guy who likes things his way.

Well it's an OS. It's much more likely to survive one way or another. I do have a DOS emulator for MoM.

I only just recently bought a new PC with a 3D accelerator. The last game I seriously played was Baldur's Gate II.

I guess you're right, I'm getting old and stuff...

I hoped for a new Alpha Centauri in all these years, but a new MoM could be almost as good.

Patches are an essential part of any software though.

I don't recall insulting you, mister. But you can picture me as a stupid person, if it makes you feel better.

It was just an example to show what I mean by saying "I don't want to depend..."

Don't you have any personal quirks or fixations? I am a control freak, I have my methods, I keep my things organized and seemingly this whole online activation trend clashes with that. Seems like I'll have to accept it or leave gaming again. I don't know, I guess I could try with this digital download after all, of course we're not talking about millions, but I'd certainly be ready to pay more for the product if it were provided the way it should be supposed to...

Then you know how you are required to have the media in the drive at game launch for both BG and BGII.  You may not have realized it, but that is because SecuROM is used to protect that game, at least on one distribution (e.g., the 4-in-1 boxset that I have).  I run a drive emulator to bypass that, but it takes up several GB of disk space to do this, since I'm not a fan of cracked .EXEs.

So to continue with the "what if...?" scenarios you keep arguing, what if your disk gets a scratch?  Well, according to BioWare, you will need to repurchase the game.

If you buy the disk version of Elemental, you just download from Impulse if your media is damaged and you need to reinstall or install on another computer.

As for patches - this was mentioned but you've brought it up again I guess because you missed the response - go ahead and patch, then uninstall Impulse.

Or leave Impulse installed and disable the auto-run at windows start options for Impulse and the Impulse Now system tray applet.  Then just run Impulse when/if you read of a new patch, get the update and shut it down again.  Functionally, this is exactly the same as downloading a stand-alone patch installer executable each time you need to patch a disk-based game and a step or two better than other digital distribution options (e.g., Steam, D2D).

Impulse isn't perfect, and I'm sure GOO DRM will have some issues not-as-yet predicted, but it isn't as bad as you are striving to make it seem.

Sure.

But I also understand that life/companies/other people have no obligations to submit to my quirks and "what should be" doesn't mean "what matches my own personal quirks". I don't rant about how things should match what I think they "should" be, I don't call a company "wrong" because they aren't going the route I remember the 'good ole days' use to be (like someone said, there's been DRM for ages, the term just got in-vogue lately), and I certainly won't care them so far to totally abandon a hobby. Yeah, I don't like a lot of DRM, but I think about all the hours, days, years of enjoyment gaming, even in it's modern faux-piracy-stopping incarnation has given me and I'd be loathe to miss out on it if I had it to do over again.

Flexibility is the best adaptation nature has provided us humans. I'd think people should utilize it. Quirks or otherwise.

It also doesn't help that Elemental has NO DRM and yet you're still complaining because it's not exactly 100% perfectly align to your own standards (Why do I need to have Impulse to download a patch?). When there's FAR worse and invasive DRM out there - it really comes off as just whining. Because it could be a whole lot worse. Plus, what Elemental/Impulse has is actually as much a convenience as it is anything else, especially since it's not even needed to run the game.

When I look at the potential in Elemental, *even now in it's beta state*, I can't see letting Impulse being needed for the brief time to download a patch as negating all that Elemental looks like it can provide now and will provide on release and beyond with future patches.

And like Aesir Raising said - just start it, get the patch, close it. Heck, that's what I've done during Beta. Open it to get the Beta update, then close it when it's done. Yeah, I know, that still goes against your quirks, but...life won't always align with them. Sometimes adapting vs fighting is a better strategy.

Yea ... you only need to be online IF your patching, and can be offline while using the patch ... and apparantly can even save the patched data onto a physical source after the update as well.

So yea ....

unless you still had copies of these games. all I need to do is archive game and current updates to usb storage device and i still have it baring the bizarre.. Let alone the fact that by the time said failures occur and stardock is no longer around how long will it take for others to offer latest  version of game ala MOM...

paranoid delusions aside.. still seems trollish.. epically compared to say many other modern games methods..

Nah, I played that, its way too derivative of Sins of an Elemental Civilization III.

Microsoft recently dropped support for Windows XP SP2, 1st version and SP1 was dropped about 6 months before that. One day you will be on your own with it no security patches will come to you. I am sure it will still work but activation of a new install could be a problem, by the way did you have this issue with activating XP also or did you steal it ! come on be honest!

Stardock has an almost fanatic following.(with good reason)  I have seen nothing but awesome support from them as a whole. Because of this when we see people blast them for things we see as not an issue or false, we tend to act defensively.

I can't speak for stardock, but I can speak from experience. If you have the ability to read this forum, you will not have a problem registering and updating the game. Even when I was deployed in Iraq, I was able to install and update my games. When my computer died and I built a new one, I was able to install my games again and update them.

on another note, most 20 year old games become abandon-ware and will either be free, or easy to find for free on the internet and you won't need to worry about it. 20 years from now we will be playing "ELEMENTAL X: Wrath of the sky lords" where the civilization has re-advanced back to and beyond it's original (pre-destruction) state and start implementing technology.. steam-punk tanks, planes and castles in the sky. Of course this will all be done in 4D virtual reality.

That would solve my issue as I said, but there doesn't seem to be a consensus about this point...

To clarify, I'm NOT complaining about having to use Impulse to download a patch... the problem rises when you re-install the OS from scratch: the Stardock official info page clearly states that upon OS re-inizialization you have to go through the entire procedure again.

That means that if I reinstall the OS a lot, everytime I've got "to ask" for permission to use the game again. This is what I don't consider fair, even not taking into account the possibility to receive "no!" as an answer. Frankly, it doesn't seem like a "trollish" complaint, to me.

That's the moment when not having to depend on a connection or activation helps. I might want to install everything on an old, unconnected PC.

To answer your question:

I have 4 work licenses for Win XP. I also have (collected over the years) licenses for various work-related programs, for a value easily in excess of 15.000 € (some of these programs use hardware locks to operate, a solution not too clumsy at last with USB keys). Add the fee I have to pay for an antivirus I have no need of, but that's required for a silly Italian law about privacy (!).

But to be completely honest, I use the software I own as I please. I don't care about the theory, because I need efficiency and if someone will argue about this, I have plenty to argue back in my defense. I have a slipstreamed installation disk for XP, which I did myself with some program, pre-patched with SP3 and stripped of most of the useless junk, so, even though I have 4 different licenses all 4 installations come from *that* disk, as it's better and faster to use. It's not my fault that the OS is poorly designed and that it degrades over time, forcing me to continuously going through re-initializations. I also have a copy of all the (licensed) software on my external backup drives, so that even the software I need can be re-installed without disk swapping or anything and I can go through the entire procedure as fast and painlessly as possible (which is something of great value to me). So you see, it's not entirely a "whim": I *do* reinstall a lot as a habit. So what do I do when finally Stardock says to me: "hey, you've activated the product too many times!!!" Well I guess if I can't do without the game at that point I could even buy a new license, but that doesn't change the fact that it isn't fair to me as a customer.

You are not asking for permission, activation is basically just verifying your purchased game.  Which in reality if it is a legit purchase, then there is nothing to worry about.

Impulse takes care of it all, pretty much silently and not intrusive at all.  There are far more worse things out there.

I was under the belief that activation simply tied the games purchase to your impulse account, so its a once only thing.

If you were to reload windows, you would just have to log onto impulse and redownload using your existing *already-activated-for-elemental* impulse account.

Thats how I thought it worked. Im sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong.

That said, I understand the desire to not have to rely on stardock remaining in business to be able to patch the game, however as someone stated you can backup a patched version for yourself. (I daresay you can just rar up the directory too, most games dont care about what's in the registry until you try and patch them)