Uhh, TBC came out in Jan 2007. It is now Nov 2008.

They announced that they would LIKE to do yearly expansions. So far there is nothing yearly about them.

"these people are powergamers. they do it with an attitude more serious than any job they work in"

Actually, in the case of this guild, it is their job. TwentyFifthNovember is a sponsored "pro-gamer" team.

Thanks for reading them through for someone whose brain shuts off after the first page break of a scanned document :) It sounds like the complaint is based on prior versions of SecuROM, so I'd be interested as to what comes out of the discovery phase. I guess I'll keep a news alert out on it in case something interesting crops up.

The problem is that the information in all the other posts is of the "I found this on the internet and haven't tested it" type.

I would happily accept that if it weren't for the fact that I have a copy of Spore Creature Creator installed and my Daemon Tools work fine, my Process Explorer works fine, and none of the files that these instructions tell me to remove even exist.

The problem is that I don't believe the article, because it's written by someone totally clueless as to how his own computer works.

Interfering with the firewall? It made an internet request, and the firewall popped up an accept/reject box. That's exactly what it's supposed to do (internet authentication), and the firewall is working exactly as it should.

It hides a folder in Application Data? Try this on for size: the Application Data folder is hidden by default. Furthermore, the files in the Application Data \ SecuROM folder have a README.txt explaining exactly what they are and what they are used for.

It disables Process Explorer? No it doesn't. It doesn't let you run the game until you reboot if you have run an old version of Process Explorer, and that was fixed a long time ago (by Microsoft) as of Process Explorer v11.

The only thing that site has under Player Stories is a bunch of people saying things like "My XXX software doesn't work or is buggy! I blame SecuROM!". The claims (it disabled my antivirus! my hard drives crashed and my dvd phyiscally broke!) border on hysteria and don't offer any more solid proof.

All I want is someone to actually look at the SecuROM protection that comes with Spore or Mass Effect and then tell me why it is bad, without falling back on "I heard that SecuROM does terrible things!"

Well, I've installed Mass Effect PC and Spore Creature Creator, and I don't have any of those files or registry entries.

Does anyone have a solid description of specifically what this form SecuROM "installs", what it does, how it is harmful, and why it can't be removed?

Every time this topic comes up it becomes a "How dare they!" bitchfest so I've never been able to figure out the answers to the above.

I'm not saying that this is definitely just a pile of FUD combined with general anti-corporate hate against EA. But I'm leaning that way without real evidence.