It requires to be online for games that use DRM, but DRM on Steam is actually optional for the developers/publishers of each game. For games without DRM you can simply run the executable from the Steam directory.

What about the fact that the UPlay download service was taken down? Customers who had purchased games cannot download said games because of this. Regardless, my comment about hurting the paying customer was meant as more of a slightly unrelated look at the type of DRM Ubisoft uses, and that this case could be used as an example to how DRM isn't working and then the many ways in which it hurts the customer could be pointed out. My main point was in the irony of the situation, and that no amount of DRM is going to stop piracy; there will always be people in the world that want something for nothing, and are willing to do things like this to get it. I am not justifying the actions of these people at all, I think they are wrong.

As an aside I have no problem with Ubisoft having their own store to sell their games digitally, but when I buy their games from an alternative source, I don't expect to be lumbered with their DRM that for example installs unnecessary browser plugins with security risks and makes me sign up for a UPlay account to play. Just give me the option to download your games and play them, with all other "features" optional.

There are many things in the world that people "put up with" and buy because they like the majority of the features, but don't like certain things. They put up with them because often, the alternatives just don't stack up on a lot of features. Were everyone suddenly to stop buying EA's games, would this really stop the root issue? Surely another company would just come along and do exactly the same, and again people would buy the games because they like the majority of the features.

I think voting with your wallet by itself just simply isn't enough, we need to carry on being vocal about these issues. Look at how Ubisoft's DRM service just got hacked and a game that hasn't even been released yet was discovered and made downloadable; highlight how ridiculous and ironic this is so we can spread awareness.

While I think it's a shame to use this survey as a platform to show EA what we think of them, because there are much worse companies out there than EA that do some horribly unethical things, I do think they have a lot of power in them, but only if we persist and don't let them forget until they change.

Finally, even if we did vote with our wallet, EA would convince themselves piracy was the problem and make up fake statistics and that would make the whole issue worse.

Assuming this wasn't done as a huge publicity stunt, isn't it just hilariously ironic that a DRM system designed to prevent (or at the very least slow down) piracy was used to access a game that hasn't even been announced yet? I hope this is used as a message to further show how futile attempts at stopping piracy like this are and how they actually hurt the paying customer.

I have to honestly say, it's quite a shame, because I played this at beta and I queued to play it at Gamescom, and at its heart I actually thought it was a very good game that had so much potential, and I still do think it looks like a pretty decent game, but forcing the always online is just something I don't want, and I just couldn't justify paying what I felt was completely overpriced compared to every other PC game on release.

Doubt it, they will just blame piracy and shove even more DRM on it, they may eventually fail but more companies using DRM like this will come, how are they supposed to know why you didn't buy it if you don't tell them? I believe the best solution is to spread as much word of bad press like this as we can, keep showing these companies that we don't want always online for games we may want to play single player in, and keep giving these games bad reviews stating why you didn't like the always online, and talk about the issue for as long as possible so they never forget. Stop letting these companies convince themselves that the reason things go wrong is because of piracy; don't vote with your wallet, vote with your voice - spread your opinion everywhere, sign petitions such as the one here . If you want to see change, then do something about it.

When it adds up to 5000 extra clicks because you find yourself having to do it for almost every other search... yes. I preferred how they used to do it by actually searching for the term you type in and suggesting the term they think it should be, rather than how it is now where they automatically redirect you to what they think it should be and make you click to search what you actually typed.

Sorry but your opinion is wrong, there have been many iFormat product names before Apple (even in the media player market) and there will be many after. Should the companies that have used the i prefix before Apple be able to slap a lawsuit on Apple because they don't want their product associated with them?

I am not much of a fan of Java games, but I completely disagree with you on Flash games here; some of my favourite games to play are Flash and some of them are pretty decent, not to mention that they are usually free.

This first point is unneccessary, most languages that get used for games were not built for games; it's the libraries that are used to make those games that matter. On the secont point, I hate Microsoft on a lot of things too, however there are many things that I applaud them for, and XNA is one of them, although some of the pricing and execution of it seems a little crappy, I've worked on a lot of mini projects with XNA, and the library is fantastic and easy to work with. Porting your games over to your 360/Zune is simple and I am excited about beaing able to dothis to my phone too.

Oh no, I didn't convert, I still play PC games the most out of them all. But when I want a group experience with my offline friends, it's usually the 360.
I play the 360 mostly for the arcade games on there, GTA IV because it wasn't out on PC straight away and was apparently plagued with bugs on PC anyway, and things like Rock Band.
Everything else is PC.

No, but it is very tedious and time consuming.

Yes, they did.

They are a good way to have fun in a group though.

Sorry, but this just wasn't my experience at all. I almost always gave up looking for groups to BFD, SM, or any of the 55-65 instances.

Not in the server I was in (Dragonblight btw). I didn't particularly find the game difficult to level up, or play. I found it difficult to have fun with a group and found it to mostly be a single player game. Perhaps I was in the wrong server, or wrong side, or got unlucky? All I know is that there weren't many new players around. I did try advertising that I was looking for a guild and did get a few nice messages from some level 70s saying it's nice to have new players for a change (even they notice the lack of newbies) but that their guild was for level 70s only, and wished me good luck with my hunt, managed to try out a few guilds but none were particularly active enough for me.

Don't get me wrong I still enjoyed the game so if you are getting defensive there is no need. I just felt I could have got more out of it had the group experience been more fulfilling.

Mod parent up.

This is a great counter argument to the growing number of people complaining it is a 'mario clone with prince of persia time rewinding' which to be quite honest really gets on my nerves. Why don't you just play the game and see for yourself. If it's not your type of game, don't play it.

In terms of a map editor. I know I will be downloading the PC version if this comes out exclusive to PC just to try it out. It would be very fun to play around with making my own levels for this great game.

Question to the parent though, you mention boss battles. Forgive me, it was a long time since I played this and it was the 360 version, so maybe they were left out, but I don't remember any boss battles of any kind.

Out of all of my friends that own a next-gen console, I was the one that waited and got mine late. Being a primarily PC Gamer I wasn't too interested in another console.

In the end I decided to get a 360 because it is what most of my friends owned. Yes, I had heard about the problems that plagued it, but I just wanted enjoy games with my friends, and only 1 of them owned a PS3.

Now, out of all my friends and I that went with a 360, mine has been the only one that hasn't yet needed to be sent out for repair, ironically, mine probably gets used the most too, and it is nearly past its 3 year RRoD warranty.

Luck? I don't know, but I know that even if it did break, I have had tons of fun with it and enjoyed many games and the online stuff has been awesome. Would I have had as much fun with the PS3? I don't know, I have a Wii and that hardly ever gets used.

What about for a new player? Someone that would probably get a lot of use out of this. I know that it was hard for me when I joined WoW just as the 2nd expansion was released. Starting as a Priest at level 1 when there is hardly anyone around your level forcing you to solo most of the time and making it almost impossible to find a group for low level raids is not easy.

Having this dual-spec system would make it a lot easier for a low level first time player to solo, especially for the low damage classes. It would mean they could easily switch between for example a healer priest for the rare chances they did get in a group/raid and shadow priest for solo.

I quit WoW when I got to level 65, I started getting bored of having to go days waiting for a decent group for an instance. It very much felt like to me, that Blizzard didn't care about new players, they already have enough regular subscribers to keep them going.

Also, I didn't have 1000g available at the time I quit, so even now, I wouldn't be able to use this.