If this was only about DRM I wouldn't be thinking y'all just need to take a breath and be quiet.  Devs usually talk about 'new experiences' and never actually try anything new.  Now someones doing something new and all people can talk about is something maybe a hundredth of a percent of the gaming population gives a crap about.  Heh.

Irony.

Yes, lots of games track your progress, but not many have a progressive unlock system tracked by the online system.  If I played on the original b.net on two machines, I'd still have to have both games seperate from eachother unless I really liked copying saves every time I changed location.

I don't know whether the actual game status (savegames) will be kept online or not, but they did say the unlock info would be.  So if I go play on my laptop after playing on my desktop, I don't have to spend time working on the same damn things I already did.  That's a winner for me.

But even that shouldn't require a constant internet connection. The player could just click a button when they're done playing to send their stats in, why do they have to be connected all the time?

And you talk about wanting to play on your laptop, but that will be impossible in many places because you won't have an internet connection. You have a 5 hour airplane flight to somewhere, and want to play C&C4? Oh wait, you can't, because you don't have internet.

And finally, who cares about a "progressive unlock system tracked by the online system"? You can have unlocks without an internet connection, as well. And none of those unlocks will mean sh!t, anyway. Within about 2 days after it's released, there will already be thousands of people who have unlocked them all. They're meaningless piles of sh!t that no one really cares about, and aren't worth an internet connection.

I have 3G internet.  I have internet access pretty much anywhere.  But 99.9% of the time I'm using my laptop, I'm just sitting at the desk at work, where I have wifi.

Who cares?  Obviously not you.  Obviously I do.  That's enough for me.

Yeah, you're talking about normal game progression.  You're not talking about what they've said about C&C4 at all.

So all you're saying is you don't believe what they've said, basically.  You could just say that and save yourself the trouble.

SB: Essentially, whenever you play Command & Conquer 4, be it in single-player, co-op, skirmish, or online, you earn experience that collects in your persistent player profile. Within the profile, you use your experience pool to level up your classes, earning new units, structures, powers, and upgrades. Since your profile is persistent across the game, you can then take your new toys and put them to use in any of our game modes.

From the Gamespot interview I do believe I linked to earlier

That seriously sounds like every other game to you?  Cause I don't think I've ever heard of multiplayer and single player affecting eachother such before.

Eh, the odds of an EA member of the board actually interacting with the "great unwashed" that is their circle of customers is somewhere between zero and negative 100. (even covertly)

You don't have to be a company employee to agree with them. There are enough gamers in the world that sheer probability dictates that there is always someone who approves of the plan in question. (Regardless of whether that approval comes from weiging up the pros and cons of said plan for them personally, or just buying into the marketing spiel.) 

Sadly, there are way too many people on the internet who either:

A. Truly believe it when they make a similar statement.

or

B. Use it as a generic Ad Hominem flame.

To be honest, I assumed you were pulling a type B. Blame my not knowing you personally or by reputation and the general failure of the internet to convey sarcasm/humour.

I'd never invest in a game company, unless games were a healthy sideline like with Stardock.

Seems like they're always losing money, no matter what they do.

Savyg, its not really singleplayer if you have to be connected to play.

I'd call it more like... let's see... "Non-interactive multiplayer"? "Next-Gen multiplayer with a strong focus on storytelling and solo experience"? "The Cash Bleeder Mode"?

Something like that. Hooray for people who actually have to watch their bandwidth usage.

None of that really makes sense, so I'll stick with single player.  And we'll have to see how much bandwidth it actually uses before saying if it actually has a negative effect in that direction.  It's very possible it doesn't use much more than basic websurfing, which makes that a non-issue.

I recognize of course that I'm in a community which attracts the anti DRM crowd, so I'm fighting 'against the tide' so to speak in this conversation.  I've talked about this on two other forums and not seen anywhere near the same reaction.

Everyone has the legal right to do whatever they want to something they're selling, as long as it isn't dangerous, discriminatory, or illegal some other way.  So what rights are you saying this infringes against?  The resale argument doesn't hold water, since it's not legal to resell software in a lot of places.  For the PC market it's pirates.  For the console market it's resale.

Once you've paid for something, as long as you knew what you were buying (or had every reasonable way to know) you have no say in the matter.  You own exactly what they sold you.

Under US law, reselling your original is often illegal as well. Depends on the details of the EULA.

Yeah, about that. Google the recent court decision about wowglider. EULAs are enforcable in the US as long as you have to take a positive action acknowledging it when installing the program (the EULA popping up and forcing you to click "I Agree" before you can continue).

And that's why software is licensed, not sold. Considering one of the rights of an "owner" of a copy of software (as opposed to a "licensee") is the unlimited right to decomplie, reverse engineer, and use their code for anything you damn well please, no company in their right mind is going to sell software if they can legally avoid it.

Also, in the US loading a program from hard drive to RAM constitutes copying and can be in violation of copyright law if the user is not covered by a license agreement.