People not noticing the internet requirement are people who can only blame themselves. The game box states it quite clearly. Online shops can be tricky with their advertisement tough.

Steam may be the devil of DoW2 but it doesn't requiere any credit card (fortunately) (yet?).

My internet connection isn't the best one but I have quite good download times. Downloaded the beta in just 45 minutes and that's the longest download time for me (included patches, switching languages,...). Lucky me, I guess.

GFWL is quite silly, because if I want to go live, I need to disable my firewall first (I can enable it as soon as I'm live and it works fine). It also forces me to log every time, even if I just want to check the army painter. And as my computer is shared, I cannot let it remember my login.

i had to go through the Steam BS thing just to get a demo Empire: TW and you know what...the $&#@ing demo won't work. personally i don't know if it's cause the game isn't compatible with my computer or if it's Steam...

http://www.beefjack.com/blog/news/pc-news-blog/dawn-of-war-ii-requires-steam-for-activation/  read post #14 by ottatouch.

"to continue. my son purchased Dawn of War II. We noted the on-line activation required - fair enough. But on activating and creating the Steam account required he required credit card details. As he doesn’t have one, he would have to use mine."

I have no idea, but it must be confusing enough that this person thinks he needs his credit card to create a Steam account. Nobody told him on that page he didn't need a credit card so I assumed you do.

All this reminds me of online music stores releasing mp3's that only play on specific mp3 players. Companies are very caught up in "rights" and protection of said rights, which is fair enough, but doing so often causes customers pain. If enough people don't buy the game things will change, if people buy the game it will not change.

Unfortunately alot of modern businesses run an equation where share price or profit is the outcome and customer satisfaction is a variable that can be lower as long as the sales keep happening. Petrol prices are a prime example of this, and I say its fine as long as you remember your satisfaction is only a variable and not the result, so if you don't like it don't support it.

Okay, is there any confirmation on whether you have to download a bunch of stuff if you buy the retail version?

You do not.  You have to have the latest Steam and GFWL updates.  These come on the disc, but may need small patches.  You have to have a Steam and GFWL account.  You have to download the latest updates for DoW2 before playing.  You do not have to download the entire game off the net.

I'm no fan of DRM and Relic's approach clearly hasn't been the easiest.  That being said, I'm finding far more people with problems with the game itself regarding bugs or design than those who just can't play because Steam or GFWL are preventing them.

All you have to do if you buy the retail version is put the disc in the drive, let it install the game, and enter its cd key as far as I know...only downloading involved is for the patches.

Dawn of War II; its appearent that I stay clear of this one.

Happy gaming to all, and enjoy being an American consumer.

I Personly enjoy DOW II a great deal and while it was somewhat annoying to need 2 other progarms to play it.  I was dissapoint with neither the graphics which are of a fairly high level or SP campagin because tacits are neither simple or as easy they frist appear to be in any enviroment.

Those patches aren't a choice though - it won't let you run the game until you've downloaded the latest patches. Which for the small minority who still have dialup is probably a big problem.

I just wish it was a better game - the campaign is good, sure, but the multiplayer is pants. So, thanks to Steam, once you've finished the 10 hour or so campaign, you're left with a game you can't even sell because it's steam-locked to your name.

I wish I'd held off a year or two and bought it from the bargain table rather than wasting $100 on the bloody thing.

i always thought if you get a game that can run on steam, it doesn't matter whether be it a retail or a download copy, but it requires steam to run; it will run after you install it.  That is, as long as you have steam installed.

Besides if you bought the game, and you hate steam, then get a crack for it.  Wait a bit, and some unknown genius whom have too much time on his hand will crack the game and upload the crack, wola, you can play your legit version without having to be at the mercy of Valve's pestky software.

i just want to add that i am not by any means advocating piracy of any sort, but rather a way to resolve of getting rid of the problem of being tied to a particular digital distribution platform, or rather being forced to.  

One game on steam is enough for me

The disk may come with the "latest" Steam and GFWL clients but it still needs to check versions seems. So you'll have to install the newest clients whenever you decide to install the game again in the future. Appart from that, you only need to download patches. I have Steam to autopatch the game but I read that I can configure it to not autopatch the game on start.

Unlike Impulse, Steam requieres you to start the service whenver you want to play the game. It doesn't seem to hog system resources or anything, and it autostarts with the game (no need for me to make extra clicks) so not a problem per se. But I would prefer an approach like Impulse's. Also, Steam offline mode requires you to activate it first while online... Not a problem because to install the game, first you need an internet connection anyways even if you would install, patch once and then force Steam to run offline forever.

Thanks to (most probably) THQ's preload, the game was pirated before a week or so of release. So some kind of antiSteam scheme was already discovered. If I were only interested in the single player part (which I'm) and without a decent/any internet connection (which I'm not), i would find extremely interesting something like that. I'm SO glad about Stardock's way of handling my SP experience...

That ottatouch surely is doing some bad PR on purpose or really has no idea of what he is talking about (not very possible) if he mistakes a serial with a credit card number.

Some people are hopeless, me to I guess for believing what I read on the internet

It is correct though that if you install the game, connect it to the net, play it, stop playing it and turn off the computer, turn on the computer, find out the net in unavailable (for whatever reason) and thus you can't play the game installed on your computer?

If this is true I'm surprised a Griefer has not Denial of Service attacked Steam yet...... I don't know anything beyond what DOS does, so I assume its possible.

I just don't like that one idea, that you must always be able to connect to the net to be able to play.

If you are without internet connection, you better have another game that you want to play installed... You could prevent such situation getting Steam in offline mode once the game is installed and fully patched, only getting Steam online whenever you read in the official forums that there is a new patch. Only interesting if you don't care about multiplayer part. Still, it's not good.

Just one thing; I don't really understand why this thread is about Empire: Total War instead, because it beats DoW II in so many ways;

DRM shittyness (steam bugs, about a billion of them), Game bugs (more than a billion), and an in the end unrewarding game.

DoW II is a well-made game with very few in-game bugs (I've played it for around ~75 hours, and have found virtually no game compromising bugs), and it's steam problems are far less than other current releases (Empire: TW, *cough*) and GfWL gets better and better for every update. (The latest update made the matchmaking damn much better for example)
The game itself also gets patched quite frequently so far, 1.1.2 is the current version so. (From 1.0.0)
Also, you don't need an online GfWL account, you can create an offline profile instead. (This will, however, not get you any achievements.)
The only thing that annoyed me was that, when added to Steam, DoW II automatically started downloading from their servers, instead of installing from the DVD. There was no dialogue to let me choose where to install from, it just started downloading. That was quite annoying tbh. Other than that, the Steam+GfWL frameworks along with DoWII works remarkably well, surprising to see considering that there have been some problems with both of them before.

GTA IV is also a good example of crappiness btw; DRM to the max, extreme amount of (many yet unfixed) bugs, extreme optimization issues, and really stupid developers (bragging about 200$K copy protection, yeah that's gonna get soo many people to not copy your game... pff.) and a non-impressive game.

My problem with, and the reason I didn't buy, DoW II is because it seems like they just updated the graphics to choke $50 more dollars out of us. I loved the original and expansions, but don't realese a new game and take out everything that the expansions added for crying out loud (I WANT MY DAMN NECRONS BACK!). Whats even more annoying is that the expansions were stand alone, so they could charge $40 for those...AND require that you have your cd key for the others just to use those races to begin with. THQ went the rout of EA in screwing over their customers, and it really annoys me.

--As far as Steam goes, I think it's lame that you have to connect to it before you start up your game. Plus I have a grudge against steam since my account has been hijacked 3 times...