That's pretty much the same position I'm in. I never actually bought C&C 3, but my friend got it and the expansion by less then legal means. He is very gald that he didn't actually obtain it through normal methods, if you know what I mean. I played it a little, and it is terrible. Most of the reveiws that I've seen for RA3 say its pretty good, but they don't mention the copy protection. As you said, C&C is the only reason that I would buy from EA, but if I'm going to, it had better be a really, really good game.

I was doing some more research, and I found IGN's reveiw of it. They gave it an 8.2. Although they didn't mention anything about the DRM. It didn't go into much detail, but here is the link to the reveiw, anyway:

http://pc.ign.com/articles/924/924694p1.html

That really sucks. I guess I won't be playing RA3 anytime soon. Of course, I don't want to support EA, so I might not have gotten it anyway. This is just the final nail in the coffin.

I really don't know what they are thinking with the 5 activation limit. All it does is annoy their paying customers.

I was in the beta but honestly I don't see myself buying it. It is a lot of the same thing which might not be a bad thing for some but having played all in the c&c series, I rather spend it on a game that tries something new. The gamespot review made me laugh though. He pointed out more flaws then good things yet still gave it an 8.

I will get the game eventually for exactly two reasons.

1. The soundtrack.

2. The mods. (When they come out, of course.)

An EA game? That means I won't buy it. Actually, it just means that there's a 90% chance I won't buy it, and a 70% chance that the game was rushed, buggy, and/or utter triol.

Invasive or arbitrarily restrictive DRM means I'll never buy it. I can see the thought process behind it all, but it boggles my mind when you punish your loyal customers while the pirates are playing a superior product.

If it's just so amazing that I can't live without playing it , I'll buy a copy and never open the box, and just DL a DRM-free version, which is something I won't feel bad or immoral about.

I was in the beta too.  I BARELY played it.  Just like C&C3 in my opinion.  The units are way over-priced and are way too weak.  I hate the whole mentality that is turning RTS games in to action games.  I'd much more appreciate supcom style RTS games.

I am also not a big fan of the direction of the c&c franchise.  Especially with RA3, there is just to much unit micromanagement.  I don't want transforming robot crap army.  10 guys that change from air to ground but still suck, wow, who cares.  I would have been happier with a true update to the original RA3 which was not this ridiculous or cartoony.

It's more the principle of the thing for many of us (btw, you're limited to 5 activations in single player or multiplayer). Imagine if this crops up on all games going forward. Imagine you upgrade your system regluarly, or tweak your BIOS when you're looking for a better/stable overclock. Now, let's assume you get an activation back if you uninstall the game first (not all games with this 'protection' do this). Would you look forward to wasting your time uninstalling every game you have and then reinstalling them again every time you performed the above operation(s) on your rig?

Or how about those of us with more than one rig, one or more of which may not be connected to the internet. So you have to connect every time you go through the above procedure.

Not to mention the glaring fact that this is supposed to curb piracy? But it DOESN'T.

I get your point. While I don't tweak my BIOS to overclock, why would you have to uninstall games when upgrading your PC? I've done hardware upgrades, and didn't have to touch anything IN the HD. Now, about uninstalling..if you don't clean your registry, won't your registration info remain on the comp, even after uninstalling?

I also understand people have more than 1 rig, as I have this desktop and a laptop, but 5 still seems a bit much.

Sorry for OT but this thread has completely derailed.

Why do people care so passionately about 5 activation limit?  Yeah ok so it's worse than unlimited but how many legitimate customers is this going to affect really?  You can uninstall the game and reinstall the game later and you still have only used 1 activation.  You can install this on a work PC and a home PC and still be able to change your PC 3 times before you need to contact EA.

I change my PC at most every 2 years so I get almost 10 years of play (if I install on every PC) before I need to contact EA to get new activations.

I keep reading customers being treated like criminals but how?  Pretty sure EA wouldn't allow criminals to install their game on 5 different PCs and then give them more activations when the criminals ring them up.  Customers are being 'punished', well how?  The people being punished are those who buy 1 game and share with all their friends, which I'm sorry but is not legitimate use.

I'm partly being devil's advocate as I'm not the biggest fan of EA but any thread that mentions an EA game just gets filled with a pitch fork wielding mob and nobody makes any sense.  This whole anti EA thing is turning in to some kind of online religion, 1 star reviews on all sites, bashing EA on every forum on the internet.  And I'm absolutely certain that the vast majority of the Zealots who join this anti-EA crusade haven't even been adversely affected by Securom.

On the other side of the fence I hate the way Securom makes resale worthless now and I feel sorry for people that get hit by poor coding and have to ring EA when their PC starts going tits up.

Because the activation is tied to the hardware hash. Change the hardware, and you change the hash. Therefore you must reactivate the game. A BIOS change is seen as a hardware change.

See my above post for an explanation of why the uninstalling/reinstalling is more than unsavory.

So because you're not affected it makes everyone else's complaints somehow not legitimate? What about people that do change their hardware on a regular basis? Or those that like to tinker with and tweak their systems? Are they somehow not legitimate customers?

I don't personally buy into the being treated like criminals argument. As to the people being punished being those that want to share with their friends, that's a bogus argument. The 5 activation limit actually allows you to share the game with your friends if you want. The old, simple disc check prevented you from doing that. Even if you couldn't lend it to your firends, all they need to do is DL the game from a pirate site and have it DRM free anyway. This DRM does nothing to stop piracy in any way,

Quite possibly they haven't. Most of those are probably offended in principle, and they have every right to be. I personally have been bitten by SecuROM. Twice. I don't pirate games. I don't even have any of the blacklisted software on my rig. But I was locked out of BioShock after adding another hard drive. That's a second drive for storage purposes, not a new one for the OS. I'm one of those peolpe that overclock their rig and upgrade a piece of hardware frequently. I buy all my games. Why do I need to deal with this crap as an honest and paying customer? The pirates don't.

The resale issue is just another in the long list.

But it's not just when it goes tits up. It can be for may other reasons as well. So you're stuck with either getting on the phone to tech support and paying by the minute, or you have to go through e-mail channels. If the former, you can easily rack up enough charges to actually have been better off just buying the game again (which EA would love, don't you think?). If the latter, you can wait days before you get it resolved. If you want to sit down and play your game on Friday, waiting until Monday or Tuesday before you can actually start the damned thing doesn't look all that appealing does it? Wouldn't you be pissed off that you'd paid 50 or more dollars for a game and you can't play it? And then, even if you do get another activation, god help you if something goes wrong on your rig again and you have to go through the process once more. Rinse and repeat.

Now, extrapolate that above scenario to every game you have installed on your rig. That's what you'll be facing if this type of DRM starts appearing on all games going forward (which is waht EA wants to do, and now other publishers are starting to jump on the bandwagon as well). Is that what you want to deal with? Do you begin to see why people are complaining? It's not the pirates complaining. They don't give a rat's ass.