It was going to suck anyway. Let's look at some key points here:
1. Ubisoft style Orwellian DRM.
2. The team behind it has been told they're going to be fired. Major incentive right there.
3. Which means little to no patches.
4. Given 1 and 2, it's hard to see how long this game is going to last. Even the single player relies entirely on EA's support and the plug has already been pulled. This is going to be like Hellgate, only worse because you won't even be able to play it in any way, shape or form.
5. No major gameplay innovations. RTS have moved on from C&C Tiberian Dawn, but C&C hasn't.
6. No LAN. In context, this is the least of your worries.

Way to tell the team before they finish the game.

They did it with Saboteur too. They should at least have kept the studio alive until the major issues were dealt with. But no, they just killed both games.

Hey now, The Saboteur was a good game.

Yup. This is the answer right here. The bottom line is, the publishers are going to take every step possible to make PC gaming like console gaming in order to preserve control, even at the cost of sales. Face it, the days of buying oen copy (if at all) of UT and pirating a dozen copies for LAN play are dead.

What's WWW?

Well, nothing keeps people from playing the older games on their LAN. I myself dont play on a LAN much often. A LAN party is something that is planned in advanced, its not like logging on to your favorite server and playing. I dont really care about the 0 ping a LAN provides, I'm good as long as the ping is no greater than 100.

From what I've heard, there are quite a few other bugs in the game as well...

Don't have a problem with that, as I a) never was that much into multiplayer and b) I'll still pay for what I play. But needing permanent connection for playing single player? Not gonna happen.
Claiming it's because of piracy? Soooo.... since they'll check that with their new online method, there's no more need for other DRM measures, right? Right - not gonna happen.
I've gotten Dragon Age and the first two DLCs. Can't say I liked the way it was handled - won't get any more no matter how good they'll be. Gotten Mass Effect 2, played through twice, still haven't (and won't) activate my Cerberus Network code.
The whole direction the industry is taking, definitely changed my buying behavior over the last years. Instead of 2 new titles each month, I'm down to about 1 "must-have" each quarter. All other titles are on my wait-till-budget list or in other words, I'll get them when they dropped below 10 bucks.
Saboteur - was interested but have an ATI card, Bioshock 2 - waiting, Assassin's Creed 1 - still waiting, C&C4 - potential waiting / now not interested anymore, Starcraft 2 - waiting, Settlers 7 - was interested / won't buy.
/sarcasm Keep up the good work guys, I'll dropped more money on GoG and BigFish last year then on retail games.

AFAIK it was to ensure single player experience points carried over to multiplayer experience points, or something like that. Even though every one knows the CPU can't provide a more challenging experience than the best human players.

That's V V V V V V. 6*Vs, not W W W or 3*Ws.
Link to demo

I've lost faith in the C&C franchise ever since C&C3. So I really couldn't care less about the latest bullshit move EA has made to further ruin what once was a great series.

That game is just annoying. They exagerated a little bit on the spikes. :D

To be honest the first games were only good to me because there was nothing much else around to play. I play them today and shudder that I enjoyed them for a few months, sorta like an ex-GF I wish I never met it brings bad memories and shivers along with fun memories.
Oh well, C&C is dead and nothing we can do about it. Play a little Starcraft or maybe get a hold of Mech Commander 2 (it's freeware now, just google it and download the MS approved ISO)