I have gone to purchase this twice and stopped twice as you have to accept an EULA before you can even buy the game; why is that? In it they speak of collecting data from you, and then if you go online it will be transmitted. There is something taking place here that requires you to say yes to before you pay for it.
I am still hoping for DRM free, and if it were the simple disk check I would have no issue.

The DLC needs to activate to be played... it used to require that every time you played, but they patched it to only need it once now like the Mass Effect 2 DLC. It is very much DRM, not sure what Delixe was getting at.
Wait and see if it bothers you.

I was talking about the core game. I did say that yes the DLC has DRM but you can literally turn that DRM off.

(Off-Topic)
I just read through this thread and I'm left wondering about the anti-DLC whining.
What exactly bothers you about this business model? It's not like anyone's forcing you to buy it or even like it's affecting the quality of the base product.
As much as I enjoyed DA:O, I didn't buy any of the DLCs so far, simply because I didn't thnk that any of them were really worth my time or money.
I never felt that Dragon Age was an imcomplete game because I didn't have any of those OPTIONAL add-ons.
Actually, they negatively affect the overall balance of the game by adding overpowered items for free, imho, which means DA is possibly more enjoyable without them.
So what's your problem with DLCs? Do you feel you should be getting them for free or something? Is the thought of not being able to do everything without paying extra so horrible to you that it ruins the game?
Frankly, I'd like to know, because I've seen lots of anti-DLC sentiment both here and on the Bioware forums, and the reasoning behind this hatred aways left me puzzled. Basically, it boiled to: Boohoo, they cut content out of the game I for some reason feel I should be getting for free *whine*, to which my response is: so what?
(/Off-Topic)
On topic, the Morrigan DLC sounds potentially interesting, I hope they don't screw it up.
I'll wait for a potential GoTY or "Ultimate" edition anyway, since my brother stole my original copy of the game the last time he visited, but it would be nice to have closure with that NPC since they apparently don't plan on giving her a big role in DA 2.

Neither do I, the only thing bothering me is the guy in camp advertising one of the add-ons. Now, I'd like a retail collection of all the available add-ons, preferably cheap enough so it won't really matter that I already have a bunch of them from the collector's edition.

Cutting game elements out to sell separately: don't see that so.
Not being able to do everything: hate that. Paying extra for that: no problem, that's DLC basic.
However, I DO have a problem with buying those DLCs and not being able to resell them anymore. It's not that I actually do reselling, just that I couldn't if I wanted to.
Now going with the DA:O example, considering I'd have the basic game and all DLCs: I would have payed for both, but when I'd consider selling the basic game, my investment in the DLCs would turn useless for me. So I'm only able to pay for the time I used them without the option to get a fracture of my investment back, which basically is one thing: renting.
The difference between renting and actually buying not only consists of what you can do with the product, but also with the price you pay. And I feel the price they're asking for the amount of content they deliver, is a lot closer to selling then renting.
Now, I'm a CRPG addict. I played the heck out of Fallout 3, couldn't be without that ME2 game, gotten that copy of DA:O. But frankly, I had more then enough problems with just DA:O and the behaviour of bound DLCs, to feel like paying full price anymore for something that I'll never own.
I still haven't gotten DA:O Awakening, still haven't even considered downloading the free DLCs coming with ME2, just don't care about when DA:O2 will get released, because I can see the whole thing repeating itself again and again. So as long as John Riccitiello is trying to rent me his products, I'm no longer willing to pay his buying price.
You have to ask yourself, what's next? What clever idea they'll come up with to get your money for something you'll be stuck with for eternity? Using Bioware-points for ingame gold in SW: old republic? Frighteningly that wouldn't surprise me.
So what I do is simply playing the waiting game. I wait for the release of that GotY / Ultimate / whatever edition and then I'll wait some more. Until the price went down to a point where I can say: don't care if it's on Steam / GfWL / whatever, bound to me for eternity or not, it's all together and I'm willing to pay that price for something, that I'm not able to resell again.

There are enough threads on this already frankly, but to answer your question I think most people just prefer expansion packs, which offered a lot more content for not much more money. $7 for three hours of Dragon Age is way overpriced if you consider that the $50 game had 100 hours of content.
Also when the main game advertises the DLC like Dragon Age did, it makes the main game feel incomplete without it and breaks immersion.

The DLC never required activation every time you played on PC version. I know, because I tested it. I don't know about consoles.
The way it works on the PC is, if you're logged into your account in-game while on-line, it will authenticate your DLC. If you're not logged in and you've authenticated it once, you're good to go, whether on-line or off-line. It's only the logged in/on-line combination that gets checked every time. It's been that way from the release of the game.
To be clear, the only reason you 'need' to be logged in is to have your game progress/achievements updated.

Same here.
The last patch even said something about "fixing" the activation process to not be as finnicky.

I know there are already too many threads about this, but on the Bioware site they always seem to turn into a shouting match with one side screaming about cut content and the other objecting no one's forcing them to buy the stuff.
I was hoping since people seem more reasonable here I could at last have a rational explanation.
Speaking of which, I can understand people not feeling the content is worth the price. I feel the same way, though Bioware's never had an history of making great expansions anyway (apart from Horde of the Underdark).
The completionist's urge is slightly harder to relate to, since the game doesn't really feel imcomplete without the DLC (except maybe Shale). After all they're only small sidequests with little or no relation to the plot.
That guy was annoying, although not worth the outcry it caused in the forums imho. At least, I for one managed to ignore him easily enough after the first time.
Whatever the case, Bioware seems to have understood it was a bad idea since they haven't done the same thing with the other DLCs, so I doubt we'll see a repeat.
I can understand being annoyed by that, but EA seem to be one of many publishers who want to cut in on used sales. The Shale DLC was partly meant to do just that, and I guess the other ones are the same. Not much we can do about that except protest with our wallet, unfortunately.
Edit: for clarity and spelling

As I said, it was the fact that they rubbed it in your face that really got to me. Characters like Leliana and Sten you could tell to sod off and leave to their deaths, or kill them later on when you really went against their beliefs such as the Sacred Ashes quest, and didn't really give you any reason to want to kill them when you first met them. Morrigan, on the other hand, starts off giving many characters a real valid reason to kill her (apostate mage, appears chasind, and claims to have taken the documents and is attempting to blackmail you into coming with her) while not really giving any reason to trust her, whether you are good or evil, and rejecting her offer should have been her 'Sacred Ashes' option instead of the 'Ooo maybe I should have killed you but I won't for no discernable reason...'
Morrigan felt like a contrived plot hammer, plus I felt the whole choice at the end was incredibly contrived, but that's another matter. Morrigan smacks of DM's favouritism, when the DM (GM, ST, whatever you want to call him) creates an NPC and then becomes too invested in them, often usurping the players' characters or coming back constantly from the dead because the DM can't let her go.

Just for clarification: you had authenticated the DLC once? And were you trying to play while logged into your account or while not logged in. The way to do it is to not automatically log into your account in-game. If your DLC has already been authenticated, you can fire up your saved game and play the DLC without issue.
I know some people were reporting troubles with this, but it was usually because they hadn't logged out or hadn't turned off the automatic long-in, and they hadn't exited the game after changing that setting.

Maybe they just need to bring back Biff the Understudy.
I don't really have so much of a problem with DLC, it just motivates me to wait a while on purchasing the game. There are quite a few ways that DLC can shape out: it can be content that was pretty clearly cut from the core game just to be sold for some extra money, it can be content developed later that is fairly mediocre compared to the core game, it can contain various annoyances (in-game hooks, extra DRM or authentication requirements, etc), or not. Because of this unknown I find it better simply to wait and see how a game with planned DLC ends up shaping out before I make a purchasing decision. And by the time the shape of the DLC has become clear there's often a GOTY edition on the horizon that has all the DLC bundled, so it's more worthwhile to just wait for that. Of course, it's also possible that in the course of the waiting I just end up losing interest in the game and never end up buying it.

Had a lot of problems with this, too. Savegame created online not working offline, starting the game and all (authenticated) DLCs not even showing up with the side effect of not being able to load a save because of missing content, a lot of restarting / trying with automatic and manual login and vice versa...
Can't say your solution convinces me - pretty much looks just like a work-around. I mean, why giving an automatic login if it doesn't work? :)
No idea how it works now with DA, even less with ME. But the whole authentication process for DLCs was a big botched mess from the get go for me.