It's not even a one time login request.

You can download the game, disconnect from the internet, and play single player on that and any other machine you own just by installing it on the others, the same as we do with our other gog games.

While it has the "look" of "logging in as guest" I completely disconnected from the internet before I even installed. I was able to install, play, save, replay, resave, etc. without ever, not once, needing an internet connection.

This one is a no brainer IMO regarding single player. It's DRM Free.

Well, I guess they were too busy testing if the game was stable and playable offline.

Besides, the default settings were overall okay, in my opinion. I probably wouldn't have noticed the bug either, if the game hadn't defaulted the language to German. I prefer to play foreign games in English, so this was the only setting I changed. Next time I wanted to play, the game was in German again. Well, at least it's fixed now.

Okay, but from our end, we weren't sure it was a "bug" and not something intentional. Because having to go in every single time and redo your graphics, sound, etc. settings every time "looked" like an intentional attempt to make one sign in because those signing in didn't have that problem.

If you say it wasn't intentional, and it was a bug, then that's good enough. It was a bug.

Damn, putting the pitchfork away. At least I know it's sharpened and ready to go.

It's mostly annoying to ask the customers and players who prefer the guest status every time. This is not nice.

On the other hand the multiplayer mode inherently presents some form of DRM because they chose not to implement direct connection multiplayer modes, right?

What if they switch off their server at some point or if it's just out of order? Will people still be able to play in multiplayer mode?

That is always a valid concern of any gamer. Nobody likes to see their favourite games lose functionality due to future decisions of the publisher/developer beyond the gamer's control, and multiplayer modes that require a central server to play and do not have LAN mode or direct IP mode (or both) definitely are intentionally trying to restrict gamer freedom. Whether it is "DRM" or not is up for other people to argue about endlessly and never reach any concensus while stabbing each other in the throat with pitchforks though. I express no opinion either way in that debate though as debating it doesn't really cause the reality that companies do this practice to stop happening. :)

Having said that though, there are quite a number of games in the GOG catalogue which have multiplayer that requires the use of a serial key in order to connect to a centralized game server not controlled by GOG. If Age of Wonders III does something like this as well, it is not a new phenomenon unique to this game alone within the GOG catalogue. I'm not aware if anyone has made a list of such titles or not but I own 274 GOG games right now and while I don't have an enumerated list of which titles I own that require multiplayer serial keys I know that there are several in my collection. Having said that, I most likely will never play the multiplayer mode of these games anyway and I am glad that the game is available DRM-free in the GOG catalogue insofar as me having a copy of it that I can install and use forever whether or not I have to use a key to play mutliplayer and whether or not multiplayer will even work by the time I might want to try it. My other option would more or less to be forced to buy the game on Steam probably loaded with many forms /undebateable/ DRM, online activation, online heartbeat or other crap for example.

As far as I can see, there's nothing unique about Age of Wonders 3 here insofar as the central-key-based-auth-multiplayer aspect is concerned.

Personally what I'd like to see 100 times more than endless arguing about what is and what is not DRM, and what should or should not be in the GOG catalogue, is creative solutions to the perceived problems being devised and suggested both gamer to gamer, and as suggestions to GOG.com and to the game developers and publishers. We can yell all we want about things but that doesn't change what we're given by the hand that feeds us. :)

What I would like to see instead personally, is that GOG Galaxy when launched is successful with the multiplayer component of the service and that that functionality gets integrated into as many games as possible that exist in the GOG catalogue already, and new games added to the catalogue in the future, and that the service hopefully not only has central online multiplayer functionality for every game, but it also facilitates providing direct host based multiplayer and LAN modes as options for as many games as possible. If everyone's energy and enthusiasm went into advocating what we /do/ want rather than fighting against what we /don't/ want (as a never ending losing battle really), we might see things change more quickly over time and become a better more gamer-friendly experience that breathes new levels of longevity into our gaming experience and the life of our games.

Unfortunately we can only speculate about Galaxy for now as we just don't have enough details about it, but it sure looks promising to my eyes and I think GOG is going to try to leverage it to do as much of what I suggest above as they can do, or at least I sure hope so. Only time will tell. I definitely look forward to the possibility of being able to shred all of the multiplayer reg keys in my GOG library and use native GOG Galaxy functionality instead. No idea if it will actually happen or not, but one can dream for now at least. ;o)

Lets hope our collective enthusiasm for gaming history can carry some weight in making something like this happen!

Peace my fellow gamers! ;)

I definitely like your first part. Yes, we should not concentrate on the naming debate. It's mostly fruitless. Names are not important. However a missing Direct IP/LAN mode is called, it's a nuisance for some more for others less. And it is a danger if ever the gateway/server is turned off. This is true completely independent of how we call it, although I would vote for keeping the possibility that it could actually be summed up under the term DRM.

As for concentrating on positive steps - somehow I feel more pessimistic there. If Galaxy does not provide the functionalities you and me would like it to have what then? Then we are exactly at the same point we are now and hoping for a wide adoption was in vain. I would prefer first to wait how it turns out and then cheer for it.

Have they?

No idea. Havent even tried the game myself (have it though)

I think the term "inconvenience" is more accurate than "DRM" personally and can probably be universally agreed upon as describing the net effect of both DRM and other things that are consumer non-friendly or irritating. Generalizing, what we really all want is less inconveniences, less arbitrarily and artificially decided upon restrictions on how we can use the software we pay for, and less generally anti-consumer or consumer-hostile practices in the industry. That includes all forms of inconvenience really, including things that are legitimately DRM and things that are not regardless of how they are labelled by individuals per se. I imagine most people could agree to this. "Stop screwing with our gaming mojo." is a succinct abstract way of putting it. ;)

If Galaxy does not provide what I'd like to see it provide then my reaction will be to suggest things to GOG both privately via the website support mechanism and also via the public web forums written for the most part as positive proactive constructive feedback. I'd like to highlight that I say "constructive feedback" and not "constructive criticism" also and I choose those words very carefully and very intentionally because I believe the former is very useful and I believe the latter is very much an oxymoron pretending to be something good when it rarely if ever is. Kind of like telling someone "Don't take this the wrong way, but you're a complete idiot. I don't mean anything bad by that though I just felt you needed to know." Hehehe. Never helpful and often even passive-agressive. Naw, I prefer a more positive approach whenever possible, although I can also admit that I'm human and sometimes reactive and critical too, but I know that's not the best way to get good results so I try to avoid that when I'm on the ball. :) So yeah, GOG will get some hopefully useful feedback and suggestions from myself and hopefully thousands of others to help them fix bugs and improve the service, software, features, etc. as the Galaxy platform evolves. I'm sure they'll get poo flung at them daily too, but that's totally the nature of things even if they were to magically cure all known diseases and end world hunger and extend human lifespans by 500 years or something.

How will game companies react? No one single way that's for sure. Some will go "meh" certainly just like they do now but . But we have to remember how GOG started out too, trying to sell DRM-free games in an industry that went "meh". now there are around 760 games in the catalogue altogether (more if you expand all the ones that are multiple games in one game card) and it is expanding at an increased rate and showing no decline. If Galaxy starts out with existing games, and one company uses it with one new product that is a win. If another one does, another win. I think its success will be measured by the games that do adopt it over time rather than being considered a failure by those that do not bother. If it shows positive steady and accelerating growth over a period of time large enough to measure it, then it is on the way to being a successful platform as long as that can be maintained IMHO. The important thing is positive growth that accelerates some amount big or small in a measureable manner over time, and trying to predict what ways things can be improved to make it more attractive and increase the acceleration of adoption.

We will have to wait to see how it turns out as you say though. I've got a good feeling about it personally but certainly no crystal ball either. ;oP Let's hope... :)

That actually convinced me. :) One should never lose hope. So yeah, can't wait to see the Galaxy thing in action.

Just on that point, I'd like to say that "criticism" is supposedly being a neutral term, it's just some people that started to use it and understand it as a negative thing. Movie critics say the good and the bad things in the movies they review, as intended. Then maybe it's because people tend to focus on bad things primarily and consider good things as expected that 'criticism' got a bad rep, but it shouldn't be the case.

/2cents