If a person wants to play multiplayer with another person, who both legally purchased the game, and the game requires that online authentication be made at startup, isn't that a form of DRM? Even offline multiplayer via LAN games is online authenticated.

How can the game sold here?

Having to create a free account, which is not bound to some cd key, is not more of a form of drm than having to create an account to purchase the game in the first place.

Does the game ever check whether it is a legal copy? Is anything in place to stop you from playing for any reason?

Afaik, its just a system to identify users within an online community.

Edit: okay it does require a serial number for an account. it really should not be necessary for LAN games.

As you stated, the serial number is linked to the account, which you log into when you run the game. The only way to run the game and enable multiplayer, is through the launcher through a valid account. That enables online and offline multiplayer.

A problem my friend and I were having was that she was playing on a corporate joined work laptop, and I was on my home computer. For whatever reason, the laptop would not authenticate (in game, not the launcher) that she was who she said she was, for online games. We tried LAN game (via me joining her LAN through VPN) and we could see each others games in LAN mode, but when we tried to join it would come up with an error of userid:-1 as if it found no user id for her.

The DRM scheme was preventing us from playing multiplayer with two purchased copies of the game. I love Triumph. I love AoW. And I love GoG. But this game shouldn't be sold here. Features of the game are only available if you actively authenticate through the internet. If you are offline, features are unavailable to you.

This is why I stopped buying Ubisoft and EA games. I don't support their forms of DRM.

This is DRM because without the permission of a 3rd party you cannot play parts of the game. What happens when Triumph shuts down its multiplayer servers? How do you play without internet connectivity or if the 3rd party multiplayer server is down?

Unfortunately I'll be passing on this game unless they remove the DRM. Annoyingly, GOG pretends they don't sell DRM games because you can play some of the game. This isn't anything new though, Two Worlds is in the same situation and has been here for years.

In short, yes it has DRM and GOG are hypocrites.

AoW3 online multiplayer only -- no lan

IMO, you're wrong about whether it should be available here. It's not the first game to require an account for the multiplayer either.

The game requires that you be online to play online? They'll probably implement LAN when they have more money. I don't think they'd be losing much money to pirating by doing so. I've never even played LAN, on any game. I trust you sods not to pirate when you are given LAN.

If I bought a product labeled as fat-free, I assume the nutritional information should read 0g fat. I don't want to see 0.5g or 1g... DRM is in the game, it is enforced.

Though, DRM-Free means lack of DRM, which isn't true. Even Triumph is promoting GOG.COM's version as DRM-free. I guess if I start viewing GoG as a place that has both DRM and DRM-Free games, then it should be here. I've just always viewed them as DRM-Free, it was a moral stance for them I thought.

Damn. Of course we don't. I was reminiscing how awesome Warcraft 2 was back in the day. We were able to play LAN with one copy because it required 1 cd per two copies installed. Awesome sauce.

StarCraft had CD-KEYS, I was never bothered by the fact. Doesn't equate to having limited activations or having to be online. Not for the developers. If you are not online then you cannot play multilayer.

Did you read through the other thread?

Basically if you can do LAN, you can use VOIP software that makes the game think you are locally connected, but in reality you are connected through the internet to each other. So if they removed the fact you have to connect to the server, people could play multiplayer online. Unfortunately it's due to pirate activity. Yes, it is a form of DRM, but I don't really plan on playing multiplayer anytime soon anyway. They might open it up or change it when the game's popularity drops down.

I mean, cd keys to play the game never stopped a pirate.

DRM:
- Authenticating through a server in order to play the game is a big bother as well if you don't have an internet connection.

However you can play the full game without having to be online AT ALL. I've played for about 10 hours and I only got past the first lvl of the DLC I think. Not sure why everyone is complaining that this is a game meant for multiplayer. Yes, it's great for multiplayer, but also for singleplayer!

Yes sir I did. Though I didn't agree with what you said: "Wouldn't you need to look into how multi-player functions for a given game anyway? Single-player always will be DRM-free."

The Settlers 7 game from UBI pauses the entire game, including singleplayer, if you lose connection to the internet, or their authentication servers go down. Singleplayer isn't inherently DRM-free.. It's also the reason I didn't buy it.

Also in defining DRM, I just generally use the basic intro definition from Wikipedia:
Digital Rights Management (DRM) is a class of technologies that are used by hardware manufacturers, publishers, copyright holders, and individuals with the intent to control the use of digital content and devices after sale

I don't think I've run into a form of DRM that doesn't fall under that definition. Triumph controls access to the multiplayer feature of the game purchased and downloaded by a user through the use of online server authentication every time the user
1. Runs the game logging into a triumph account
2. Clicks the Online Multiplayer button.

It is fun for Singleplayer, but honestly, in AoW:SM and AoW1, I never even got past the first few maps of the campaign. I always had a family member who was available and wanted to play multiplayer. It's the same still, even though we're adults, my sister loves playing against me. We spent two hours last night trying to get authenticated from our computers to online. I finally resolved my issues after about an 45 minutes of tweaking local firewall settings and figuring out where the program was screwing up. My sister was unable to get it working on her laptop, at all, and finally went to another computer which had no issues authenticating. Then we were only able to play for two more hours before one of us had to turn in for the night. If there was no authentication system, we would have gotten 4 hours of game in.

I must agree with you. As soon as I found out that multiplayer requires online authentication, I decided NOT to purchase this game. I must also say that I am disappointed with GOG since this game does go against their stated intent for this site....DRM free means no DRM.

I really don't mind a CD key but if it needs to be authenticated to play then when the authentication site goes offline then I can't play anymore! I have had this happen in the past it is very very disappointing.

I was referring to singleplayer on GOG.

I agree completely that the design of the online multiplayer is DRM. This and the pre-order/day-1 DLC are why I'm not currently purchasing it.

GOG has sold other games that used to have Steamworks for DRM/multiplayer stripped out as it was non-functional. Would you have preferred GOG to similarly break the online functionality for AoW3 which actually does work, but requires a Triumph account (which is specifically noted on the gamecard)?

The LAN will require internet so will have DRM. I don't know if you kids ever heard of direct TCP/IP connection, it was used in many games before, u did not required a account, username, password, authentication, etc. I am afraid that the only purpose of this authentication is to check the serial number of this game so this game HAS DRM. Shame on you GOG.

What do you call a connection between two computers?
I know what it's like to be five years old.