So don't play the best realtime battletech game ever made. Your call. I can vouch for Magic and Wolfman X. They are both legends in the MC2 community. Their expansions include hundreds of new vehicles, mechs, placable models, and all the graphics have been upgraded, but if you have problems trusting people that's your issue.

Don't hold your breath for a GoG version, though. It would be pretty stupid to try to sell a game when customers can get a better version for free somewhere else.

humans/animals...perish/die/consumate

You mean like Star Control? ;)

At least in SC2 the fan made version is pretty much backwards engineered from the original. "Ur Quan Masters" didn't introduce new systems, new campaigns, new ships, etc. This is what they have done with MC2. It is, for all practical purposes, a completely different game. GoG would be trying to sell MC2 when you can get MC3 for free.

Now... if they could get the RETAIL version that would be a different story. PvP play and video support would be worth a few bucks, and Wolfman-X already has an expansion pack for the retail version that would upgrade the original game almost as much as his stand-alone version does. There are also a ton of fan made campaigns for the retail version floating around out there.

No. Trying to repackage and sell the freeware version would be stupid... but if they could get rights to the retail version they would have something worthwhile, and the fan content is already out there waiting to add value to the game. All it needs is for the game to be made available and, of course, for a new community to embrace it.

GoG could pull that off.

If GOG could ever pull off Microsoft. And they've been pretty intransigent in their policies. The MechWarrior 4 freeware licence was not renewed/reissued, neither were the MC-releases, and the company's been re-issuing their Ensemble titles on Steam, exclusively. To their credit, they've actually been trying to add value to them, however little that may be.

As to the whole "get a better version free" idea, the fact remains that most people are clueless, dismissive, or just unconcerned. Remember how everyone went gushing over the Baldur's Gate "Enhanced" Editions, no matter how many people told them they were actually worse than the modded classics. People still bought them, and people still dismissed anything else as amateur hackjobs, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Same could be said of the Duke3D & Shadow Warrior re-releases on Steam.

Now, I'm not too clear on the difference between the freeware MC2 and the retail, care to elaborate? I thought MC2 was released, more or less, as a straight-up iso. I even remember getting it at some point and being rather happy with the release. Am I mistaken and just don't remember things clearly? I do, however, remember trying some of Wolfman-X's expansions, and for all the great work that seemed to have gone into them, they were also quite hard :/

Only Mechwarrior I really want to play again is 3 - I still have the discs for 4 and its addons but they just don't have the same 'feel' as MW3. Still have Mechcommander 2 and it is indeed ace.
Call me when GOG gets Starsiege though! I loved Earthsiege but never got to play Starsiege, one of my bigger gaming regrets.

I totally agree about MW4. The boards were too small and there was little or no strategy involved with most of the fights. MW3 was the last good MW title. For the record, 2 is also awesome, if you can get your machine to run it and if you can get past the first gen 3d graphics.

The ISO version of MC2 is not freeware. The only legal way to get an ISO is to burn a backup from disc. The downloadable freeware version does not require a disc.

The fan made versions have improved textures, about three times the number of placables (buildings, trees, rubble, etc), about four times the number of available mechs and vehicles, new pilots, and unique campaigns.

Microsoft did not just release the compiled game, they actually released the source code. This means the fan versions have actually been able to tweak the rules. Wolfman-X didn't mess with the rules much. He just added a few new weapons systems and clan armor, but Magic completely revamped the entire inventory system.

Because the source code is available there really aren't many modding limits.

Wolfman has like 5 different versions of his expansion on his site, each with a different campaign attached. Last I checked magic had two? Not to sure about that though.

Wolfman-X's versions all include a bunch of modding tools also. This includes helpful tools like a brain generator for designing enemy AI and a purchase.fit generator for building mechlab shops.