Entrenchment 1.2 manual patch ,anyone?

I'm amazed at some people. Free updates, and free online play. All you have to do, is work with an extremely easy to use, does-it-all-for-you download manager. And yet people complain.

People are basically complaining about the way they get their free stuff.

Seriously.

I'm using Impulse now for all my digital purchases, instead of Steam. I like Steam, I like the stat tracking stuff, friend/community options etc, and the auto-updating of my games. But it's so bloody slow to d/l a game or an update. I have no idea why this is, but Impulse is a million times faster, and when a game shows up there as well as Steam, I buy it from Impulse now.

By the way, just to remind some people: Free stuff. You're actually moaning, about free stuff.

I'm reminded of a certain quote that I saw saying something to the effect of "If this company gave out hundred dollar bills, people will complain about how it was folded"

The only thing I'm disappointed with in Impulse is that it uses IE7's engine, and that it doesn't minimize to the system tray. Little things, though.

First off, Impulse is not spyware. Seriously.

Second, updates are made via Impulse because STARDOCK wants to:

1] Control who gets updates. Only people with a registered game can do it. Anti-piracy policy, protecting one's own wallet, you name it.
2] "Encourage" people (as in: force them) to use Impulse. It's not a readily available value built into a community-focused interface. It is a very profitable thing, that's all. There is plenty of information there that might sway you into buying another game or checking out some cool new preview (of course, that leads to buying a game through Impulse cause it is made of bargain prices).

Stardock very well understands that:

Some people 
- may NOT have a ready access to internet or
- may have a slow/limited connection or
- may not be adept in administrating their firewall into letting Impulse through (without endangering their system) or
- may expect to reinstall the game (cause they are buying a new PC in the next week and having the patches burnt on a CD would be a lot more helpful)
- may not want to wait half a f*kin day until the stupid program updates its stupid self so they can start downloading the patch (like I had to)
... and Stardock obviously understands that such people might want to update their legal copy of the game anyway.
For example by downloading the update on another machine and burning it into a dvd.
Well, screw them.

Some people do not want to install another program that mules their stupid Windows(r) by stuffing its registry with another stack of keys that are useless 99.99% of the time they spend by the PC.
Well, screw them.

Finally, Stardock is well aware that file hosts like fileplanet or filefront stand ready to host any file for free and knows that to lower our costs (and then yours) is nowhere near true.
Don't believe me? I informed filefront myself once of a 2-gig installer of some crappy MMO I wanted to download and that filefront did not host (the official download site provided me with a 24kB/sec download so I wanted it faster). 2 hours later I received an email saying Thank you for your information. We'll look into it. Three hours later that 2-gig installer was available for free, 250kB/sec download on filefront.

So, summing things up, it's a game of money vs. gamer's convenience.
Should we let the pirates (and legal customers) put their hands on our patches more easily or should we screw the 5% people that might HATE THIS STUPID IMPULSE.

Well, it seems Stardock hates pirates more than we deserve easy access to game updates.

So I don't get banned for calling things what they really are?
Sew me.

Oh didn't I?
If you live in the US where Stardock happens to have its servers, then it is easy.

If you don't, well...
Error: Can't log in to Impulse
Error: Your internet connection may be screwed
Error: can't build file list
Error: connection timed out
(FYI my connection was very freakin' fine all the time)

I downloaded v1.1 for 8 hours.
I had to wait 6 hours for Impulse to finally update itself before I could download Entrenchment.
I had to restart impulse 6 times during the download of entrenchment.

If game updates EVER land on any auxiliary file host, Impulse is out of my PC.
Oh no, I can't kick Impulse out. I can buy the next micro-expansion only via impulse. Silly me ;]

I really don't understand why people are getting so upset over Impulse.

It is a FREE software item, that allows you to buy games online (or even if you physically bought the game on a cd/dvd), update that game for FREE, and allow you to download the whole game as many times as you want on any number of computers for FREE, with no DMR you have to go through.

On top of that, many games that install update automatically will install a downloading program onto your machine without you knowing. I know that Relic has done this with Company of Heroes, and i'm perfectly fine with this becasue its being used by a legitamate company that is trying to make the patching/updating interface easier and faster.

The other thing that amazes me is that people complain about not having access to updates online (this is directed at those who pirate the game). If you want to play online, you need to update, for that you need Impulse, and to use that you need to legally obtain the game. Face it, Stardock is a COMPANY, that needs to earn a profit from its marketed material so that it may continue to pay their employees, who are people to and do need to make a decent living, so that the company may continue to produce games in the future.

Remember, if everyone pirates games, companies wouldn't be able to remain in buisness, and there would be no more games. Stardock is merely protecting it's finacial future, and did it that makes thing easier for everyone execpt those who pirate the game. If you were in the same situation, you would have made the same choice.

its not more convenient for the customer, its only more convenient for the manufactor. if there were a manual update you just had to download it and run the installer. then there werent any problems with the internet connection or login data or so.

is the piracy policy of stardock to sell bugged software and make the fixes only available for these with a valid regestration?

First off, almost all games have minor problems and glitches when they are released. I have yet to play a single game in it's vanilla version that dis not have some minor bugs or balance issues.

Secondly, why would you worry about this unless you didn't have a valid registration?

No.

Yes.

This is drivel.

I live in the UK so im pretty far away from the Stardock servers yet I downloaded the full versions of sins and demigod in less time than some games take to install from a disk. My computer can run games fine due to being upgraded over the years but its not some face melting gamer rig.

Stop blaming Stardock all the time, most of the time connection problems are  client side not server  side.

Its as bad as people who play MMOs complaining at the company about lag when the problem is 9/10 times client side.