Comments on: Warcracked III

By: Scundoo

Scundoo — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 03:07:37 +0000

Take command 2nd Manassas has a no-cd patch.

Of course, having tc2 in the same sentence as warcraft 3 is an insult to tc2, even though both are considered RTS games.

By: Jerricho

Jerricho — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 15:09:34 +0000

Egosoft release a no-CD patch a year or so after release which is fair enough really. I’ve never had any problems with starforce for it to raise my hackles.

@Rob
Atari made themselves very unpopular when they used Securom for NWN. Bioware removed if from SotU and Atari pointed at their contract and made them put it back on for Hordes. Consequently Bioware refused to work with Atari again.

By: Breaking The Chain: Bioshock Now DRM-Free | Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Breaking The Chain: Bioshock Now DRM-Free | Rock, Paper, Shotgun — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 10:28:51 +0000

[...] bad going in the grand scheme of things, really – at least if you compare it to something like Blizzard removing the CD-check from Warcraft III 5 1/2 years on from [...]

By: blah

blah — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 20:46:30 +0000

Warcraft 3 is also due for a balance patch (possibly the last one) within the next month or so. It was slated to be released at the end of last year, but it has been pushed back.

Kudos for Blizzard for taking time to look out for the competitive gaming scene.

By: Rock, Paper, Shotgun: Still Hoping For That Post-Apocalyptic Robot Versus Monkey Immersive Sim » Blog Archive » RPS Omnibus: Feb 3rd-8th

Sat, 09 Feb 2008 14:57:36 +0000

[...] Warcraft III gets official no-cd patch – in which copy protection is dissed, and comments discuss other games that officially remove their DRM [...]

By: bobo

bobo — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 05:59:46 +0000

Flight Simulator X doesn’t need a disk… then again it’s 17 GB and has a brutal activation system, so they balance each other out.

By: Alarik

Alarik — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 23:42:24 +0000

Same with Drakan – they removed cd check in patch 4.45 IIRC – which was out pretty soon (in nowadays terms).

One game I haven’t got into is Gothic 2 – mostly because of its protection (it was late EU release with stronger protection and there wasn’t/isn’t no-cd fix out) – and I was unable to create working image… One of those bad purchases :-(

I guess I haven’t played with medium in optical drive for years now.

By: Scandalon

Scandalon — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 12:40:32 +0000

I’ve seen UT(1) mentioned a lot, but not the Original Unreal. I’m not 100% positive, but I think the PC version originally required a CD, patched out at 1.6 or 1.06 or something. (Although I do recall that originally Tim Sweeney had said the wouldn’t…so maybe I’m confusing it w/ UT?)

I *do* know that the Mac version of Unreal 1 originally had a CD check. (Patched out later.) It was a simple “Look for this hardcoded path” which was a small .utx file, so you could just make a small disk image (say, 1 meg), name it “Unreal” and put the single file and required folder structure on it. Then make a 2 or 3 line applescript to mount said image and launch the app, and “Bob’s your uncle”.

This was back in the OS 8 (7?) days mind you, so back then disk images were tres cool. But it’s 2008, and you all are going on about CD checks as a horrible thing. Just do the smaller/partial install, and run the image w/ Daemon Tools. (Which emulates Starforce, etc, btw) If you’re not on a laptop and drive space is an issue, host the image on another comp and mount it over the network…

Somehow related to all this, I wish to point out that Blizzard was the first that I saw implement the “You can install the network version to play with friends, and only need one CD to play with them” policy/technology/option. Thingy. It was brilliant as the English might say.

By: Xanadu

Xanadu — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 03:21:35 +0000

There was a way to play without the CD and without no-cd cracks, this allowed battle.net game play. There was a “mini iso” image of like 500 KB you could mount in daemon tools to fool their CD protection.

By: Indra

Indra — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 23:27:51 +0000

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars similarly doesn’t require the disc in the drive at the time of play. Handy.

By: Lord_Singing_Whale

Lord_Singing_Whale — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 23:21:23 +0000

Given that I have installed a great many No-CD hacks for Warcraft 3 over the years, I can safely tell you that the hacks for Warcraft 3 disable Battle.net, the online portion of Warcraft 3. That is the only reason I put up with CD checking madness, because DOTA is oh so fun.

By: Laurence 'GreenReaper' Parry

Laurence 'GreenReaper' Parry — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 23:14:56 +0000

Speaking as a developer (from Stardock, as it happens), it seriously annoys me when I see programs that do the check for Process Explorer. It’s stupid, because it’s not like those it’s targeted at can’t just patch such a check, anyway.

Like many developers and IT professionals, I use Process Explorer in my work. Those of us who are trying a demo and encounter this problem will not stop using such software – we will stop using your software. And guess what? Being geeks, we’re probably among your biggest fans…

An amusing sidenote: a year or so back a competitor used Process Monitor to copy features from one of our programs, literally lifting the layout and description of those features word for word from our program (their motto is “often imitated, but never equaled” – perhaps they should start looking in the mirror).

They neglected one thing, though – actually testing the features worked. As it happened, the registry settings changed in the final version of Windows Vista. It took them a whole year to figure out the problem.

Oh, and they have a check for the Process Monitor driver too. I guess they didn’t want a taste of their own medicine. :-)