🚀 go-pugleaf

I'd just like to express my opinion that the CD copy protection scheme
that Blizzard has implemented in WarCraft II is very much a nuisance.
At the company I work for we only have a few machines with CD-ROMs,
while most of us peons go without (although we do all have Pentium
90's or better, go figure).  We purchased two copies of WC2, as we
usually have between 3 and 5 people playing at any given time.
However, since none of the people who play actually have a CD-ROM, we
have to wait until other people leave (we usually play after 5pm
anyway) or tie them up and throw 'em in a closet somewhere until we're
done.

It'd be nice if we could simply install the software and then throw
the CDs up on the shelf never to be used again.  The scheme used with
the original Warcraft, where you entered a word from the manual in the
install program (well, this was introduced with a patch) worked well.
We have successfully installed the program on two machines using the
FAKECD program (kudos to the author), but we get strange results with
it from time to time and it doesn't seem to work with Windows 95.

I believe that in the end, people who are going to pirate the game are
going to do so anyway and copy protection hurts legitimate purchasers
the most.  If I wanted to pirate WC2, I'd just copy the WC2 CD onto a
ZIP (Iomega) disk and bring it home (the data is only about 90MB
anyway, so I'd lose the CD-audio, no big loss as the GM sounds great
on the Yamaha DB50XG).  Or, I could simply download it overnight at
28k.  

CDs have been a great boon to game publishers, especially those that
take full advantage of the storage medium making it nigh impossible to
copy (such as Wing Commander III).  However, I still think many
companies are greedy in that even though A) it's more difficult to
pirate games nowadays and B) there's a much larger market for PC games
now than even three years ago, the prices have not come down.
Granted, games like Wing Commander IV, with a budget of $12million+,
may be able to justify sticker shock somewhat.  But most games are not
WCIV.

I am a software developer by trade and I've been following piracy
issues for many years (back to the good 'ole C64).  I am sensitive to
the issues of piracy and do not condone it.  However, I refuse to
spend $50 on a piece of software before I get to either A) try a demo,
B) find a copy of it (perhaps on the warez newsgroups) and try it, or
C) read enough reviews of the game in the games newsgroups to satisfy
my curiosity.  The software industry has to be one of the oddest in
that it's very difficult at times to "try before you buy", although I
feel at times this is due to the fact that if you "try" you probably
won't "buy".  :)  I do spend a considerable amount of cash every year
on games and have at least ten titles each from Origin and LucasArts,
so if anyone labels me a "pirate" simply because I have downloaded
games from the 'warez' groups or because I want a crack for Warcraft
II, they are sadly mistaken.

As I doubt Blizzard will release a patch for this version of Warcraft
to eliminate the CD copy protection, if anyone has found a method that
works sufficiently well, or has actually written a crack explicitly
for WC2, I'd love to hear about it.. 

Thanks, 

 ..Al Yarusso, a...@warpsoft.com