SWEAW Ships Feb 2006 (Pre-Order)

[Cain]

LEC Price: $49.95

 

PC players now have the opportunity to control the fate of the galaxy in the all new real-time strategy (RTS) game Star Wars Empire at War. Customers who order Empire at War will receive an exclusive mousepad with unique Empire at War art.

 

Set a few years before the events of A New Hope, the game lets players rewrite history as well as experience the aftermath of Revenge of the Sith, the creation of the Rebel Alliance, and Darth Vader's rise to power.

 

The game features beautifully rendered land and space battles set on memorable planets such as Hoth, Tatooine and Dagobah as well as never-before-seen environments taken directly from the Star Wars films and expanded universe novels. In the game, players can choose to join either the Rebel Alliance or the Galactic Empire, building and setting up tactical forces that can be unleashed on the enemy in real-time 3D. All of the gameplay and action within Star Wars Empire at War is persistent, meaning that strategic and tactical elements from previous events will have a permanent effect on the galaxy.

 

As players build, manage and progress their space and ground-based units, troops and vehicles, memorable Star Wars hero characters will begin playing a role in key situations. In addition to the single player campaign mode, the game includes a two-player Empire vs. Rebellion mode and up to eight player online skirmish modes.

 

LucasArts SKU: SWLECEAP

 

http://store.lucasarts.com/catalog/product.xml?product_id=103968

 

 

Comment : They seriosly will have to change the price for East Europe or all EAW games played here will be piratated. I think for Eastern Europe $20-25 will be enough. Its better to get some money from there then nothing at all.

[Guest JediIgor]

Well $50 is the standard US price, and since they don't realize people in Eastern Europe/Asia are far poorer they price it the same overseas too. I have to agree with Cain though, in Russia you can get a new game for $1-$2 so there is no way you would buy a "legal" copy for $50.

 

On the other hand you might have problems with people importing games overseas if they are priced cheaper.. however the real problem in my opinion is that if they can price the games cheaper overseas what does that tell us? It would tell us that they are ripping their domestic customers off! If they could afford to price it lower there, they could afford to price it lower here (U.S.)!

 

So it's a problem on both ends..

[Kneeeta]

I don't know if I'm allowed to reply so if not you can just delete this post. And sorry.

 

If they have a good system that veryfies the CD-key for online play there won't be a lot of people being able to use pirated versions.

[Cain]

I know that they can defend them selfs online from pirate stuff but the singleplayer is the one that worries me.

 

How you are going to defeat the pirates in East Europe ?! Loll the funnyest solutions is for producers to act like them ... anyway i will try to come up with some interesting solutions that may solve a part of the problem and increase the cash revenue. It can be done but has never been done cause usualy PR's dudes avoid useing new ways of cracking the pirate problem.

 

 

EDIT Kneeeta of course you are allowed to reply

[Foshjedi2004]

Everyone the best way to do it is to need online verification to actually initialise the game itself.

 

If it doesn't work then what r u gonna do.

[Guest JediIgor]

Everyone the best way to do it is to need online verification to actually initialise the game itself.

 

If it doesn't work then what r u gonna do.

 

And instantly lose the sales of everyone who doesn't have internet access (hint: majority of the world). What else you can do? Make a good game and people will buy it. I bought Rebellion and that didn't have any CD protection (nor did JKII, but I bought that as well).

[Ghostly_Substance]

Nice so pre-order and get a mouse pad ? Hope it aint a cheap mouse pad which will fall apart after 5 000 mouse movements (1 week or a month of mouse movement).

 

Hmm well you could always have 2 cd keys so it would take longer to rip it and harder. Hmm one code would come from the makers (inside the box) and the second would be to mail in/call/email in your first code and get a second one and then enter them both in the registration window in the game while installing. (in-game) To make your account/profile you enter the second code to play single and multi. One last defence would be to register the game serial number into LEC or whoever while sending in your first code to get second code.

 

It may be harsh and lose couple more sales but keep in mind its just a thought.

[Kneeeta]

There is some protection that I don't know the name of but it prevents games to start if your using CD/DVD emulators, like Alcohol 120% and Deamontools. But a lot of people have those kinds programs.

 

Then there are the program needs to check the disc for something, don't know hos it works but it was in Splinter Cell Chaos Theory.

 

There isn't a solution that fits EVERYONE, so, some of us are just going to have to accept that there are people that would rather play a pirated version of a game than a "legal" version.

[Juggernaut1985]

I have 60 bucks ready to go just in case the price goes up.

[Guest JediIgor]

Folks, cd protection doesn't work.. it just doesn't.. Ghostly, you are talking about activation, and guess what, paying consumers hate it. Photoshop CS/CS2 has it, Quicken (2004?) had it (and removed it for the next version cause it suffered sales heh). All you need is a keygen to generate the second serial anyways and pirates can still pirate, but people who buy it need to spend their time calling some phone # (and what if they are overseas, huh?)

 

Kneeta, that's called StarForce and it installs a bunch of unwanted software on your computer.. plus once people figure out how to make 1:1 copies of those CDs the protection will be useless.

 

IMHO, the only protection they should have is a cd-key for playing online, any "CD" protection like StarForce will only harm the people like us, who will be buying this game.

[Overkill]

Febuary? I thought they said spring w/e at least its sooner than I thought.

[Zerogravity]

i won't be preordering till january. that february date is gonna change i think.

[Havok9120]

Never trust Lucas Arts with release dates......

[Foshjedi2004]

They must have changed the Galaxies release date about a hundred times.

[Little.B]

Good. At least we will have something to report about

[Foshjedi2004]

What the fact that they are continuously changing the release dates???

[Zerogravity]

no, the fact that the game isn't being scrubbed. and that it will eventually be released

[Havok9120]

I wish all companies were like Bungie before the Evil Conglomerate Microsoft bought them out.

 

This was for all the Myth, Marathon and even Halo before M-Soft got wind of that game.

 

Q: When will the game be released?

 

Jason Jones' A: When its ready.

 

Q: What the heck does that mean?

 

A: When its ready.

 

Q: No release date?

 

A:No.

[Admiral Cotla Charre]

Clearly the answer for this is that when you try to play online, the game will activate a registration thinger, and the game will not be playable online until a CSR comes out to your residence and visually verifies your physical CD and reciept of purchase.

 

(this is a joke btw )

 

Really, despite the pain in the ass, I like what Valve has done with Steam. Have the cd-key in question registered to an account, and that account can only be logged in once at a time. That stops the soft-core warez folks from just sharing the CD with their neighbours (I know that nearly all of my friends have a legit copy of Half Life 2 for this very reason, myself included).

 

Of course, an option is just to use extremely long non-algorithmic CD-keys, store them all in a non-haxable database, and verify your game that way from a completely unique cd-key. Imagine having even a 40-digit non-algorithmic cd key. Letters and numbers, that's 36^40 possible combinations, or 1.786^62 combinations. Most cd-keys are already 20-30 characters anyways... whats 40 or 50 if it means more security?

[Havok9120]

Don't go overboard with that tho, I have a 10$ game that had a 144 character key, letters and numbers lol.

[Guest JediIgor]

That doesn't matter, you would have to either store all the cd keys on the actual cd itself, which means anyone would be able to steal the cd keys, or you would have to use an algorithm, which once again wouldn't work because anyone who knew assembly could look at the algorithm. So for single player using CD keys wouldn't help, but for multiplayer they could store the keys in the database (so a generated key not in the database wouldn't help ).

[Admiral Cotla Charre]

That doesn't matter, you would have to either store all the cd keys on the actual cd itself, which means anyone would be able to steal the cd keys, or you would have to use an algorithm, which once again wouldn't work because anyone who knew assembly could look at the algorithm. So for single player using CD keys wouldn't help, but for multiplayer they could store the keys in the database (so a generated key not in the database wouldn't help ).

 

Ah, but I mentioned Valve's example, which uses the serial key database regardless if you're doing multiplayer or singleplayer. That simply means you need an internet connection to register the game, or you can phone your key in to their database, kind of like Windows XP makes you do.... and I doubt their'd be room on the CD(s) (and it probably will be CDs) anyways for every single cd-key to be stored hehe, that'd be a massive file.

[Guest JediIgor]

Charre, you did read the whole thread, right? I addressed this at http://swempireatwar.10.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?t=306#4070 .. if you do something like that, you instantly lose a lot of customers who can't access the Internet.

[Admiral Cotla Charre]

Yes, I did read the whole thread, but no, having that kind of registration doesn't instantly lose you customers... look how many people bought Half Life 2, and it had absolutely NAZI serial key systems... In fact the game installs and such, but it installs encrypted data files to your hard drive, which are only decrypted after you register your game. I still bought it, and I sat through the decryption, and me and all my friends crabbed about it, but we all still played the game and still do play it today. If thats the price of security, and extra 5 minute wait or so while my files are decrypted, so be it.

[Ghostly_Substance]

I was going to say this before but i'll say this now, If its a great game then its worth the wait. IF its a crappy game then its worth crap. 5-30 minutes more wouldn't hurt, I got Half-life 2, Silent Hunter III, Battlefield 2 with all these magic cd protection and still play it. BF2 was weak tho since someone I know owns the ripped version of the game but sucker he cant play on official servers