[Gandalf Parker]

How often do games start?
I could always find about 1 a month with Dom1. There were probably more but that was fine with me. Gave me a few weeks to lose, some time to decide on a new strategy to try, by then I was ready for a new game.

How long do they take to finish on average?
Well the range runs from hours to months. I would say that most games are played as 1-a-day turns and probably run 3 weeks?

Is the MP internet game stable--how much of a problem is crashing and dropping of players?
I havent seen that problem. There is a strange bug which seems to cause the combat playback to be different than what you have on the map. So far it seems to be from different machines (windows players when a linux machine hosts, that type of thing). Its irritating but not game destroying.

How welcoming is the MP community to new players?
Very. At least in my opinion. Still new territory so I dont THINK we give the impression of the "old guard" being cocky and rude. We are all still fairly equal at being able to get our tails kicked.

Are there many Online games in the U.S. Eastern time zone, and when are sessions scheduled: weeknights, weekend morning, afternoon or evening?
There are some IRC channels for immeadiate fast games. I dont ue them but they are posted here somewhere. I take it by mentioning timezone you want a blitz game where the host processes as soon as the turns are in and it goes all day.

What I say to people considering the purchase is this game (and as yet no one seems to argue) is that IF you can get past the learning curve with the free demo then I can pretty much gaurantee that this game will live on your machine many times longer than any other game of equal price. Dom1 lived on multiple machines of mine for 3 years. I have seen no reason to think Dom2 will not stay active on my box at least until someone creates a Dom3.