[Scott Hebert]

Norfleet, I respect you greatly for your contributions here. However, I seriously do think you are overreacting to all of this. If you honestly believe everything you've posted in this thread, I'm amazed you allow yourself to be Online at all.

What you've said here smacks of paranoia and conspiracy theory, and to accuse a game company of it is rather humorous, I must say.

From your 'line in the sand' comment, I'm guessing (and it's only a guess) that you checked as Gandalf suggested, and probably found out that it is only a CD key. My sole concern in all of this is that it activated, as you said, on a single-player game. That could be a simple coding bug, though. I mean, we had Abysian Jotuns Last patch because of it, right?

Bottom line is, if you want to black-hole the data, I guess that's your choice. If it doesn't hurt to do it, I can think of few reasons not to do it. However, think about this. Illwinter has a right (and, in fact, a responsibility) to protect its software from piracy. Given the nature of the game, the easiest and most cost-effective method for Illwinter is to have the computers check against a server. The only real alternative is to set up dedicated servers to run MP games, and ONLY allow MP games to be played on those servers. I think, when all is said and done, Illwinter went for the best and least-intrusive method possible, within their means.

Bayushi Tasogare