Very nasty surprise.

[Beorne]

I have heard of this wonderful game on the net. I investigated on it reading various reports and reviews (including the horrible GS review!). I decided it was the game I should have. I was a lover of MoM, Fantasy General and Warlords II, you know, and AoW hasn't one tenth of the appeal.
So I described it to my friends. Two (rpg mates) fantasy lover gamers agreed with me to buy together a copy of this game to play in multyplay. I found only two, you know, it is hard to find turn based game lovers, especially in a language different from yours (I'm Italian). It is harder we are not young students anymore and real life bothers us. We bought this wonderful game at a very high price (I think are many years I don't buy a game full price). The game is truly wonderful. After a couple of training plays we decided to set up the pbem game.
I think you have understood how it went. What a nasty surprise!. Multiple CD keys do not work.
I think to be one of the very few Italian DominionsII players (this from the Italian language pc.games.strategic ng: nobody knows it) and I was avertising in all the ng how wonderful this game was (well, the game itself IS wonderful).
I don't think I'll ever play it in multiplayer, I can't ask my two friends to pay 50 Euros (=60$) to play a game they are not deeply loving like me. I'm very, very disappointed.
I could understand these protection politics taken by a big production/distributor company, but not from Shrapnel/Illwinter.

Sorry for the rant, but I'm seriously disapponted.

[Ragnarok-X]

i think i can understand you, i would be pissed off if it was me. There should at least be some kind of spawn install, just like blizzard was doing with their early game (diablo, starcraft)

[Kristoffer O]

What is a spawn install?

[calmon]

If your friends like the game they should buy it too, if they think its not worth 50€... have a look in the forums. Pbem and normal mp starts at times.

I was disappointed too about the high cost (payed 50€) but so far there is no regular european publisher.

[Zurai]

Originally posted by Kristoffer O:
What is a spawn install?

Spawn install is something Blizzard did with some of their older games (they no longer do it, just like no one else does it), which allowed you to play the game multiplayer on a LAN with only one purchased copy of the game.

[PDF]

Originally posted by Kristoffer O:
What is a spawn install?

Multiple installs from the same "master", usually spawns are MP-only.
IMHO current limitations in MP are too tight and ultimately counterproductive (for people that *would* be interested in buying *if* they can play the game somewhat in MP with owners)
So spawning could be a nice feature to spread Dominion

[Zeikko]

If multiple CD-keys would work in same game no one would buy this. Some people buy the game because they want to support Illwinter, some because of the manual, bur i think almost everyone buys it because thay want to play multiplayer.

If we all could play with 1 CD-key i think there would be no patches or even dreams about Dom III

[Pocus]

you can play a small pbem game with one single key, if you are confident in your host: give him your password (or dont set password), and let him open your turn, then submit and close. It will fingerprints your turn with his comp sig and cd key, and no conflict will arise.

[Gandalf Parker]

Everything has its pros and cons. With Dom1 the price was something like 20 and I bought 6 copies. All my machines (5) had one and one frined who was determined to "borrow" it so I just bought him a copy. I was very unhappy to see the pricing on Dom2 since I knew I wasnt going to do 5 or 6 copies.

On the other hand, as a programmer I understand the difficulty in having this kindof game understand multiple LAN copies and still tell the difference between that and multiple computers across the net. And I WONT say that its not worth the money. Definetly try the demo first but IF you can get past the learning curve then I can pretty much gaurantee that it will live on your machine 10 times longer than any other game you can buy now for the same price. Its worth the money and Illwinter does deserve to get paid for it.

I did suggest to Shrapnel (they actualy control things like pricing and cd keys) that a way to pay less money and download a key (not get a disc or manual) might be good but apparently its not cost effective.

[Beorne]

Originally posted by Cainehill:
Beorne,

While I might agree that the MP license policy is a bit restrictive (and counterproductive), your friends could always install and play via the demo Version. True, they'd be limitted in their choice of races, magic research is capped, and the game ends around turn 40 - but that would probably allow them to decide if they enjoyed the game enough to buy it.

On the other hand, I fail to see why you refer to a "Very Nasty Surprise" - you bought one copy, not three, so why would you expect it to allow three (or 10, or 20) people to be allowed to install and use it?

Finally - there's several other Italian players out there; I've run into at least 2, Cohen and one other.

Yes, you are right.
But several things made me think at least mp would be allowed:
- the game is costly
- the "no big company" atmosphere around the game (very much like that of freeware or shareware games), a game that is a forever work in progress with great enthusiasm and feedback between fans and autors
- I think, but i could be wrong, that another great Shrapnel game I have (SEIVG) allows mp gaming with one licence
- the fact that a game like this has no advertising apart that of fans
- the fact that lovers of turn games are almost disappearing, and is difficult to pull any other real time high graphic junk fan to access this sort of "steep learning curve" type of game.

Ok, i think something like the cited spawn install, where I and only I could be a host should be the best.