I bought it today. In fact, I bought the special edition. The metal case is kinda cool, but for the extra price the contents aren't worth it... They will be easily available and free in a few weeks. As to the gameplay? Well.... First, when I started installing it, it said it needed Steam before I could. I really really really hate Steam. I was loathe to install it. More so than when I had to get a stupid Windows Live account for GTA 4, which DoW 2 also needs. So anyway, I install steam, make an account, login, then go to continue the install. It tells me the release date is tomorrow so it won't install until midnight! That was a good 7 hours ago, at 5pm. It is now nearly 1am, I stayed up waiting even though I have uni tomorrow, and it still won't let me install. You would think it would be pretty damn simple to get the time right, and set the time for different regions, but I guess not. Given the amount of trouble I had with GTA 4 before I could play it properly, I am really not looking forward to trying to get this to work, GTA 4 took a good 3 days of troubleshooting before I could even play after I bought and installed it. I really hate what the industry is doing to PC gaming, forcing us to register and sign up on the net. Security? Yeah right! They just want our personal details. You can already download fully cracked copies of DoW 2 even though it isn't out, so making us legitimate purchasers mess around with online accounts and stupid programs before we can play is rediculous, all it does is make me want to not give my money to them and just get illegal copies, they seriously work better and are easier to install. If all I want to do is play single player, get into the single player campaign, and have fun against bots, then why the hell should I have to make accounts on the net??? Same with GTA 4. It is a very sad thing that EB does not let you return games that have cd-keys, since you could rip them off. If they did, I would be taking this right back to the shop and uninstalling Steam then downloading a copy that doesn't need any of that. Securom is another big problem. Ever had the trouble where a game won't start because it says you have emulator software on your computer? My GF likes the Sims, she legitimately bought the second one and most of the expansions, installed it on my computer, and it wouldn't run because I had Nero on my computer. That is just a burning program, not a emulator program, she was trying to play it legitimately not rip it off. An illegal copy of the game would have bypassed that. In the end, I had to find an illegal no-cd patch to get it to run. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure the game will be great, as was GTA 4, but it is very annoying the rubbish you go through before you can play a PC game these days. I bought the game, I expect to take it home, install it and play it. The sad fact is that it is well past the release date of the game here, and so far I have had to install a program I don't want, create an account I don't want, activate my registration key on the net, and for all my troubles I still can't play the game. If, instead, I had decided to download it this morning rather than buying it, I would be playing now. Hell I would be playing several hours ago and in bed now. I can't speak for the gameplay, as I mentioned before I am sure it will be a great game, but I really can't recommend people buy the game for all the hoops you have to jump through to play it. PC gaming needs to improve dramatically or it will die, I think this is the last game I will buy aside from Empire Total War, which I already have on preorder.
I played the beta, had no issues with the install and the gameplay is hella fun. Mostly because I missed the tyranids and now get to play them. I kinda like it when I get an error stopping something from running. Often at LAN parties a less then legal copy is handed out for ppl to play a new game and you get all sorts of issues. Only gameplay issue I have had from my friends is the lack of Chaos in the game.
The game is great. Lots of fun. Like no other RTS i have played and very different even from DoW I! I had no trouble installing and no trouble with steam. I do use steam to play other games like Left for Dead and Team Fortress II thought. The release time was 12:01am Perth time by the way. I hope you find the game as enjoyable as I did once you finally get in there! It really is worth the extra effort. I do agree with you about single player mode and the annoyance of singing in to some online system. It is mostly to record stats. Its not really that bad is it?
Well it is making me give my personal information (email) to people I don't particularly want to give it to, and in the case of GTA I actually couldn't sign in to windows live for some unknown reason, which meant for a while I could play the game but I couldn't save until I just used an offline profile instead. DoW is still giving me trouble.. Now it is making me download the game off Steam! Of course being 6GB it is going to take 4-5 hours, and leech a lot of my bandwidth and download limit for the month. Why must I download it when I bought the disk? Or what the hell is on the disk if not the game??
Use a hotmail account (or similar) for online things. That way if you ever get spammed you really dont care. Keep your personal ISPs email for family and friends. I am currently downloading the game. It doesn't make sense that you would have to download the game if you bought the disks unless it says so on the box? I would assume a patch to download if anything but not if your getting 6gig! What is on those bought disks? Did you install them first?
When you go to install, first it installs Steam. Then the game installs through steam. However, it wouldn't install last night since it 'wasn't released'. Now that it says it is released, it is telling me I need to download the full game. Not a patch, not an update, the full game. A bit over 3GB it says. So I actually couldn't install any other way besides through steam, even by opening the install file on the disk it just launches steam. The disk contains .sim, .sid and .sis files ading up to around 6gb, so I am baffled as to what that might be if it is making me download the game anyway. I did a bit of a google search and a few other people have had the same problem.