Blizzard Patches No-CD Support Into Warcraft III

Rock, Paper, Shotgun notes that in Blizzard's never-ending quest for perfect balance, they've added a handy feature for still-dedicated Warcraft players. Players will no longer need to have the disc in the drive in order to conquer Azeroth. This kicks off a discussion by blogger Alec Meer about the role of copy protection and anti-piracy in PC gaming: "I don't need the Paint Shop Pro disc in my DVD drive whenever I want to butcher my holiday photos, after all. It was always doubly unnecessary for a game like W3, which also employs serial number checks if you want to play it online. Having the CD check as well seems like leaving a polite post-it note on the windscreen of a driver prone to double-parking. Don't bother. Just wheel-clamp the bastard. While there're still some reasons to be circumspect about online distribution systems, they do spell an end to miserably sorting through quivering towers of plastic discs or popup-heavy crack websites. This brave new world, in which the data already installed upon my hard drive is all that's required to play a game I've paid for, is one I know I want to live in."

Comments

Please please please be a trend

[mrxak]

I really hope this sort of thing happens more often. I remember some games I used to play only required the CD if you hadn't copied the CD onto your hard drive, and that was because the normal install didn't include all the data needed for the game to run. But now that hard drives are so much larger, it'd be nice for more games to do that, even if they are on DVD.

Re:Honestly, who cares?

[urza208]

It's not even the space fact. People like me ( I am a student in a university). I am always on the move, and one day last week I had the urge to play some dota in between classes, and alas I couldn't becuase I don't carry my WC3 cd around with me. Or Diablo2, etc. I think this should be implemented right away in all programs, seeing as how it would actually have people like me... play more. That simple.