Elemental Forums
I moved to a new apartment this week and discovered I cant play Fallen Enchantress without an internet connection. How long will this DRM scheme interfere with my ability to use the product I purchased?
it has drm too?
yet another game I won't be able to play during deployments.
This has been explained quite a large number of times. Only Stardock BETAS require internet connection, so some files can be updated without always requiring a big patch. Full releases never require authentication (except if you are playing something that requires Steam, which FE definitely won't).
The beta dials home to get up-to-date files. So you need an internet connection to get them. But you don't NEED it. You can run the game using -localdataonly and you should be able to play (although it'll take a long time to load up trying to dial home and timing out).
The game (as in the released version) won't have this.
Very cool. I needed to hear that. As you can tell I am new to these forums despite having played Stardock games before.
No worries. 
(Just that this question has been posed many times in the past. ;-))
A better search function on theseforums would solve that..or some moderation to sticky previously answered questions.
In this case I think you are wrong. No way does FE need an always on connection just to update files. Are they really making changes and just not letting anyone know? Thats a poor way to test. And as far as I can tell my game never auto downloads the actual beta update, which would save me some time. Ive never seen my game update itself in any fashion so I'm going with always on connection is there to collect and transmit user behavior/data and provide DRM for an unreleased product. Which I imagine is useful in a Beta, just not very sexy (and in fact frightning to some) to explain to people. So we get this silliness about autoupdate functions.
I wanted to test the product which I paid for the privilage to do and I couldnt. Opt out option for always on internet pls.
^^ Agreed, they need a generalized FAQ with questions just like this and answers from the guru's in regards to it all. Stickied on every forum for easy access. I just made a post about this very subject, and am relieved to see that it will NOT require an online connection past the beta.
One reason for the connection is that all crashes are relayed to them automatically. Which is a pretty good feature for a beta, I think. I know I wouldn't want to write an email / forums post with attachments every time a beta product crashes on me.
That alone is worth the connection in my eyes.
Stardock servers were down once when I tried to play the game and there were network issues (i.e. I could get to some sites but not others) a couple more times over the past few weeks so it would be nice if the Beta supported cached credentials (possibly time limited) so the game is useable when the internet isn't available.
I think the game is updating in the background. One example is the restoring potions - I'm now only finding them in goody huts, a couple of weeks ago I was only finding them through a quest - which seems to be gone from the game. This could be an artifact of random map generation but seems too consistent.
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