Glad another company came out and announced they recognize DRM doesn't actually do anything but punish their paying customers.  Hey EA, how many people pirated Spore?  Oh, that's right more than probably another other game in history.  Purely out of spite for the most part, as it certainly didn't sound like a fantastic game from the reviews.

Anyhow, I generally like Relic though I'm upset they removed LAN play from the CoH expansion.  Their Relic Online system isn't very good and drops people constantly.  I'd like another option to play it multiplayer, but there isn't one.  However I like their stand-alone expansion concept, and they try to avoid annoying cd-checks (note to developers still doing this: it is the weakest form of copy protection and it just pisses people off as today's large hard drives mean people may have dozens of different games they certainly don't want to put in the disc for).  It's nice that people who bought the original can still play with others rather than split the community.  Even though realistically anyone who bought an expansion for DoW or CoH probably owned the original anyway.

Sadly, I can't say I'm looking forward to DoW2 though.  It smacks too much of Warcraft 3, which I hated due to your hero being more important that your entire army.  I liked the commanders in DoW 1 as they were useful units, but not so important that you were screwed if your commander died early on in a battle.  The emphasis on your commander in DoW 2 doesn't bode well.  They also cut the number of units per faction from DoW 1, which seems like it will limit variety.  For example, according to interviews/previews, Eldar only have rangers, guardians, banshees and warp spiders for infantry.  What is this, Warcraft 2?  Didn't they learn their lesson from the British in CoH?  Having limited unit choices makes for boring gameplay.

You are the first and probably only person on Earth to say this.  Hopefully Relic learned a valuable lesson about letting other companies make their expansions from that mess.  Thank goodness I listened to the boards first instead of blindly buying it.

Thank God I own Soulstorm. Because i have really enjoyed it as a game since day 1 (no MP for me helped too... as Adeptas Sororitas are my fav army). A pity the bugs, that fliers are not so useful and that all comes down to Ironlore's situation (that was closed even before Soulstorm was released, go figure).*

Oh, i get 7 extra Beta days just because i bought Soulstorm? Cool! That means like 30 less days without nothing to do until Elemental's beta starts.

* Just letting you all know that i seem to be one of those "few" that enjoyed Soulstorm.

I heard the DE turned out okay; they were probably worked on first.  I still play DoW, but I can only stand it with the DC Pro mod.  It cuts down on the mindless spam and insures all units scale through the game and remain useful.  They're working on one for SS now.  Maybe by the time it's out SS will have dropped to $20 and I'll pick it up for the new factions.  Alternatively, the Witch Hunters mod is in open beta and seems to have much higher quality models than the Ironlore offering.

I don't know how they though air units were a good idea though.  There were still plenty of decent units they could have added to the existing factions.

I disliked soulstorm. That's just me, perhaps.

Some things worthy of note are that it's very similar to Dawn of War 1 in multiplayer mode; they shift the emphasis back to armies and territory control as opposed to the singleplayer campaign.

Regardless, I look forward to playing the DoW2 beta alongside the Demigod beta.

With regards to the "DLC for paying customers" debate, I must confess I bought into impulse and Stardock in general quite late; however I do recall Valve releasing free Counter Strike Source maps and content as early as 2005.

the 21st is fast approaching. 

*drools uncontrollably after playing some comp-stomp in the DoW2 Beta*

Now i have a serious distraction until Elemental's beta...

So uh... if you buy soulstorm from steam you get into the Dow2 beta straight away?

Confirmed

I keep thinking one of these days someone's going to see something they shouldn't have on my computer.

I figure I could make it out the window in my office before someone could break through the door. Outside there's a fire escape but I noticed a few months back if you play your cards right you can actually jump across to the other building and escape over the roof (there's like a vent thing that is old and rusty you have to land on, it can hold my weight but not someone larger). Right next to the chimney on the roof there were a couple of loose tiles where I hid some money and an external USB drive - if you stomp on the tiles they come loose again. The other building has several exits and I placed tiny mirrors I can fold down on the roof so I can see where they are / are moving to. Once down from the roof I would proceed to an old container not many blocks away, stood there for years and noone did anything with it except shit and dump garbage. Anyway there are two ways into the container, and I locked the small doors and left the big ones open and dumped some furniture so anyone who looks at it walking past won't even notice it is actually where I have a spare set of clothes and just enough room to change. After that I'd grab a taxi (never the first one that stops ofc) and proceed to the train station where I would pay a bum to get my train ticket, and if you tilt your head just right and hold a phone to your head when entering the trains you can avoid all the cameras without looking suspicious (or if I am real lucky it rains so I can hold umbrella/newspaper over head). Then about half-way to the next station (~15 minutes) I would jump off the train at some signal lights where it usually slows down, and if you walk about 5 kilometers through the forest there is a tiny village with an adorable inn that doesn't ask for your CC or your name if you bring cash. That's not where I would spend the night, because I figure the police must have learned about that quite some time ago. Instead, there's a bus that goes between that village and a couple of other remote places and they have these funny busses where you can't actually see if someone is sleeping in the seats in the back. At this stage it's important to not move too far from the original scene because they know how far you can run, and they don't always bother checking inside that area. After that, I could start to make some real plans.