Cologne, Germany also played host to what could be the last instalment in the long-running C&C series, with Command and Conquer 4, where Trog had a chance to sit through a hands-off demo and ask a few important questions.

There's a fairly big revelation in his preview, which also details a lot about the multiplayer aspect as well as the new Crawler unit used as your base HQ. RTS fans and Command and Conquer die-hards would do themselves a favour checking it out.

Click here for the full preview.

One of the other journalists asked if there would be an online sign-in for the multiplayer aspect of the game, to which Mike replied there indeed would be - and it would be also required for the regular single-player stuff as well. There was a bit of a dumbfounded silence for a second and I clarified, asking if that meant there'd be no offline mode at all - and Mike confirmed that was indeed the case

Lols. And people were upset at StarCraft 2 having to online auth for LAN play.

Ouch..

Im on the fence about this LAN and online verification business.... It's fair enough that they want to cut down on piracy in the PC market which is out of control.

But I do want LAN play... so imo if the authentication is transparent, takes little bandwidth and issue free... I dont care.

Most computers are online when their on so a small handshake with the auth server shouldnt cause too many problems.

I guess at bigger lans there would need to be internet access which could cause problems....

too little, too late for cnc.

too little, too late for cnc.

Pretty much. CnC3 and Ra3 were terrible games. RTS games have evolved since the old ra and cnc games.

The dumb thing about requiring online auth for singleplayer is that it's inevitably going to get cracked for offline play anyway, so you're not hurting the pirates, you're only inconveniencing your legitimate customers.

so you're not hurting the pirates, you're only inconveniencing your legitimate customers.

----------------------------

Like all anti piracy.

You can not stop piracy, you can only embrace it.

The dumb thing about requiring online auth for singleplayer is that it's inevitably going to get cracked for offline play anyway, so you're not hurting the pirates, you're only inconveniencing your legitimate customers.

The funny thing is the way the dude explained it was sort of like, he couldn't understand why anyone would care about it. Either he's totally convinced himself its not a big deal or he just doesn't get why people will think its lame.

Meh, the guys who explain it are just doing there jobs. You obviously aren't going to "oh yeah because my bosses are bunch of pricks there be draconian anti piracy measures in dis s***, dig it yo"

Considering the huge mess that occurred with C&C3's anti-piracy measures, this is actually, insanely, a positive move. :/