Theres a massive difference between requiring (occasional) on-line verification...and requiring the user to be online constantly whilst palying in single player mode to exchange statistics and data...
One is legitimate copy protection...and i have no issue with that...the other takes the game into territory that looks like laying the ground for pay to play...or for minimising the Offline aspect of the game and encourage online multi-player involvement...or for marginalising single player content in favour of a multi-player scenario...
There is a differenece between telling me IF i can play the game (IE IF i have a legitimate purchased copy of the game) and telling me HOW i must play the game (IE I MUST be ONLINE all the time..I must exchange game data and statistics whilst I am playing..I must log on to the developers server whenever I want to play the game...even in single player mode)

ROF: Ridiculously Odd Fools! There is a short term "Greed" factor here. Meanwhile, they'll cut their sales by 2/3 or more, and will go Belly Up within six months.

I'm not happy about the games format either, but they probably lose more sales from piracy than the few people here who won't buy it because of the format.

Surely the reverse applies..if they can't shift boxes to people who already play prop sims and have an interest in WW1 what chance do they stand with the man in the street...zero!

Chivas its not the 'few here' who won't buy it,its 75% of every flight sim forum that is discussing this!

You could be right Uther, but I suspect the forums communities are still small compared the overall flight sim market, and 75% of the forums members who say they will not buy it are just posturing in hopes of a format change.

It appears from the latest blog that you don't have to be on-line continually to play in career mode. Its only logs on when you start the game, I guess to confirm you bought the sim, and logs on again when you end the game to collect your stats. Atleast thats the way I read it. On-line play of-course you must be logged on continually.

Well, here's one who isn't 'posturing'. If they don't change this, I can't play it, so they've lost a sale.

And if the vast majority of the most keen of people who play flight sims are against this online format, what does it offer the rest of the flight sim market?

They've alienated far more people with this than any number of 'sales' they could have lost through disk copying.

You were on-line longer to write your post than you would be in ROF's career mode. Your only on-line to verify you bought the game and then again to collect your stats. That would take only seconds.

That actually sounds a lot like COD:WaW, though not sure if COD actually verifies anything but you get the point. Might change things but we will see with time.

Here's an idea. Tweak the online verification a little. What if you had to do an online verificiation to their server every time you installed it but did not need to be online in any way to actually play the sim in SP?

Flyingbullseye