installing Elemental on Offline PC ?

Yes if you get a box and disk you can install and play elemental:war of magic single player off line without ever going on line.. however you will not get any updates or play multi-player  (unless down the road custom servers allow for off line line play)..

Updating the game would be more difficult, since Impulse doesn't provide standalone patch downloads. There is a service (http://anywhere.impulsedriven.com) that allows you to download fully patched game archives that can be installed Offline (but still need you to have Impulse installed), but it would require you to re-download the entire game from somewhere with internet access.

As Twohawks stated, though, the DVD version will not need an internet connection for anything other than updating (not even a one-time authentication, because it won't do one).

Thanks for the replies!

Not as straight forward as I'd hoped then. Playing a game without patches and updates isn't ideal, especially as I'd like to get involved in some modding. Updates are usually crucial to Modders.

Ah well...Least I can play offline, that's a rarity nowadays.

Mind you, if I go with the physical box and CD option, I could install on a friends computer maybe and save the up-dates from his?

Not quite, no. The way Impulse updates is by comparing your installed game files with their up-to-date files on the distribution network. If there's a difference, Impulse just downloads and over-writes the necessary files directly.

In theory, this does mean that you could install at your friend's house, update it by logging in with your Impulse account (you will also need to register the game to your account before you can download updates), copy the installation folder to a USB drive or something, and then paste into your install at home, overwriting everything. I think Impulse updates the version string in the registry for its own purposes, but as you're not online anyway I don't imagine missing any registry updates from the patching process will mean anything.

Stardock is considering  a method creating archival and patch cd's.. we just have no details of how / when but Brad said he understands the reasons some may want / need these so stay tuned for more on that...

Let's hope so! Frustrating If I can install the game but can't update! I understand the concern over copy protection, especially as I read about the Demigod fiasco, but as someone who can't afford a regular Internet connection there's very few games I can actually play any more !

Thanks for the replies, folks.

Impulse will allow you to "Archive" a local update on your work computer. Provided your work computer has a burner attached to it and the available hard drive space you could make a "Archive" on your work computer, burn that Archive to disk as it will have the latest patch applied, then take the disk home to patch your offline game.

I'm not going to say you won't get fired for using a work computer for private matters though, so, do that at your own risk. If you take my advice, no job is worth the ammounts of gaming pleasure you'll be getting from Elemental. I say take the risk and burn the Archive at work. If you get fired that just means you'l have more free time to play Elemental .

P.S. If you do get fired tell me where you work so I can take your job after you're gone thnx