More Awesome Than You!

Hey, long time lurker, rare poster here.

Thanks to the BV warnings, my own version fell off the back of a truck *cough* and works perfectly with a no-CD crack in all its SecuRom-free glory.

Thing is, the BV launcher thing remained. According to another thread, I can create a shortcut directly to the .exe and bypass the launcher altogether. The first time I tried that, it didn't work and got stuck with a black screen. Then I tried the shortcut again with no active Internet connection, and it worked perfectly.

My question is: should I keep playing with the launcher+live Internet, or should I just disable the net when I want to play without a launcher? Is there some EA dirty trick I should be aware off, or are both methods ok? Sure, disabling the net takes 5 seconds, but it seems to be an annoyance. Is there a VBT I should be aware of in either case?

Thanks in advance...

Is there a reason you need the internet when your playing? 

Block BV on your firewall. Actually, block all Sims games while you are at it. There is absolutely no reason why they should be communicating with the rest of the world, unless you are trying to post a story on the Exchange.

No, I don't really need the net while playing; in fact, I was mildly indifferent to allowing game to log on. I'll think I'll just firewall it and be done with it, I don't want to worry about weird stuff with EA. I had never allowed my games to log on because I used to have a 56k modem; it would've been internet suicide to allow it. Broadband made it too easy now.

I later figured out that the only way to create the shortcut was to unhook the Internet and THEN do the shortcut. Once the shortcut was created, however, the game started up, net or no net. Learn something new everyday, I guess.

Nevertheless, thanks for the help!