Only bad part about downloadable games

Downloadable games are great, for the most part. When you have a hard drive failure like I've been prone to have lately, it makes it really easy to restore games, especially if you no longer have the original media. But then there's the actual reinstallation part. I'd reinstalled Guild Wars shortly after replacing my hard drive, but hadn't played it since then. It didn't even occur to me that I should, because the download and installation was quick and smooth.

Thing is, I forgot that a lot of games like Guild Wars download on the fly, meaning that the actual content of the game isn't necessarily installed when you install the game. That is downloaded later and installed as you need it, which means that right now, when I want to play Guild Wars, I have to wait a good thirty minutes and counting before I can even get into the game.

I shouldn't bitch, though. At least I can install the game a million times over if I need to and not have to worry about losing any CD's or license keys. Same deal with Steam games. I really like the fact that if I've purchased something, it's there for me when I need it. Now some Steam games, like Company of Heroes for example, I'd like to have physical media to keep on hand. I'm not even remotely concerned about Steam going away, but for single player games like CoH I'd love to have a physical copy of the game installer, just in case. I mean, if Steam goes away, it means Valve went away and I won't be playing Day of Defeat or Left 4 Dead anymore anyway so I don't care about those games, but it would be nice to have physical media available/burnable for single-player games.

Oh well. Just ranting while I'm waiting on GW to finish downloading. I'm 120+ MB into the download, still got a thousand or more files to go, so killing time I guess, and boring others while I'm at it.

Maybe I'll break down and buy a new gaming rig this weekend so that I can give MW2 and Aion a shot. Aion is really tempting to grab, but I doubt this box can handle it. It barely handles Eve Online, which I also want to start playing again but am avoiding because I lag so hard in fleet battles.

Can you say rambling? I knew you could.

Later.