If I remember correctly, the “GotY” version of vanilla CoH comes pre-patched up to CoH:OF compatibility (uh, 2.101?), requiring only the later patches. Otherwise, you have to install the 1.4, 1.7, and 2.101 + all of the CoH:OF patches. Bastards.
Actually, it’s marginally less painful if you have CoH:OF. Really though, this is because the 1.8 Gb vanilla patch doesn’t properly enable the CoH:OF campaigns, so you have to do a full uninstall of vanilla CoH, and then a fresh reinstall of CoH:OF. Then you only need the CoH:OF patches and not that 1.8 Gb monstrosity. You can unlock the vanilla campaign/factions using your CD key.
The stupid copy-protection system is just annoying, made worse by problems with patch distribution for the Steam version. The really upsetting part is that the original retail version didn’t include a CD check, and it was actually added by a later patch. Way to piss off your paying customers, THQ.
The real tragedy is that the game is good enough that I was thinking about reinstalling, except that the game requires 9 Gb of hard drive space, and I only have 7 Gb free right now.
FYI, and CoH requires that UDP ports 6112 and 30260 be available.
- Alan