Just out of curiosity, is this the download version or retail?
I’d think that offline mode in a download version would be tougher than retail, which should just fall back to the CD check.
There’s no issue at all accessing offline mode with the download version. I just tried it by blocking all outgoing traffic… Steam starts up and in about thirty seconds tells you you’re switching into offline mode.
Anyway, if you don’t want to bother with that, there’s some launchers doing the rounds that work pretty well.
This is retail. My suspicions are that my trouble had something to do with the way my network connection sort of gradually died out initially (thanks to the campus problems) instead of doing something like pulling the plug from the start. I’m not sure why the problems persisted when I did start pulling plugs, but I’m willing to assume the bulk of the problem was my specific scenario and probably not a widespread issue for Steam. So no additional Steam hating from me, just confusion.