You can also go old school and buy a disc version from ebay and probably some other places. I know ebay has it. There are some things that you can do with the disc version that origin wont allow you. For example, on disc you can have the game run in -quickstart (which i personally use) which allows you to skip the intro every time you enter the game and it removes the slide effect when you hit TAB in game to view armies and whos still in the match. There are other commands that you can use with the disc version that origin does not like aswell... However there are some downsides with the disc version and 2 of them beeing are that alot of people that build computers now a day are not putting in disc bays in their computers at all. Another thing is if you actually do have a disc drive and are using the disc, it can very easilly get scratched and ruined to the point that you cant run the game. But that is all up to you to decide what you like best. I own both disc and origin version (thanks to John for origin) but prefer the disc mostly because of the -quickstart command.
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