Wow sounds surpassingly high.. I always download a pirate copy of the game, and if I like the game I buy it (I even bought 3 copies of MOOIII, that are still in the wrapper, even thought the game came out unplayable).

Point is I never encountered a game that didn’t have a ‘patch’ and it sounds like all of those protection layers effect the legal gamer then the illegal one... maybe sticking with the old faction technique of CD-Key is the way to go, blocking updates and online playing (dynamic DB that keeps a set of produced keys and used keys).