Direct IP connect is important, it's not just illegal gamers who find it useful
Who doesn’t hate going to the slow online lobby thing to play an online game? If I know whom I want to play with and I don’t care about the score being kept on some global ranking I want Direct IP connect. The original C&C had it and even though the Westwood Online is now dead you can still play it without any trouble. Will you still be able to play Red Alert 2 or Battle for Middle Earth once EA decided to kill the lobby servers? I think not.
This also makes Quake 3 much more pleasant to play online than Joint Operations or Battlefield 2, although it should be said that the slow online lobby isn’t so slow in Quake 3 compared to them as well.
Just blowing off steam from some yesterday frustrations.