[rwolf]

When the authentication server went down my second week of trying out Minecraft, my copy kept working (with a dialog on startup letting me know that auth had failed).

I agree that it is embarrassing for a company demoing at a conference to have a protracted outage on their website, but the impact on current users should have been nil.

Have they made the DRM stickier since I last played?

[eropple]

You can't play online if the auth server is down, IIRC, unless you're playing on a server that doesn't authenticate. Which is kind of a problem.

[rwolf]

Ah, I was mostly a "putter in the corner by myself" kind of minecrafter, so I never tried multiplayer. I agree that that is a problem, yikes!