[noAnswer]

My brother bought CorelDRAW for Win95 and only kept the CD, forgetting how important the paper with the key was. On a reinstall he than entered 11223344556677889900 and it worked. I used that method multiple times as a teen on software from different manufacturers. It worked quite often. Though sometimes you had to play with the numbers at the end. (sometimes 000 other times 011 etc.)

[boredemployee]

wtf. he entered that number just out of nowhere and it worked? what a wizard!

[esrauch]

The way this worked was there's a very large amount of keys accepted by the installer and a very tiny fraction of them are actually issued / valid for online play.

There wasn't that much value in having the installer keys be that narrow; if you have a legal cd it'll have the key printed right on the case (and there's no way to stop sharing). If it's a burned cd either the person who ripped it can just include the key or they can edit the installer itself to accept any key.