Reason for the question: friend is in a mid-move situation to another country, and while he's getting his PC in about 2 weeks, won't have internet connectivity established for at least a month. We were discussing things via IM, and he said he could probably go to a local internet cafe and download the game there and possibly transfer the files over via an external drive perhaps, but the one variable that couldn't be accounted for is if the EA version of the game will launch/play without internet connectivity (especially keeping mind the back end metrics you guys are wanting to gather as people play).
On the one hand I'd want to assume there wouldn't be a requirement for connectivity to play, but also don't want to just assume such either given your focus on EA metrics, so just looking for insight/clarity on this angle of things - if this is something that can be confirmed or spoken to at this point before EA official opening.
