Well, I finally managed to get back to digging in DLR stuff, including writing my own summarizing thorough help guide.

So I got back to Official Strategy Guide to clear up some info for me, and I met at least a dozen cases of mentioning of DLR user manual, including even mentioning its particular parts (as Appendixes of various numbers and such), where a reader of the startegy guide might find additional info. An author of the strategy guide (Rick Barba) almost insists that that user manual is (was, would be?) very comprehensive and useful.

So the question is - did such user manual ever exist, and if it did, so why the common opinion amongst Warlords community tells that there was no such manual at all?

There's no mystery. I own DLR big box that contains the user manual. I can scan it for you if you want.

Well, it could be done not for me but for the sake of Warlords community and for preserving everything Warlords-related.

Yet if it really exists so whence this common opinion comes from - that there was (and is) only Reign of Heroes manual?

I've never heard of this opinion before. You can even buy it on Amazon.

If I'd search well, I'd find this opinion expressed publicly right here, on Warlorders board

So.. I scanned the manual several months ago, but I didn't have time to make a proper pdf ebook. But iy turned out that I don't need to do that.

Out of curiosity (after reading SkeleTony's post here) I download Old-games.com's version on the game and you know what? They actually scanned and OCRed the user manual and bundled it with the game.
It looks like they are actually cool dudes. They are pirates, of course, but they put effort into making their builds. They make sure that their games run on modern PCs and pack them with goodies.

I uploaded it to my server. Here it is: sombre-sleep.com/warlords/files/warlords...ds_Rising_Manual.pdf

Hurray!

You're a true hero of Etheria!

As for 'piracy' I don't think that popularizing the abandonware should be named like that.

If any of Warlords titles (aside from Battlecry franchise that I own on GOG, of course) were still sold anywhere digitally, I'll buy them all gladly. But it will never be, obviously.
So the sites like Old-games (COM or RU) makes no harm, only the Greater Good for the dinosaurs like us, Warlords fans.

Not sure how much 'piracy' matters on older games.

For example when Steve gave me the source code for War4 he told me that Infinite Interactive was no longer receiving any revenue from sold copies of the game. Only the publisher was (at the time Direct2Drive was selling copies of the game but Steve was getting nothing).

That's one reason he doesn't mind so much what gets posted as long as it's not something that's still actively sold in some manner by him / receives revenue for.

Publishers of course care because they are the copyright owners but I doubt most Warlords care much about publishers.

KGB

It doesn't matter until the current IP holder decides that it actually matters. Btw. Who is going to sue me for uploading my own builds of Warlords 3 and Warlords 4 to my server? Who holds all the IP rights at the moment?

M0d3M,

I doubt anyone would sue you. At worst you'd get an email or letter asking you (or whomever is hosting your site) to take down the content. The same way YouTube removes copyrighted content.

Steve owns the source code and Warlords IP (ie Warlords name, Lord Bane, storylines, graphics, sounds etc). The publishers (different one for War2, War3 and War4) own the distribution IP (ie right to sell/distribute the game).

The only ones likely to care are publishers and then only if they are still selling the game in some form or might want to sell it again in the future. Since you aren't charging for anything (making money) it's unlikely anyone will care.

KGB