[quote name='ogvor']How have people's experience been with Direct 2 Drive? I've already got a ton of games in my Steam account and a couple in Impulse and I'm a little hesitant to open another download account, but I'm also interested in picking up Dragon Age and Dawn of War II. Does D2D work as well as the others?[/QUOTE]
I'm pretty sure Dawn of War II will require activation in and installation through Steam anyway, regardless of where you buy it. You can avoid using most of D2D, and just purchase the game and have the key emailed to you to type into your current Steam account (choosing to download from D2D will just download a Steam installer and a Steam backup image of an older version of the game).
As to other games, I usually avoid the DRMed games, since waiting for a D2D-compatible patch can take a while, or maybe even never come at all (I don't see the latest NFS:Shift patch listed on their site, for example). Also a few games have DRM which interferes with mods designed only for the retail game. On the other hand, with more and more games switching to online activation D2D's often shipping the same thing as the retail game now, and more and more retail patches sound like they'll just work on the D2D version. And of course you can always use a retail patch + nocd crack to end up with the latest version with full mod compatibility.
As to their DRM-free games (like Bob Came In Pieces), I like them better than anyone except GOG. They give you a straight HTTP download link (on Fileplanet's servers, but it bypasses the queue system's waiting line), compatible with your downloader of choice (using a multi-part downloader gives me better speeds than through Steam), resulting in a regular old installer, with no online checks or authentication, or really anything D2D-specific. You can then back up the installer, or download it again from them in the future. I hope this isn't the start of trying to force all their users to a custom client.