i have a years of gold banked up from various promos and giveaways. i dislike that you HAVE to have gold for a lot of stuff i think you shouldn't need it for.
but looking towards the future, xbox is going to be the forerunner when testing these features. initially it won't be a requirement to be "always on" but it will be in place. Devs are going to activate this feature under the guise of hotfixes, anti-piracy, etc. eventually it will become the norm; the new online pass. there will be backlash and SP games will receive "Offline patches" (once you're copy is verified as being new and not, 2nd hand). based on how quckly it is adopted it will become the norm for all consoles, maybe except for nintendo...for now
you heard it here folks