I think it goes without saying that one could find ways to download the game without owning U2 original, too. In other words, there are a million different ways to get it, be they legit or semi-legit or illegit. So not even the moral-less pirates have reasons not to play U2XMP
But finding a legit copy of U2 shouldn't be much harder than digging around the local bargain bins.
I actually got it myself from a friend who had bought the original game, played through it and then set it on his bookshelf, there to rest forever. It's too bad about the single-player only nature of it, really (insert vague conspiracy theories about pressure from Atari to avoid competition with UT2003), but in my mind Legend more than made up for it when they released XMP. Not only did it feel like the next step in Unreal (instead of, in my not-so humble opinion, the mis-step that was UT2003), but they had managed to accomplish so much in the way of polish for a product that had only a fraction of the resources and time put into it that most actual retail releases do!
For example, the complete overhaul of the engine; I couldn't get U2 or 2003 to run on my old computer, no matter how low I put the settings. But on lowest detail, my P3-600mHz GeForce-1 computer managed to handle the demo admirably! So what if it looked like crap, having that extra computer there for a friend to play together online with from the same room created some of the most memorable gameplay experiences I've ever had, hats off to Legend there! They had that winning combo of tech savvy and gameplay ideas, which seems all-too-rare nowadays (most of the time it's a tradeoff).
I wonder what they would have done next if Atari hadn't shut them down? Anyone know where they ended up? (I seem to recall a bunch of them being hired by Epic soonafter, but I'm not sure if that's my memory lying to me or not).
