I find it fascinating that despite releasing a patch more than 4 years after the previous one, and 3.5 years after the release of the succeeding game, both of which are quite unusual, Firaxis managed to make the patch if anything a negative for PR by removing direct IP. You'd think that releasing a patch after so long would be a sure-fire PR gain, particularly since it avoided non-direct-IP multiplayer from ceasing to function, but by removing that one feature, it essentially canceled out any benefit. I've never used that feature myself, but it's nonetheless an interesting reaction.
But adding the old patch as a beta may cancel out that ill-will. Still not as good as leaving direct IP in, I'm sure, but better than nothing. Although if it's easy enough to leave it in the old "beta" download, I'm curious why it was taken out in the first place. It's clearly not that dependent on Gamespy if it still works in the "beta" version.
Bungie's still the best in long-term patch support, having patched Halo 1 to work without Gamespy, and not losing any features, more than 10 years after release.
Speaking of patches, what's the status of the Civ3 post-Gamespy patch that was mentioned in the same announcement as the Civ4 one? While I tend to play all my Civ3 multiplayer games by LAN, I'm still curious what the status of that is. If that patch works without removing any features (and ideally fixing a few bugs

), I might be able to put Firaxis up towards Bungie levels of long-term-support, despite the trip-up with Civ4.