I've never played any games online. I'm not interested in MMORPGs. Many of my games urge me to install "Gamespy Arcade" which I ignored for years.

When I checked it out today it says it's "not supported" any more, whatever that means.

I've got a mediocre speed DSL connection of around 2800 Kbps. I'm running a HP desktop model p6710f with Windows 7 64 bit.

I'd like to play Call to Power 2, Shattered Union, Sid Meirs Alpha Centauri, Empire Earth 2, Mechwarrior Mercenaries/Vengence/Black Knight

Looking for a place to find players. Any advice for a total novice at online play?

GameRanger supports most of what is on your list. There's both a free and pay version but the free one would suffice.

GameSpy can be implemented differently depending on the game. If you got a message about it not being supported anymore, the game probably used the old stand-alone GameSpy Arcade client. This has been replaced with Gamespy Comrade.
The other method of implementation is a built-in game server browser inside the game. A recent example of this would be Borderlands.

Another match making utility is . It has [url=http://www.xfire.com/faq/]a lot of other features as well.

Those 3 (GameRanger, GameSpy Comrade, xfire) should cover most of your needs.

Thank you. If you've got time, I could use just a little bit more information. I created a GameRanger account, and activated it, but am not seeing any box to Log In

. I can see a long list of games, but it's just a list.....none of the names are "clickable". I was expeciting to see the names of the games paired with a rundown of user names of people looking to play.

I clicked on Forums and got a message:

"This link needs to be opened with an application" but nothing will open it.

To access the forums I believe you need to be logged into the GameRanger app. Some of the games supported don't have the provisions for "drop-in" multiplayer and a lobby must be created first with other potential players and then launched in that manner. Hope this helps.