i found my copy (came with warhead) in a bargain bin like 2 or 3 years ago. i played warhead and never touched crisis wars. it was really cheap and i couldn't pass it up, i think it was $19.99 or something like that, that looks about the same as steam, but you might find better if you rummage around the bargain bins at your local electronics store.
anyway we've got 7 people so far. thats enough for a star (or lance for you innersphere freebirth dogs). we just need to set a time/server. we would need a lot more players to make our own server work out. typical games have 20+ players. im also not in a good geographic location, and dont really have a fast connection (though i do have my old c2q rig which would make a good dedicated server). im also not sure if you can host and play on the same license (especially on 2 different computers simultaneously), il have to look at it. were probibly better off using one of the existing servers.
as for the time, i can play whenever (im on the servers a lot lately).
*edit* i played around with dedicated server and it seems i can run it on this machine just fine. will try the other machine later.
*edit2* let me remind you of how annoying good web installers are at wasting bandwidth. dispite having 4 of the 6 required update files, it still had to download 3 of them to update. fortunately the big 1.4gb one worked, because that would have pissed me off and wasted 7% of my transfer cap. anyway will see if the dedicated server works without invalidating my license.