Not urgent. Any way to play off-line game, while being on line?

[IJoe]

This isn't urgent, nor really significant, so I'm not in a hurry for some answers.
The problem is:
I don't really play online, 'cause the connection is unstable, due to shitty provider, which I'm thinking to relieve for another, but the internet is mostly on. So, when I start CoH it always drags me into that relic-online thing, and there when I'm in the game lobby (which I might enter, then fold the game window and be gone for couple of hours) people try to join me, and when they finally realize, I'm not there, they obviously  get somewhat disappointed (can't blame them).
So I'm thinking, is there any way of starting a game through a disk check (basically, starting an off-line game), which is not a problem since I have one (two actually) with internet on line?

[Blackbishop]

I never tried that but i have a couple of theories you can try.

Option 1:
If you have a firewall installed just deny the permission to CoH.

Option 2:
If you know the address that relic uses to validate, you can block them by adding it to windows' hosts file.

If you don't know the address you can use HTTPAnalyzer to catch it and paste it on hosts file:

"C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts"

I don't know if the same directory works for 64 bits OS though.

Example:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Copyright (c) 1993-2009 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol.
#
# For example:
#
#      102.54.94.97     rhino.acme.com          # source server
#       38.25.63.10     x.acme.com              # x client host

# localhost name resolution is handled within DNS itself.
127.0.0.1    localhost
::1             localhost

127.0.0.1    www.coh.com

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You are saying to windows that look for www.coh.com on localhost.

[IJoe]

Thanks for the advice, it really helped! 
I mean, how could something that obvious be lurking in the dark from me?! Guess I've never given it a serious thought. Took me 'bout 5 minutes setting my AVP to make it all work as intended.