I'm not really aware of truly effective DRM. DRM just needs to be cracked once for it to be pirated. And there are people who actually enjoy cracking DRM.
I guess server side authentication would work, but that is only if you convinced people to connect to your servers. This is actually pretty hard. Spore seemed like it added value when it connected to the internet. But I am sure authenticity could have easily been verified with less restrictive DRM. And cracked copies were out before retail copies were out, so DRM was a total bust in that case.
WOW is one of the few companies that I don't think has huge problem with piracy. But that is only because you can't pirate the experience of playing with tens of thousands of other people. And even with WOW I was able to easily find torrents of the game and lists of private servers. So even MMORPG's get pirated.
Big companies have thrown millions of dollars at this problem already, and haven't come up with a good solution. So this isn't an easy problem. And I am under the impression that DRM is currently very expensive for companies.
Sure, DRM could be made better. But I think it is kind of pointless. If the authentication relies only on hardware that is under the users control, like a pc, it will get cracked. And you will almost certainly end up annoying your paying customers.
That said, I am interested in seeing how GOO turns out. A DRM solution that lets you legally sell your game sounds promising. And since Stardock built it, it might actually be customer friendly.