Cannot comment on Ultima - never played that series. The rest is a definite yes - all run under one config. The only troublesome component here is Privateer and the 16MB EMM limit with a soundblaster.
What I find surprising is that you list Doom. Doom in my experience is THE game when it comes to 'will run at all times'. If Doom refuses to run you might as well just trash your whole hardware.
Yeah, Doom was easy too run, and still is. But damn, Priv, wc2 and WC3 had wildly different hardware and mem config demands... WC3 needed lots of EMS or XMS, while Priv needed you to NOT have any of that turned on, thanks to that god damned mem manager. Like Ultima VII. Those games just pulled you in opposite directions. I'm talking about running those games with all the cool shit turned on, like sound, speech, the cockpit animations... I never knew that there was the pilot hand in WC1 until KS, thanks to all that mem config bullcrap (wc1 was my first PC game). Even if you had a good machine with a Sound Blaster 16, you had to clear up most of the low 640kb in order to have all the animations in wc1 and 2.
I don't mind a little bit of tuning and fussing around on my machines, I love tuning stuff up, I still love pc gaming very much (while still loving portable and console gaming, much to my wife's desperation), but the required amount of machinery shenanigans in the DOS era was waaaaaay too much.
And Crid is right, most people don't want and don't need to understand most of the technology... And they shouldn't. Maybe everyone should have a minimum technical knowledge, it is always good to grasp the basic principles (ugh, i hate that expression) of stuff like cars and computers... But very few people need to know how to fix car engines or troubleshoot pcs and macs and consoles (yeah, you can troubleshoot videogame consoles these days). I mean, I know how a car engine works, in a generic sense, but I'll be damned if I need to freaking open it up and fix stuff. Especially today, in the electronic engine age. Unless you're some sort of Asperger techinical genius, you just won't know all about all kinds of machines. I know some things about PCs, not a lot, but a lot more than the regular joe and jane (people ak me to fix their machines), and I know how to set up a basic home theater, and so on, but I know shit about lots of other stuff. Don't bother giving me a soldering iron.
Concerning "Games were just more exciting back then": that's really subjective. I don't think games went worse or anything. There is still plenty of awesome and incredible new games that provide unforgettable experiences today. I just had a blast with Company of Heroes, Bioshock, All three Orang box games, STALKER, Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass and Twilight Princess, Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops, Ace Combat Zero, all this year, among many, many games. Sure, I'd love to have a new full WC game on my PC, with all the great WC storytelling and all new and shiny graphics and sound, but I can't complain, in general. Gaming is doing mighty fine, and it will keep getting better. Damn, The reason I still dont have an Xbox360 (with Arena and Dead Rising and Ace Combat 6) and a Wii (with Metroid Prime 3, Super Mario Galaxy, and so on) is that they're too expensive around here (and the xbox breaks too damn much, too).
And there's always Linux.
