recently upgraded to 12 myself, mainly because of the new Midi controller set up being so damn amazing.I'm currently using Cubase 12. It was my first DAW after I bought a Steinberg audio interface when I was out of college back in 2016. It was Cubase 9 at the time but I didn't like it a first because it relied on iLok to start. I had lots of issues with that and couldn't get into Cubase if iLok wasn't working. Even their help center was useless in fixing it so I dropped it for a bit and went to Reason and FL Studio. Years later when they came out with 11, it was advertise that they would do away with relying on iLok and they had lots of new extensions. So I decided to get into my old account in Steinberg and redownload it to upgrade from elements 9 to artist 11 and now 12.
My Cubase 11 still requires an iLok but 12 doesnt.