66 réponses à ce sujet

[Cheiron the Centaur]

Varenus, you may be right that hacking this DLC is not an easy task (frankly, I sincerely hope you're right!). That would also mean that this method of DLC will not lead to piracy, and that Bioware can safely (and successfully) continue this business model for years to come.

Anyway, it's obvious that you are extremely focused on your worst-case doomsday scenario, and you don't want to look at this in a more positive way.
Well, then here is my final advise to you, Varenus, then I'm out of here:

Don't buy any DLC. DON'T! Just don't!

Instead, sit still and watch while all of us are enjoying all the great DLC content for the next several years, waiting for a moment that may never come, just so you can say "See? I told you so!". And who knows, if you're very very lucky, then Bioware/EA just might release a Gold Edition of this game in a couple of years, containing a compilation of the best DLC addons on disc. And if not... well, no worries then. You will not have spent any money on a product that you don't have faith in, and we will still have had a great time playing all of it. Everyone happy, right?

Modifié par Cheiron the Centaur, 02 novembre 2009 - 06:31 .

[LevitasVeneficus]

Mordaedil wrote...


I'm still unsure why not every computer terminal in the world is not connected to the Internet yet. It's almost becoming another house-hold requirement, much like television and telephones are now and have been for 20 years.

Hmm, you're unsure of why not every terminal in the world is not connected online...well since you're speculating that everyone with a computer is required to be online I will speculate right back that perhaps you've never had trouble paying bills? Or perhaps hand fed until age 23 then started work with pops already in a station above those already working for 20-30 years? Am I close or am I  just another ignorant ****** that assumes too much?

[Mordaedil]

LevitasVeneficus wrote...

Hmm, you're unsure of why not every terminal in the world is not connected online...well since you're speculating that everyone with a computer is required to be online I will speculate right back that perhaps you've never had trouble paying bills? Or perhaps hand fed until age 23 then started work with pops already in a station above those already working for 20-30 years? Am I close or am I  just another ignorant ****** that assumes too much?

You assume too much. I just live in a country that has a very low population that are unemployed. Though, the only bills I'll have a problem with are my student loans and soon to be apartment loan. However, examining my current budget reveals that I live on a very heavy surplus and I 'forget' that a lot of people have 'outs' into temporary reprieves that are extremely expensive, such as drugs or even something as simple as cigarettes.

I don't get why, since people would have a ton more wealth if they didn't seek out these addictive substances, that they could use to otherwise lead very decent lives.

Furthermore, my father was a police officer, albeit is now retired and I am currently in employ elsewhere doing web-design. I'd hesitate to call you a ****** though, that seems kind of going too far. Besides, I was merely fantasizing. It'd be really great if having every computer terminal in the world equipped with internet access at a more "nominal fee", and I just felt it has become such an important part of society that the governments should strive to reverb the taxes to focus on bringing everyone online, instead of focusing on providing everyone archaic instruments like phones and televisions.

It can be done, I felt.

[Magister Lajciak]

I am with Varenus Luckmann on online activation. Although I would have been interested in purchasing DLC, I will not do so for the reason that in say 10 or 15 years, either BioWare might not be around (bigger companies have disappeared...), or they might change their business model and no longer want to maintain activation servers. In fact, I don't buy any entertainment software that requires me to rely on some external check to let me install or use it. If you ask whether I still play games that old, I can only answer with an unequivocal "yes" for good games. Heck, even Starcraft, a still quite popular game, is more than 10 years old now. Dark Sun: Shattered Lands, which I have replayed recently is at least 15 years old and the company that created it is no longer around despite having been a heavyweight of RPGs in its heyday.



Furthermore, a company doesn't have to go bankrupt to shut down its activation servers. Sometimes it can simply change its business model and decide that continuing to operate them is no longer worth the expense. Among companies that planned or plan to do this with respect to DRM servers for music are such giants and supposedly trustworthy companies as Yahoo, Walmart and Microsoft.



At least I am thankful that the retail version of the main game doesn't have any sort of activation, so I will definitely purchase that one. Maybe the DLC will one day come out on a disc without the need for online activation and then I will be able to get that and play it too - that would be nice, since I am generally keen on more content for excellent games. If not, though, well, that's a pity, but online activated content is not for me.



Heck, I am not even sure I will download the free DLC that I don't have to purchase extra: Shale. I like the character and would love to have him, but who knows what it would do to my save games when I will want to reuse them in the future and the downloadable content is no longer available...

[Magister Lajciak]

Fernando Melo wrote...
We have a pretty good track record for supporting our games, and a little time to figure that one out 

I'm not making fun of the issue - it is something we are working to find a solution for.  But the truth is that for now, this works as you would expect with any other game's DLC... as that is the nature of DLC.  It is dependent on a downloadable/online/server being there system. 

I'll confirm, as you may be able to do backups of the files as is, but regardless you would still need to go online to activate it later on or on another PC, so it doesn't completely answer your question.

Let me make a suggestion on how this could be done while still protecting intellectual property. Why not develop some sort of "copy once" or "burn once" feature for downloadable content and possibly also for digital editions of the game?

It could work like this: Let's say that I purchase some DLC. It is tied to my account as normal, but the DRM allows me to copy or burn the game to a physical medium, such as a DVD. The DVD then operates on a disc check principle. The process of burning/copying could even be supervised by some sort of online monitoring system/check and could only be done once (or if you wanted to be even more generous, you could set a higher limit, but once would be enough for me), but when installed from that medium/DVD the DLC would require no online activation, so it would be archived and installable/playable for posterity, so to speak, and not dependend on the future existence of external activation servers.

[Magister Lajciak]

On a related note, I believe that NWN Premium Modules (DLC for NWN) are no longer available (I never actually bought them [I have always disliked online activation for the aforementioned reasons], but the website for downloading them is no longer accessible), which does not exactly inspire confidence in the perpetual support for the activation servers for Dragon Age DLC.



I don't actually want to rap BioWare for having online activation for DLC. I am already glad that online activation is not needed for the retail version of the game, which I will purchase. The reason I am commenting at all, is that I would find DLC interesting as I enjoy the greatest amount of content possible for great games (and Dragon Age seems to hold a promise of being such a great game) and would be a potential customer for this extra content on top of the core game were it not for this snag.

[Magister Lajciak]

Varenus Luckmann wrote...
Eventually getting shut down or ceasing support is rarely a willing decision.

You would be unpleasantly surprised that ceasing support for activation servers happens even without bankrupcy - Yahoo, Walmart and Microsoft are all good evidence for that. Even BioWare, as far as I know, does not make its DLC for NWN available any more.

That said bankrupcy is the worst case... the last think a company in its death throes and undergoing a bankrupcy would think about would be how to support its 10-15 year old games and remove their activation...

[Magister Lajciak]

Test Post



(For some reason my posts don't seem to appear in this thread, hence my need for a test post. I wrote some reasonably lengthy ones only to lose them upon pressing submit.)

[Katsunami]

While I know that Bioware has good support for their games, I also vouch for an offline storage/backup capability of downloadable content, so it can be used in the future, even if the community goes down.



I even (also) use an official patch-installer for Neverwinter Nights 2, with seperate downloads up until version 1.0.21 (or someting like that; it's off the top of my head).



I really hate ingame downloaders/updates and authentications, because in time, they WILL fail. (Try Baldur's Gate's update option in the opening screen, for example )



Still, I think I'll use the DLC (even buy Watcher's Keep), and see what happens in the future. I hope that a big expansion will be released on disc, instead of as DLC.



It would be very nice if a DA:O expansion would automatically include all DLC up to that point. People who want it will have it "extra" on top of the expansion; people who want it earlier, download/buy it beforehand. (Compare this to buying the game for €45 and the expansion for €25, while you can get both together for €30 the year after the expansions release.)

[DPB]

Magister Lajciak wrote...

On a related note, I believe that NWN Premium Modules (DLC for NWN) are no longer available (I never actually bought them [I have always disliked online activation for the aforementioned reasons], but the website for downloading them is no longer accessible), which does not exactly inspire confidence in the perpetual support for the activation servers for Dragon Age DLC.

Bioware's activation servers still work, so you can still play the premium modules, but Atari pulled support for NWN so Bioware are no longer allowed to sell them.

[The King of Dust]

Just wanted to share with you a little issue I had yesterday. As I stated already I'm stuck on dial-up, which means my maximum download speed is around 4kb/sec. I got the game yesterday, registered my DLC/promo items on the social site then started the game.

Here's where the problems start : the DA updater has to run for me to be able to login. If it's not running, DAO thinks I'm offline. Problem is, it starts downloading stuff automatically without asking me for my permission, wich means I wasn't able to login at all once the downloading started. Bioware really needs to add an option to prevent the downloader from downloading patches/DLC automatically.

I was able to login eventually, and managed to download 3 promo items and start the download for the Blood Dragon Armor. I realized this one was going to take a while so I decided to start playing. Now at this point I was logged out again because I tried to restart the game to see if It would fix the DLC downloads (they kept failing at first) and wasn't able to log back in.

Once the game started, I had the 3 promo items that I had already downloaded in my inventory, as expected, and went on the play the game. Eventually, I went back to the main menu, finished downloading everything but Shale, logged in, and tried to load my game to see if the other items I had just downloaded would be added to my character's inventory. The game wouldn't let me load my saved game. Somehow, the first 3 items had become linked to my offline status, and would only show "authorized" when I was logged out. If I logged in, the installed DLC interface would show "authorization required" (or something like that) for those 3 items.

I managed to fix it by going into the Addins.xml file and removing the "RequiresAutorization=1" parameter for those 3 items. After doing that, I logged in, managed to load my game, then I logged out to see if I'd still be able to load my game and succeeded again.

Sorry for the wall of text, I hope it's not too hard to follow. Just wanted to bring this to the attention of bioware and other users in case it happens to anyone else.

Modifié par The King of Dust, 04 novembre 2009 - 12:39 .

[Brathly]

I purchased the impulse version, setup an account and then entered my DLC codes from in game, and my items still aren't there, what do i need to do?

[paintdetroit]

Hi, this may not be the right place to post this, but I'm not having much luck finding an answer by searching through the forums...

Has anyone had any problem activating their game? I recently purchased and downloaded the game for my macbook pro, everything's gone fine so far, but when I go to play the game and it asks me for the activation number, I type it in and after a few moments I get a message saying "The activation server is unavailable. Please try again later." I've tried a dozen times in the past day and keep getting the same message. I haven't gotten a response back from EA Support. Any one else have this issue?

[Spiderzz]

I actually have a question about already downloaded content such as the armor download and the golem download. I have saved games with these two things active in my saved file but on repeated basis it keeps saying you must log into your dragon age origins account which activated the addons, or something along those line. I had just been playing and got eaten by a bunch of rabbid wolves and died, i tried to load the game that i had already been playing from and it once again asked my to log into the account that had activated the downloaded content. I was wondering how/why it keeps coming up asking me to log in if i have "automatically log me in" clicked and it gives me no error saying i am not logged in. It also says "logged in" on the bottom left corner of the main menu.

[Quicksilverk]

Not sure when you're facing the problem with logging in to the account but if you load up the game and click "Resume" or Load Game too quickly at start up, your login won't have synched so soon. What I use as a guide is the drop of blood that falls off the hilt of the sword in the Menu Screen. When that falls, it's been long enough to allow the synch.



If on the other hand your problem is that you aren't being logged in automatically, I faced the problem myself recently. (PC - Steam version) I can't rightly say what was causing it but it went away after a while - I had to log in and log out numerous times, turning off and then back on "Automatically log me in".



I hope those solutions are of some help.

[Spiderzz]

cool ill give those a try thanx

[Spiderzz]

well i tried both of those things you were talking about Quicksilverk and neither of them worked. Also tried to log out wait a min or so then log back in, to no avail. I looked at the downloaded content and it says in brackets for both of them (unauthorized).

Quite confusing considering when i DO log in it says that i am connected to the dragon age servers but it still wont allow me to play the saved games. I cant even load them up anymore.