Dragon Age: Origins Catch-All

mwdowns wrote:

Amazing. The servers are still down. Spent the evening reinstalling Windows and redownloading DA:O from Impulse. Tried logging in just now and everything is still unauthorized. Yay, DRM!

Ended up using the EA workaround where you edit your addins.xml file. That seems to have worked. Still...

Try the fixes from the forum in this thread:
http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/to...

Downloading and running the DAUServiceDiagnostic_beta app completely resolved the issue for me.

Man I've been trying to morph Leliana's face so that she more close to the way she does in Dragon Age 2... man it's impossible.

The DA:O DRM servers thing is getting a fair bit of press now. It's a shame that it takes bad press to get a problem sorted now, assuming EA do actually fix it, and whether EA do a permanent fix rather than pay someone to turn the server back on. It really sours me on EA and Bioware, and also how a game 18 months old is left to rot from the support perspective. I can understand that all hands might be on deck trying to fix it, but there's no public sign of that, and that speaks to another problem, that big companies often don't engage with their community in a honest and frank way.

And once again, pirates have access to a superior product while the rest of us have to deal with this DRM BS.

The best way they could fix that at this point would be to remove the DRM entirely and institute a no-CD patch.

LarryC wrote:

The best way they could fix that at this point would be to remove the DRM entirely and institute a no-CD patch.

I'd say 'at any point', but that's another debate.

The thing is, so long as people buy this stuff they'll keep on doing it and placate the masses with a CM apologising, late, on the forum. Business as usual. For a company as big as EA, it's just a tiny bit of bad press one month when they're not really releasing much.

The servers are meant to be back now. http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...

Apparently the reason they didn't get onto it sooner was because their volunteer mods assumed all the forum posts were about previous problems with the DRM, and the staff were focussing on the DA2 forums with their shiny new patch for the new hotness. IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/Wdmcx.gif)

Jesus.

Kind of a tempest in a teapot. There was an easy fix available to access the content before they officially resolved the issue. All one had to do is visit their support forum. Took me all of 10 min when I checked after seeing people were having issues.

TrashiDawa wrote:

Kind of a tempest in a teapot. There was an easy fix available to access the content before they officially resolved the issue. All one had to do is visit their support forum. Took me all of 10 min when I checked after seeing people were having issues.

Assuming you're talking about the link you posted at the top of the page, that's a issue with the client, rather than their authorisation servers. That thread is also a year old.

I am indeed. That fixed the current issue, year old thread or not.

Hmmm, well I guess it might work if it wasn't set to auto-login, and didn't have any DLC needing authorisation. From what I understand (I didn't have DA:O installed during the outage) if you had your game set to auto-login and couldn't connect to the server, it assumes a negative and de-authorises everything, which is an issue when your save requires authorised DLC to continue without major problems.

Hypatian wrote:

I'm amazed RPS hasn't picked up on this issue yet and broadcast it to the world of angry internet men.

Ars Technica did.

"Thanks to a combination of DRM idiocy and technical and communications failures on the part of EA and Bioware, I (along with thousands of fellow EA/Bioware customers) spent my free time this past weekend needlessly trapped in troubleshooting hell, in a vain attempt to get my single-player game to load. "

Is this where we've come to now? PC gaming has long been rumored "dying". If this is what PC gaming is like alive, maybe it's better off dead.

Is it entirely a PC problem though? on my http://social.bioware.com/user_entit... page, I've got a load of stuff listed for 360/PS3 as well, although from the descriptions that may be just for the first time, and then it just unlocks it permanently from then on (handing off the DLC authorisation onto another system...), which would suck less. Perhaps a console DA:O/DA2/ME2 player can enlighten me.

The thing with online DRM, whether it's for the whole game or part of it, is that they're setting themselves up for the game depending on that service for the life of the game, which in the case of a singleplayer game is (or should be) indefinitely. Failsafes for situations like this, and what to do in the event you no longer want to run those auth servers, should be designed in from the start (perhaps they are). The best case scenario is that the player never notices anything, but over the weekend a significant number of people did. As the hijacked quote goes, every time a legitimate consumer is prevented from playing something they've paid for by DRM, a pirate gets their wings. I guess I'm preaching to the choir though.

I loaded up DA:O on 360 maybe three days ago and saw no issues. I was using some gear that required DLC too, so I guess all was well.

Jeff-66 wrote:

Is this where we've come to now? PC gaming has long been rumored "dying". If this is what PC gaming is like alive, maybe it's better off dead.

Stuff like this isn't the reason I stopped playing PC games very often (chalk that up to the tech rat race and the purchase of a HDTV), but it's one of the five or six monthly reminders why I'm half-glad I jumped ship.

On non-PC you also have issues, but generally linked to the platform DRM. So, for example, on the 360: DLC is linked to your physical device and your account. You have to be either logged in as you to use it, or on the same console your downloaded it from. If you get new hardware (old hardware choked, new one came out and you decided to upgrade because the new one is more awesome), then suddenly your wife/kids/whatever can't use DLC stuff from their gamertags that they used to, or if the net goes down. MS added an ability (once per year?) to "port" purchased content from one console to another.

Basically: Think about the horror stories you've heard about GfWL stuff, not being able to load saves when they're moved from one machine to another because they're encrypted to that machine, etc. (Or even an OS upgrade, or a new hard drive or video card that changes the "signature" of the machine.)

Hypatian wrote:

MS added an ability (once per year?) to "port" purchased content from one console to another.

Yup. And you have to "re-download" all the material (even if you transferred it from the old hard drive using the MS-branded transfer cable) added to your account after you get it associated to the new hardware in order to get it to work offline or without the account signed in to XBL.

Which is crazy when you have a daily bandwidth limit, and upwards of 120 gig of material to download.

[/not bitter about the process since buying my Slim and having slow satellite internet; not at all]

Hypatian wrote:

On non-PC you also have issues, but generally linked to the platform DRM. So, for example, on the 360: DLC is linked to your physical device and your account. You have to be either logged in as you to use it, or on the same console your downloaded it from. If you get new hardware (old hardware choked, new one came out and you decided to upgrade because the new one is more awesome), then suddenly your wife/kids/whatever can't use DLC stuff from their gamertags that they used to, or if the net goes down. MS added an ability (once per year?) to "port" purchased content from one console to another.

Basically: Think about the horror stories you've heard about GfWL stuff, not being able to load saves when they're moved from one machine to another because they're encrypted to that machine, etc. (Or even an OS upgrade, or a new hard drive or video card that changes the "signature" of the machine.)

I understand that the console solution isn't perfect, but it's fine for me. I am the only user on my consoles, I had no issue transferring licenses the one time I needed to. I am concerned that as consoles become closer to just being closed-system PCs I'll lose some of that instant gratification, but I never, ever seen a new PC game thread where there aren't at least five people pissed because the game is not working for them. I've been a victim of this sort of thing fairly recently, with Magicka. I preordered it based on falling in love with the premise, then the game came out and I couldn't get it to playability to save my life. You don't see that on console, ever. Server load issues and non-critical glitches, sure, but not the thousands of problems my particular PC could have with any given game.

Of course Magicka would become notorious for that shaky launch, but it seems like every game has its own issues: DX11 making DA2 framey on high settings, Crysis 2 being hacked, the whole Elemental deal. It just looks scary from the outside. From 2003-2006 I played almost nothing but PC games and from a usability standpoint they seem to be getting worse rather than better.

Not saying there's anything wrong with playing on PC, just there are too many obvious headaches for the kind of player I am.

The good news is, in 20 years we can play all these current games DRM-free from GoG.com

Blind_Evil wrote:

I understand that the console solution isn't perfect, but it's fine for me. I am the only user on my consoles, I had no issue transferring licenses the one time I needed to.

A lot of mileage may vary here. I'm the only user of my console as well, but transferring licenses was a giant pain in the ass, because I have a slow net connection and hundreds of megs of Rock Band tracks. So.... yeah.

On the plus side, having the game set to not log in automatically meant that I didn't have any issues. What DLC I have worked perfectly.

Jeff-66 wrote:

The good news is, in 20 years we can play all these current games DRM-free from GoG.com

We shouldn't have to rebuy the games we already own...

Also.... more anti-DRM converts for me!

Blind_Evil wrote:

I understand that the console solution isn't perfect, but it's fine for me. I am the only user on my consoles, I had no issue transferring licenses the one time I needed to. I am concerned that as consoles become closer to just being closed-system PCs I'll lose some of that instant gratification, but I never, ever seen a new PC game thread where there aren't at least five people pissed because the game is not working for them. I've been a victim of this sort of thing fairly recently, with Magicka. I preordered it based on falling in love with the premise, then the game came out and I couldn't get it to playability to save my life. You don't see that on console, ever. Server load issues and non-critical glitches, sure, but not the thousands of problems my particular PC could have with any given game.

Of course Magicka would become notorious for that shaky launch, but it seems like every game has its own issues: DX11 making DA2 framey on high settings, Crysis 2 being hacked, the whole Elemental deal. It just looks scary from the outside. From 2003-2006 I played almost nothing but PC games and from a usability standpoint they seem to be getting worse rather than better.

Not saying there's anything wrong with playing on PC, just there are too many obvious headaches for the kind of player I am.

The way I see it, those are signs of bad developers rather than a bad platform.

Bad developers that somehow develop all the games I want to play? No, I'd say they're fine developers forced into a bad place. I have something of a soft spot for creative people trying to get theirs for their talents.

Again, not saying it's a bad platform. The whole situation has conspired to soil things. The prices/humanity/ease of doing so begets the harsh DRM, which leads to situations like this, which creates more piracy (?), etc.

Hmmm, yes. It's always tempting to simplify situations like this, but they're more often than not complicated by many factors. Still, there are plenty of examples on all platforms of good and bad game implementations. There are some games that are a joy to play, and some which are not.

Duoae wrote:
Jeff-66 wrote:

The good news is, in 20 years we can play all these current games DRM-free from GoG.com

We shouldn't have to rebuy the games we already own...

That's what they call the lesser of two evils

And of course, I'm assuming GoG won't be bought up by some giant evil corporation and turned into a heinous DRM torture chamber.

Jeff-66 wrote:
Duoae wrote:
Jeff-66 wrote:

The good news is, in 20 years we can play all these current games DRM-free from GoG.com

We shouldn't have to rebuy the games we already own...

That's what they call the lesser of two evils

And of course, I'm assuming GoG won't be bought up by some giant evil corporation and turned into a heinous DRM torture chamber.

I,I "GoGfWL"

Hypatian wrote:
Jeff-66 wrote:

And of course, I'm assuming GoG won't be bought up by some giant evil corporation and turned into a heinous DRM torture chamber.

I,I "GoGfWL"

It should be a crime to ever put "good ol'" in front of GFWL.

RSPaulette wrote:
Hypatian wrote:

MS added an ability (once per year?) to "port" purchased content from one console to another.

Yup. And you have to "re-download" all the material (even if you transferred it from the old hard drive using the MS-branded transfer cable) added to your account after you get it associated to the new hardware in order to get it to work offline or without the account signed in to XBL.

Which is crazy when you have a daily bandwidth limit, and upwards of 120 gig of material to download.

[/not bitter about the process since buying my Slim and having slow satellite internet; not at all]

It only downloads a 'very tiny' update to the file (lucky if it's more than 1MB). It only downloads the entire file again if you've deleted it from your machine.

I found the same thing annoying until I realised it was just the same as an update when you log into live.

If you don't want to do the lot, do this.

Load up your 360, without internet connection, scroll through your library, and in the description it will say something like "unlock to use on this machine". Make a note of all of those, then plug in the internet again. Now go to those game pages in the marketplace, and where you would noramlly hit "buy" it says "dowload again", select this, and then 2-5 seconds later, license is updated, now you can play it offline, etc to your hearts content.

I'm about half way through doing mine. I didn't want to download the entire history again as there are demos and movies and stuff that I just do not need to download again.

Hope that helps.

So, I am getting close to finishing this for my first play-through, and the Landsmeet did not go nearly as well as I was hoping it would.

Spoiler:

I had arranged for Alastair and the Queen to get married - neither one particularly wanted it, but it was the best compromise I could see - a known, liked capable ruler married to noble blood who can lead the nation in a battle. I had let the Elf slaver live so that I would have access to the proof of Loghain's involvement in that dirty business. I let the disgusting Earl's son out of his prison from Earl Howe's house to get his voice added to my side in the Landsmeet. I had the Templar who was chasing the Blood Mage who poisoned the Earl of Redcliffe willing to speak to that. I thought I had enough evidence and support to be able to end Loghain's usurping with minimal bloodshed, but the Landsmeet went in his favor.

Since this would obviously mean the end of the game, I guess I understand the game forcing you to fight the "rightful" ruler, but it still felt wrong. As expected, in a melee, my team won, and the Chantry called for an end to the fight before Loghain could be killed. So a duel, single combat, was called for. I had Alastair fight Loghain, which turns out to be a mistake, since he beheads his after winning the duel, ruining any hope of my arranged marriage working out. I gave Alastair the throne, since so many people expressed a belief that noble blood was required on the throne, and I still had some hope that Anora would change her mind with the rule out of her reach otherwise. Instead, Alastair says to lock her up, and she says she would have had him killed, so I guess I picked somewhat wisely there, even though the kingdom lost a capable ruler, and I pissed off a friend.

Now I am off to Redcliffe, my hopes of leaving King Alastair of the Grey Wardens with his new wife and taking the defeated and (hopefully) still useful Loghain to lead the armies of the land in a fight against an Archdemon crushed. Instead I take the armies of Ferelden to fight for survival with an unwilling King, a brutal killing dwarf, a dying Mage and a ranged Bard; but a lack of a tactical genius and a secure throne behind me.

Can anyone help assure me that I didn't mess up the Landsmeet beyond all repair?