Magic of Myth Drannor is now available to pre-purchase!

[GrayJedi AntiProPaladin]

good to hear that a combination of above tips finally worked for ya

 

[Sylvado]

I did.

Alright, finally got it to work. I ended up clearing all browser cookies, clearing out all previously known payment methods in DDO, while using a VPN. Gota say that this ghetto-discount payment provider SSG is using sucks ballz. Especially for those residing outside the United States.

So you cleared cookies but it is the payment provider that was the issue, got it.

 

[Spikkel]

Still doesn't work for me, it says I bought it on steam and the transaction is pending together with 2 failed transactions,
but I didn't play ddo on steam over 2 years now.
Other computer, other browser, private mode, erasing cookies, ... It all doesn't make a difference.
It would have wondered me should it have worked this way though because the source of the order is wrong to start with.

Opened a support ticket.
My guess is, because its about them being paid, they will answer eventually.

 

[Br4d]

I'm really hoping Myth Drannor is the killer x-pac we've needed since Ravenloft.

There's so much you can do with the theme of ancient ruins.

 

[Smokewolf]

So you cleared cookies but it is the payment provider that was the issue, got it.

This is not my first rodeo with SSG'S payment vendor(s) mate. Case in point, some time ago I was able to try using a German neighbors laptop, resulting in the same purchase denial. After which, I was able to confirm the card during the month I was in Florida for my mum's passing. (Card worked fine in there)

All of this points to the fact that I'm an American legally residing in Germany while using a US based credit card. Far as I can tell, the payment vendors see a US card being used in Europe, and they flag it as out of its geographic region. Making it unusable towards any DDO purchase from then on. (While not specifying why) Later on, deleting all payment history and re-adding the cards (while using a VPN) does appear to work. Though I wonder for how much longer...

Based on the feedback I've gotten from the Dev's, SSG could care less that a significant number of its overseas players (including deployed military) require a VPN to process a payment. Hence in addition to the cost of the recent expansion, we also must pay a VPN provider to be able to use our own money.

Note (1) My CC's billing address matches my residency in Germany.

Note (2) SSG's payment vendor used to work fine, until the last major store update. (About a year now)

Note (3) I'm not employed in Germany, so I've no need for a local bank. Especially while I'm collecting a retirement the States. More to the point, regardless of my State-Side finances, obtaining a German account and credit card would be impossible without employment.

Note (4) My family uses my CC for most every purchase in Germany, without issue. Rarely is cash needed here, as most all transactions are digital. Surprisingly more so than the US.

 

[Smokewolf]

Still doesn't work for me, it says I bought it on steam and the transaction is pending together with 2 failed transactions,
but I didn't play ddo on steam over 2 years now.
Other computer, other browser, private mode, erasing cookies, ... It all doesn't make a difference.
It would have wondered me should it have worked this way though because the source of the order is wrong to start with.

Opened a support ticket.
My guess is, because its about them being paid, they will answer eventually.

Get rid of Steam and directly install DDO. Having Steam as a 3rd or 4th party in your transaction makes it so much harder to work. Besides Steam takes a big slice of what you think your paying to DDO.

 

[Br4d]

@Smokewolf

Anything that results in charge backs is a huge problem for SSG and they likely go out of their way to have those not happen accidentally. One of the responses to a charge back is action against the account in question, up to and including disabling/banning the account.

My guess is that your US bank has a robust fraud detection system and that purchases made for online entertainment purposes are particularly closely scrutinized. The odds are pretty good that the bank/CC AI that checks your purchases has been continually tuned and it does not like the payment processor that SSG uses for transactions in Germany.

One solution would be to buy a German fixed amount payment card (like Visa's fixed payment cards in the USA) and see if that resolves the problem. The cards are sold in fixed amounts and likely denominated in Euros and they don't trigger fraud detection in the same way that banks and credit cards do.

 

[Smokewolf]

@Smokewolf

Anything that results in charge backs is a huge problem for SSG and they likely go out of their way to have those not happen accidentally. One of the responses to a charge back is action against the account in question, up to and including disabling/banning the account.

My guess is that your US bank has a robust fraud detection system and that purchases made for online entertainment purposes are particularly closely scrutinized. The odds are pretty good that the bank/CC AI that checks your purchases has been continually tuned and it does not like the payment processor that SSG uses for transactions in Germany.

One solution would be to buy a German fixed amount payment card (like Visa's fixed payment cards in the USA) and see if that resolves the problem. The cards are sold in fixed amounts and likely denominated in Euros and they don't trigger fraud detection in the same way that banks and credit cards do.

I'd agree with you except that the US card works for everything else. Besides, I've spoken with my bank about this and they're sure it's not being blocked on their end...

Now as for debt "like" cards, they exist here yes. Though most often they're for Amazon, Netflix, WoW and Apple. Single use credit-cards for general use don't. Odds are that just having them in many places would be a considered a liability due to money laundering and fraud potential.

 

[Spikkel]

Get rid of Steam and directly install DDO. Having Steam as a 3rd or 4th party in your transaction makes it so much harder to work. Besides Steam takes a big slice of what you think your paying to DDO.

I didn't use steam for years now, it stopped working when Apple switched from Intel processors to ARM processors.
I tried to pay on the website of standing stone games with my paypal account, but this showed that I was using steam.

This morning it got resolved, it looks like there is an issue with linked creditcards on paypal.
So when I wired money on my paypal account and used that to pay, it did work.

 

[Spikkel]

I'd agree with you except that the US card works for everything else. Besides, I've spoken with my bank about this and they're sure it's not being blocked on their end...

Now as for debt "like" cards, they exist here yes. Though most often they're for Amazon, Netflix, WoW and Apple. Single use credit-cards for general use don't. Odds are that just having them in many places would be a considered a liability due to money laundering and fraud potential.

I sincerely dislike using my creditcard online on most sites.
* Do they store that information?
* How do they store that information? (lets hope its encrypted, and its a strong encryption, do they keep the secret to decrypt next to the encrypted data, ...)
* How do they protect that database where it is stored? (open or only accessible on internal system, is the site secure, SSH, ...)
* Do they keep that protection up to date? (replace broken algorithms, replace end of life tech, patching, ...)
* If there is an incident, do they notice? (logging, auditing)
* When they noticed, did they act well and do they tell us about it or will they hide it?

You probably won't find any answers to that, so I try to always work with paypal whenever possible. In that way my information is shielded with that layer at least and they never received my credit card number.

Large players like Google, AWS, Apple, ... will be OK as well, but the random store which coincidently also has a webshop can not be trusted to keep this information.

 

[Lacci]

Get rid of Steam and directly install DDO.

You don´t even have to do a new install. I downloaded the game years ago via steam. But you can just create a shortcut to the ddo.exe from the install directory and start that without steam.

 

[Jack Jarvis Esquire]

You don´t even have to do a new install. I downloaded the game years ago via steam. But you can just create a shortcut to the ddo.exe from the install directory and start that without steam.

Yes. I hate Steam, and do just this. ?

 

[Sylvado]

This is not my first rodeo with SSG'S payment vendor(s) mate. Case in point, some time ago I was able to try using a German neighbors laptop, resulting in the same purchase denial. After which, I was able to confirm the card during the month I was in Florida for my mum's passing. (Card worked fine in there)

All of this points to the fact that I'm an American legally residing in Germany while using a US based credit card. Far as I can tell, the payment vendors see a US card being used in Europe, and they flag it as out of its geographic region. Making it unusable towards any DDO purchase from then on. (While not specifying why) Later on, deleting all payment history and re-adding the cards (while using a VPN) does appear to work. Though I wonder for how much longer...

Based on the feedback I've gotten from the Dev's, SSG could care less that a significant number of its overseas players (including deployed military) require a VPN to process a payment. Hence in addition to the cost of the recent expansion, we also must pay a VPN provider to be able to use our own money.

Note (1) My CC's billing address matches my residency in Germany.

Note (2) SSG's payment vendor used to work fine, until the last major store update. (About a year now)

Note (3) I'm not employed in Germany, so I've no need for a local bank. Especially while I'm collecting a retirement the States. More to the point, regardless of my State-Side finances, obtaining a German account and credit card would be impossible without employment.

Note (4) My family uses my CC for most every purchase in Germany, without issue. Rarely is cash needed here, as most all transactions are digital. Surprisingly more so than the US.

I can sum it up with BDSG

 

[Sylvado]

I didn't use steam for years now, it stopped working when Apple switched from Intel processors to ARM processors.
I tried to pay on the website of standing stone games with my paypal account, but this showed that I was using steam.

This morning it got resolved, it looks like there is an issue with linked creditcards on paypal.
So when I wired money on my paypal account and used that to pay, it did work.

Yes, one odd thing with DDO and Paypal is that it automatically uses the default Paypal payment method, instead of giving you an option.

 

[Sophie The Cat Burglar]

Just copy/pasted these off the sales page...

Thanks, Rabidfox. The pictures do not show for me.

The horse is really nice. The matching armor is pretty good. The wizard outfit also looks pretty good. Need to see the female human version.

I gave it a lot of thought. Myth Drannor looks very promising but I am going to pass because of wild magic. Messing with and killing my characters at random is a huge turn off. I despise rogue-like games. Just providing feedback in case anyone making decisions still cares.

 

[rabidfox]

I gave it a lot of thought. Myth Drannor looks very promising but I am going to pass because of wild magic. Messing with and killing my characters at random is a huge turn off. I despise rogue-like games. Just providing feedback in case anyone making decisions still cares.

Wild mage has t1/t2 AP spends to prevent the very bad and bad effects from happening (the iconic also has AP spends for that); so you can remove the risk factor. But that might still not be your idea of fun, just letting you know you can prevent it.

 

[Sophie The Cat Burglar]

Wild mage has t1/t2 AP spends to prevent the very bad and bad effects from happening (the iconic also has AP spends for that); so you can remove the risk factor. But that might still not be your idea of fun, just letting you know you can prevent it.

Rabidfox, you are one of the few people I really trust for information on stuff like this.

So, let's say I am my plain old cat burglar self solo roguing my way through dungeons. While standing outside a quest like The Lords of Dust, is a wild mage gonna roll up, cast Jump while standing next to me, trigger a surge, and hit me for a million points of damage? Drop hams everywhere? Do something else to really cheese me off?

Now let' say I venture into Myth Drannor. If I use a scroll to cast Invisibility, am I going to cause a wild magic surge and do a million points of damage to myself? So on. So on. Is my hire going to cast Heal and trigger a surge? Is a spell caster I am fighting going to trigger a surge and get a super duper billion point damage attack that I cannot do anything about?

This is why I destroy every stupid Potion of Wonder I find. My Inquisitive does run in the destiny with all the random stuff, though. Kinda weird. Never seen anything bad happen with that.

Help me, Rabidfox. You are my only hope. Totally wear the three bun hair in Star Wars. Ran with two buns one Halloween, too.

 

[rabidfox]

So, let's say I am my plain old cat burglar self solo roguing my way through dungeons. While standing outside a quest like The Lords of Dust, is a wild mage gonna roll up, cast Jump while standing next to me, trigger a surge, and hit me for a million points of damage? Drop hams everywhere? Do something else to really cheese me off?

Wild mage (and iconic procs) the bad effects aren't supposed to effect anyone but yourself (good effects can effect others). There's at least one bug I've heard of where friendly fire can occur off heals with one of procs; but I assume that'll be fixed (and it's not an insta-kill or anything that bad).

Now let' say I venture into Myth Drannor. If I use a scroll to cast Invisibility, am I going to cause a wild magic surge and do a million points of damage to myself? So on. So on. Is my hire going to cast Heal and trigger a surge? Is a spell caster I am fighting going to trigger a surge and get a super duper billion point damage attack that I cannot do anything about?

As for MD, we haven't seen the quests yet, so can't be 100% sure how the quests will be but the devs mentioned "Just to clarify, while Myth Drannor is still in development, most wild magic zones you should encounter will be visible, and avoidable or manageable through some mechanic." so I'd assume you can avoid them and/or be cautious what you do anytime you're inside a wild magic zone. https://forums.ddo.com/index.php?th...d-magic-surges-general-info.11689/post-131738

 

[Sophie The Cat Burglar]

Wild mage (and iconic procs) the bad effects aren't supposed to effect anyone but yourself (good effects can effect others). There's at least one bug I've heard of where friendly fire can occur off heals with one of procs; but I assume that'll be fixed (and it's not an insta-kill or anything that bad).

As for MD, we haven't seen the quests yet, so can't be 100% sure how the quests will be but the devs mentioned "Just to clarify, while Myth Drannor is still in development, most wild magic zones you should encounter will be visible, and avoidable or manageable through some mechanic." so I'd assume you can avoid them and/or be cautious what you do anytime you're inside a wild magic zone. https://forums.ddo.com/index.php?th...d-magic-surges-general-info.11689/post-131738

Thanks again, Rabidfox. That is much more manageable than I was led to believe. Even I can handle, "Don't step in stupid." I'll put aside money for the expansin and horse but wait for more information on the quests and bug fixes. It may not seem like it, but I really want a reason to play DDO again.

 

[nix]

I'm really hoping Myth Drannor is the killer x-pac we've needed since Ravenloft.

There's so much you can do with the theme of ancient ruins.

It would be nice to think so but my hindbrain is warning about borderlands length (or should that be short?) quests