I need a bit of advice

[Mark Oban]

Hi Guys, Hope you are all well.

My wife and I were all ready to return home, I even logged in one night and of all the people to run into, I find Sammy, he had just returned as well, really blew me away.
Since then we have been unable to authenticate when choosing multiplayer from the NWN main menu, I did a bit of searching, and discovered that many others have had this problem, I even tried the Avlis world login and had no luck there, so I figured, Damn!!

Today I got a spam from Impulse, normally I terminate the window but it was advertising NWN Diamond edition for $4.82 AUD, and I got to thinking that perhaps this version will authenticate some place else other than Bioware.

Would anybody be able to confirm this?, or if I buy will it still try to authenticate through bioware bring me back to where I am now ?

[Gorgon]

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=124163 if you want to play here. How other servers deal with it and keep your login secure is not something I can help with.

[Mark Oban]

Thanks Gorgon, I had already tried that, what I need to know is if I buy a new copy of NWN will I still be subject to the Bioware Authentication, or are new copies authenticated elsewhere.
And why would I want to play anywhere else?

[rshampshire]

The Bioware authentication is purely to check that your online account is being accessed by the correct person. I'd be very surprised if new copies of the game circumvented Master Server authentication since, in theory, anyone could access anyone elses character vault.

[PlasmaJohn]

... what I need to know is if I buy a new copy of NWN will I still be subject to the Bioware Authentication ...

Short answer: yes.

For all intents and purposes the Bioware Master Server is dead and gone. There is no single replacement. If you wish to play on Avlis you must register with Alpha. Except for certain Premium Modules, NWN is perfectly usable without it. Yes you get a scary dialog when you click multiplayer. That can be safely ignored.

There was a brief period of time (7-10 days) where I was capturing authentication sessions between our servers and the Master Server. During that time I cached 333 unique MSID's. The instructions in the FAQ I wrote were to ensure that if you were one of the lucky(?) 333 all you needed to do was to register on the web page.

If you were not then I need to capture an authentication session for you and that's something that 5160 does. Before you can log into that server, an admin (see the FAQ) needs to generate an activation password. When you tell the clerk your activation password, the authentication session generated with your MSID and multiplayer password is recorded. This is to ensure that you are who you say you are to prevent somebody you isn't you from hijacking your servervault.

And while I'm on a roll... the activation password is temporary and should be different than your mulitplayer password. Also, 5160 is intentionally set to be localvault primarily to avoid hijacking issues.