Support Ending for Windows XP

[Cordovan]

Dungeons & Dragons Online will be deprecating support for Windows XP and earlier operating systems as of July 21st, 2021. All of your characters and progress will remain, and you can continue to play the game by running DDO on a Windows 7 or newer operating system. Players who need to can contact Account Support at help.standingstonegames.com. Thank you!

[rabidfox]

Dungeons & Dragons Online will be deprecating support for Windows XP and earlier operating systems as of July 21st, 2021. All of your characters and progress will remain, and you can continue to play the game by running DDO on a Windows 7 or newer operating system. Players who need to can contact Account Support at help.standingstonegames.com. Thank you!

So is code actually changing on the client that removes that support? Haven't used WinXP in many many years, mostly curious if this means we're seeing some more modern code being added to engine to improve performance, etc.

[FuzzyDuck81]

So is code actually changing on the client that removes that support? Haven't used WinXP in many many years, mostly curious if this means we're seeing some more modern code being added to engine to improve performance, etc.

Not a programmer myself, but from past experience with similar things happening to software at my work in the past couple of years I suspect it's less about it immediately no longer working but ensuring compatibility with XP & ability to ask for tech support about it isn't going to be a factor any more, it'll likely still more or less work fine for a little while until new additions & optimisations come along.

[Cordovan]

Not a programmer myself, but from past experience with similar things happening to software at my work in the past couple of years I suspect it's less about it immediately no longer working but ensuring compatibility with XP isn't going to be a factor any more, it'll likely still more or less work fine for a little while until new additions & optimisations come along.

Yes, after this date we will no longer support Windows XP as an operating system to play DDO with. If it technically still works for a while, great, but no further effort will be done to maintain compatibility with Windows XP.

[tcosta1982]

Yes, after this date we will no longer support Windows XP as an operating system to play DDO with. If it technically still works for a while, great, but no further effort will be done to maintain compatibility with Windows XP.

Windows XP went EOSL (End of Service Life) a few years ago. No Microsoft Support in any way from what I heard. I'm surprised ANY support has been available since 2019.

[Edwinge]

Dungeons & Dragons Online will be deprecating support for Windows XP and earlier operating systems as of July 21st, 2021. All of your characters and progress will remain, and you can continue to play the game by running DDO on a Windows 7 or newer operating system. Players who need to can contact Account Support at help.standingstonegames.com. Thank you!

This is an odd statement.

Windows XP and earlier will not be supported. Totally fine and reasonable. No problem there.

Windows 7 and newer will be supported. Err, where does that leave Windows Vista which came after XP and before 7?

I'm not saying anyone should use Vista, or even that anyone would want to. Maybe no one is using it anymore. I don't know. I'm just questioning the ambiguity of your statement. If you want people to use Windows 7 and newer, then why not say Windows Vista and earlier are no longer supported? If, rather, you just want Windows XP and earlier to be unsupported, why not tell people that they can continue to play using Windows Vista and newer operating systems?

[FuzzyDuck81]

Err, where does that leave Windows Vista which came after XP and before 7?

I've heard legends that whenever it's name is spoken aloud, you can hear a distant scream of despair from programmers & sysadmins past, which even freaks out Rahadin...

[PpalP]

Dungeons & Dragons Online will be deprecating support for Windows XP and earlier operating systems as of July 21st, 2021. All of your characters and progress will remain, and you can continue to play the game by running DDO on a Windows 7 or newer operating system. Players who need to can contact Account Support at help.standingstonegames.com. Thank you!

That will have any effect on the Mac Wine client? (I ask because I don't know what Windows uses the Wine client)

[Helder]

This is an odd statement.

Windows XP and earlier will not be supported. Totally fine and reasonable. No problem there.

Windows 7 and newer will be supported. Err, where does that leave Windows Vista which came after XP and before 7?

I'm not saying anyone should use Vista, or even that anyone would want to. Maybe no one is using it anymore. I don't know. I'm just questioning the ambiguity of your statement. If you want people to use Windows 7 and newer, then why not say Windows Vista and earlier are no longer supported? If, rather, you just want Windows XP and earlier to be unsupported, why not tell people that they can continue to play using Windows Vista and newer operating systems?

Market share of Windows XP (counting only Windows desktop) is 0.72%. For Vista it is 0.30%. There are more than 2 XP desktops to each Vista desktop.
I still agree with your point, but in the actual scenario, Windows Vista is irrelevant.

[CSQ]

This is an odd statement.

Windows XP and earlier will not be supported. Totally fine and reasonable. No problem there.

Windows 7 and newer will be supported. Err, where does that leave Windows Vista which came after XP and before 7?

I'm not saying anyone should use Vista, or even that anyone would want to. Maybe no one is using it anymore. I don't know. I'm just questioning the ambiguity of your statement. If you want people to use Windows 7 and newer, then why not say Windows Vista and earlier are no longer supported? If, rather, you just want Windows XP and earlier to be unsupported, why not tell people that they can continue to play using Windows Vista and newer operating systems?

Fun fact, Microsoft's official support for Vista ended before official support for XP did.

I suspect, as pointed out above, that the reason is install base. There's hardly any install base for Vista, while up until a couple years ago XP still had a significant install base. Even as early as 2016, when Vista was still in extended support, it had negligible (less than half a percent) of market share. While XP was definitely on the way out at that point, it was still solidly above 1% of the market share, which translates to hundreds of thousands of machines. Considering that Microsoft tried really hard to move users from Vista to Windows 7, it's not a surprise that XP lasted longer- XP was well liked and received, and Microsoft didn't *need* to move people away from it, but Vista was not helpful for Microsoft and probably caused more problems between optics and support issues than it was worth.

I don't think any developer should be reasonably expected to support Vista, unless that's the last operating system their software runs on, in which case they shouldn't be reasonably expected to be considered developers.

[Cordovan]

That will have any effect on the Mac Wine client? (I ask because I don't know what Windows uses the Wine client)

No, this does not impact the Mac Wine client, which remains supported up to Catalina.

[KasumiFan1]

Dungeons & Dragons Online will be deprecating support for Windows XP and earlier operating systems as of July 21st, 2021. All of your characters and progress will remain, and you can continue to play the game by running DDO on a Windows 7 or newer operating system. Players who need to can contact Account Support at help.standingstonegames.com. Thank you!

Sorry to bother you but according to help.standingstonegames.com DDO hasn't supported Windows XP for a long time. I have played it on Windows Vista before but I hadn't tried DDO on XP but I was surprised to hear/read that it will have supported dropped for it.



source that I have seen: https://help.standingstonegames.com/...ments-for-DDO-

[gravisrs]

Yes, after this date we will no longer support Windows XP as an operating system to play DDO with. If it technically still works for a while, great, but no further effort will be done to maintain compatibility with Windows XP.

Does that mean you're dropping legacy client altogether in favor of new 32/64 bit client ? That's a good news, shifting resources toward more demanding areas.

[mikameow]

Seconding the question of where this leaves Vista supported status? I havn't used it in years but it does exist and the failure to mention it seems like a serious oversight.

[LightBear]

Release year of 7 is 2009, extended support of it ended at the start of last year.

I'm curious to know how many clients are installed on these old systems and if any support is still justified for a game like DDO.

Great that they do, but really what is holding SSG back from updating some libraries?

[Cordovan]

Seconding the question of where this leaves Vista supported status? I haven't used it in years but it does exist and the failure to mention it seems like a serious oversight.

The number of players using Vista at this point is statistically tiny, something like less than a tenth of a percent at best. However, yes, this will also impact the ability to run DDO in the future on Vista. Windows 7 has been officially in our Minimum Recommended Specs for some time now, but the game still technically ran on earlier operating systems. We are nearing the point where that is becoming less likely, and we are dropping the remaining bits of support we provided for those systems.

[Alrik_Fassbauer]

I understand that way of thinking,

yet still I hate Microsoft's approach as "an Operating System is not something you own anymore, it is instead now a service we provide !"

And gaming goes now into a very similar direction.
Steam, for example.
Companies apparingly want to eliminate "ownership" in software at all.
Only board games - these can still be bought AND owned ! And card games, too.

Which means that I still hate that thought of not owning an operating system I have bought and which I need to use.

Microsoft's approach is the perfect DRM for their OS, and thus the perfect way to increase their sales.
Plus, it is on the other hand a frowning upon the concept of "owning something" from their side.

But, that already started with the "activation" for OSses. Windows98 didn't have that.

MMOs have a similar problem, but with a few I chose to live with that, because i like these MMOs - at my own free will.

Microsoft, however, is so dominant that they are factually able to force people to use something they don't own.

The only other way would be to run DDO in Linux, but I have no idea how much feasible this is.

Throughout my whole life I was always buying my software and games, because I believed and that that this would be something a honest person does.
And now I'm feeling as if corporations do not believe that I could be honest at all.

Sorry, I'm always getting philosophical on these matters.

[kanordog]

The only other way would be to run DDO in Linux, but I have no idea how much feasible this is.

I've been running DDO in linux for years. The only issue I have is with the store which I have to open in a browser.

[mna]

I've been running DDO in linux for years. The only issue I have is with the store which I have to open in a browser.

Same here, several variants of Linux too.

Would be nice if there was an option to open the Store in an external browser application (not just its own window) also in the 64-bit non-Steam client.


(Internal Store on Linux appears to be a bother mostly because it doesn't obey the DirectX version controls in the Options dialog, apparently? And DirectX 11 is still only in a workable state on comparatively few hardware and driver combinations on Linux. Of course on older hardware you might want to use older versions of DirectX on newer versions of Windows too, but the Store isn't performance-critical so...)

... ... yet still I hate Microsoft's approach as "an Operating System is not something you own anymore, it is instead now a service we provide !"

And gaming goes now into a very similar direction.
Steam, for example.
...
The only other way would be to run DDO in Linux, but I have no idea how much feasible this is.

Well. DDO at least clearly is a service. (Though would be nice to at least see a list price for the server-side software...)

Steam on Linux will run DDO for you with fairly little effort, recommended for non-technical folks.

Can be done without Steam too. In extreme cases, occasionally even on hardware that can't run DDO on Windows, but that's after quite a bit of tweaking.

[spikkel]

Fun fact, Microsoft's official support for Vista ended before official support for XP did.

I suspect, as pointed out above, that the reason is install base. There's hardly any install base for Vista, while up until a couple years ago XP still had a significant install base...

The reason why support was extended that long for Windows XP by Microsoft is because several major companies payed Microsoft to prolong their support. Most IT departments wouldn't touch Windows Vista with a 10 foot pole and they skipped right to Windows 7 whereever it was possible. So Vista was (completely understandable) never kept alive this way