Ok, until just recently i found a problem with Turbine (oh wow, one of ****ing many) If you have started the DDO download, then for some reason, you can never use the files of a manual download. even though you have them, in character select it tells you to wait for the download to finish, even though the files are installed.

so heres a hint. DONT USE TURBINE TO DOWNLOAD UNLESS YOU ARE INTENDING TO GO THE WHOLE WAY. if you have my problem, use turbine to uninstall, then reinstall the game using the manually downloaded installer.

if my explanation of the problem was a bit confusing, heres a summary:

I started the download on Turbine, but changed my mind, and downloaded it manually.
I installed ALL THE FILES using the manually downloaded file.
I started game. (no problems).
I got into character generation, created character (no problem).
In character selection I noticed that even though i had ALL THE FILES DOWNLOADED, i still needed to download them.

so yea, if anyone can shed light on why this happens that would be great, and for those people that have this problem, i hope it helps.