I thought I was just reading a thread about this.

Edit: Oh wait!  I found it!  http://www.ddovault.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1311810848

Strakeln wrote on Jul 27^th, 2011 at 8:02pm:


I just spent some money on a point card and started my second account. I actually am running up a bard.

Oh and that bard? It goes without saying that it's a hagglebot

Flag a character or two in that second account for Shadow Crypt and all the other Necro end quests that you don't feel like flagging for.

Run a character in the second account through Delera's part 1 and stop there.

THF is better than TWF when you want to be a cheapskate.

If you chug an XP pot on a character on either account, you can step into a quest on characters on both accounts, log off from the XP pot running character and then sign back in with that character when you're about to get the completion.  You won't get "you entered late" penalties because you both entered at the same time and you only used about 2 minutes of the XP pot.  Probably not worth doing this if you are running a quest where you really want the end chest and it's a long run (Rainbow in the Dark, Coal Chamber, Misery's Peak, etc).

If you're content on running multiple computers when dual boxing, ignore the rest of this post.  I'm addressing the "dual boxing on one computer" issue of the launcher preventing it.

One of the best things you can do for dual boxing is to write your own launcher app.  If you can get a port 80 sniffer (I use Fiddler) you'll see the HTTP and SOAP calls the launcher is making to perform the various parts of logging you in.  You'll also have to make it trust the sniffer's https certificates in order for the launcher to work while it's running.  For somebody with .NET services experience and the right software tools (all free), this can easily be done in a single day.

The only reason the launcher prevents multiple client launches is to protect your data files from getting trashed by 2 launchers attempting to update them at once.  If you write your own launcher and just skip the patching checks, the game server will boot your client with a "wrong version" message.  Just fire up the real launcher to patch and you're golden.

Once you get your own launcher running, you can start additional game clients on 1 computer any time you wish.  No fancy batch files, no simultaneous startup requirements, etc.  Provided you trust yourself, you can even make a command line version that auto-logs you in from a desktop shortcut and just launches the game directly.

Not that any of this is supported or endorsed, but it's theoretically possible...

Gol wrote on Jul 27^th, 2011 at 9:16pm:


I wanted to do it on one machine, but I was a little lost. My wife tries to get me to use SOAP.

stainer wrote on Jul 27^th, 2011 at 9:34pm:

People seem to want to make it waaaay more complicated than it needs to be.

1) Copy the entire DDO folder found at C:\Program Files (x86)\Turbine\Dungeons & Dragons Online - Stormreach\

2) Paste it somewhere else.  Like, say, C:\Program Files (x86)\Turbine\DDOCopyTwo\

3) Create a shortcut to the launcher in the copied folder

4) To launch, start with no DDO launchers running

5) Launch DDO instance 1 (double-click your original DDO shortcut)

6) Within 15 or so seconds, launch DDO instance 2 (double-click your new DDO shortcut)

Strakeln wrote on Jul 27^th, 2011 at 9:33pm:


...I got to try that. Not sure if it would be worth it on my smaller monitor but i so got to try it.

Ooh, stepping late for this one, but yes, strake is right.  It is the best way - why people who know how to use SOAP or fiddler didn't think of it, I will never know.

Copy/paste rules all, when will people figure this out?

Epoch wrote on Jul 28^th, 2011 at 5:47am:

Eh, I triple-box sometimes, but only need 1 copy of the game.  OS/HDD can cache better (faster load times) and patching is faster since it only has to be done once.  The 2-launcher way works great, I'm not dissing it - certainly easier for most.  I'm sure somebody would be interested in writing their own launcher.  Some guys wrote one for LOTRO on Linux (in a Windows emulator).

I did it without much fuss.

Installed  DDO. Copied entire directory contents to a second directory.

Made shortcuts to desktop from both directories. You obviously have to have different names so I renamed them something simple like DDO and DDO1.

Made a batch file on the desktop that first calls the DDO shortcut and then the DDO1 shortcut. Shortcuts have a .lnk extension I believe. I also included @echo off as a flashback to MS-DOS 3.3 days. 

And that was about it. About 1 time in a 100 I get an error launching the second instance, but a quick shut down and restart usually works.

I used to let each directory do its own update but got to a point where everytime I would log into the second instance of DDO I would have to go through 'read and agree with the terms of use' page. A minor annoyance, but I solved it by just updating one instance and then redoing the copy and paste bit to the second directory.

If the second game account is strictly F2P, you may find the AFK timeout annoying. Having both accounts premium helps a bunch.

JC wrote on Jul 28^th, 2011 at 10:42am:

Well I never! Thanks.