D&D 4E Get WotC 4e's Online Character Builder to work or get a sub

MwaO · Apr 30, 2019

Scoops said:
I tried making a new account, the same thing happens: whenever I go to purchase a subscription and it asks me to log in again for confirmation, hitting the log in button just times out. For reference, on my old account, I had a subscription as recently as August 2018.

You shouldn't have to make a new account I'd think then.

Just curious, did you try it with the Sea Monkey browser? That digital river purchase site is really old code, maybe there's some silverlight in it somewhere.

Nemesis Destiny · Apr 30, 2019

Also, if you don't want to try something new and strange, like downloading a new piece of software, try IE11. It's what I use for this (and only this).

Win + R, type "iexplore.exe" into the box and hit enter.

Scoops · Apr 30, 2019

MwaO said:
You shouldn't have to make a new account I'd think then.

Just curious, did you try it with the Sea Monkey browser? That digital river purchase site is really old code, maybe there's some silverlight in it somewhere.

Nemesis Destiny said:
Also, if you don't want to try something new and strange, like downloading a new piece of software, try IE11. It's what I use for this (and only this).

Win + R, type "iexplore.exe" into the box and hit enter.

Yes, I've tried Sea Monkey, Safari, IE, Chrome and Firefox. I've cleared cache and cookies in each one. I've gone to the link on the first page to try and buy a sub and to my subscription history to renew a lapsed sub (which is what I did in the past). Every time the same point of failure: when it asks me to log in again, it says "waiting for store.digitalriver.com", then it directs me to https://store.digitalriver.com/DRHM/store and shows a blank page with a 504 error, saying the page took too long to respond.

MwaO · May 1, 2019

Scoops said:
Yes, I've tried Sea Monkey, Safari, IE, Chrome and Firefox. I've cleared cache and cookies in each one. I've gone to the link on the first page to try and buy a sub and to my subscription history to renew a lapsed sub (which is what I did in the past). Every time the same point of failure: when it asks me to log in again, it says "waiting for store.digitalriver.com", then it directs me to https://store.digitalriver.com/DRHM/store and shows a blank page with a 504 error, saying the page took too long to respond.

Yeah, I can't get to the point where you're at without having a new email address to try it. I'd say something to the effect of 'digital river seems to be the problem.' because you tried it on several browsers.

Did anyone else recently subscribe and have it work/not work?

Joshua Randall · May 6, 2019

I found out that Silverlight is deprecated in all current, major browsers on MacOS 12 -- including Safari. So you may want to update the first post to mention this.

Source: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/336838/silverlight-plug-in-in-safari-12

As you noted, Firefox 52 is an option. However, your link is pointing to the regular Firefox ESR (extended support release) site, which is going to get you version 60 not 52.

Here's a link to the Firefox FTP site where you can get version 52
https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/52.9.0esr/

You want the file 'firefox-52.9.0esr.mac-x86_64.sdk.tar.bz2'
Download it
Launch it - it will extract itself into a folder called 'firefox-sdk'
Open that folder
Open the sub-folder 'bin'
Open the file 'Firefox' (note: you may need to Ctrl-click, then Open if you get the warning about it being from an 'unidentified developer')
Immediately turn off auto-updates: Preferences, Advanced, Update, toggle to 'Never check for updates'
Go to ddi.wizards.com, sign in, launch Character Builder, activate Silverlight
Enjoy

edited to [MENTION=12749]MwaO[/MENTION] for visibility

Arcrist · Jun 4, 2019

I'm having the same problem as Scoops. I had an old Wizards account and DDI subscription that lapsed, and long story short I ended up creating a new account and trying to subscribe. But when I click the price of the DDI subscription link it takes me to a store.digitalriver 504 error page. Support tells me to try another browser or clear my cache, both of which I've tried.

From reading through the forum, it seems like some people having this problem reported that it went away eventually. Do I just keep trying until it works?

MwaO · Jun 4, 2019

Arcrist said:
From reading through the forum, it seems like some people having this problem reported that it went away eventually. Do I just keep trying until it works?

I think so. It may be some sort of weird security problem due to the website code being old. Maybe use your phone as a hotspot or go to the local coffee shop so no software such as school software gets in the way? Dunno, not having seen it myself for straightforward reasons.

Arcrist · Jun 5, 2019

Thanks for the reply! I've been trying, and in the meantime I'm continuing to explore other options.

MwaO · Jun 5, 2019

I can't log on today and compendium isn't loading fully. Looks like someone turned one of the servers off. If you're having the same problems, please submit help requests via the link on the first post...

Nemesis Destiny · Jun 5, 2019

I'm also getting a login error. I would submit, but I'm not using my own account (one of my players subs on our behalf).

I really need to get my own account one of these days...