I get asked about this one a lot: Is it possible to access chat from games like Neverwinter, STO and Champions Online (and possibly others I don't play) using an external chat program? And if so, how? Well, I just happen to have the answers to those questions.
Cryptic's games use the XMPP protocol (sometimes referred to as "Jabber"). XMPP is a fairly standardized chat protocol set up on public servers, and this means that other programs can be used to connect to it. While there are a lot of chat programs that support XMPP and can be used to connect to chat, my instructions will use Pidgin, since it's the one I use personally.
The first step, of course, is to download Pidgin here:
https://pidgin.im/Click the green download button, then do all the standard program installation stuff.
Once it's installed, you'll need to set up an account to log into Cryptic's XMPP servers.
The settings for the account should look something like this:
- Protocol needs to be set to "XMPP."
- Username should be the name you use to login to Cryptic games.
- Domain must be "crypticspace.com" as shown above.
- Resource is the name that will appear before the "@" in in-game chat. In my configuration I use "Trick," so when I use Pidgin to chat with people in-game, I appear as "Trick@IMTrick." You can set this to anything you like.
- Password is the password you use to log into Cryptic's games.
The rest of the settings are optional and I just leave them blank.
Next, click on "Advanced" at the top of the dialog, and check the settings there:
The defaults here are probably fine. I check to make sure the "Connection Security" setting is "Require Encryption," and the Connect Port is 5222. File transfers and BOSH are not used by Cryptic's chat system, so those settings really don't matter.
Once your settings are saved, Pidgin should be able to connect to the server. Now all you need to do is join the channels you want to see in Pidgin. To do that:
- Select "Buddies" from the Pidgin menu, then "Add Chat"
- In the dialog that pops up, set Account to the account you set up to log into Cryptic's chat
- Enter the channel you want to join into the Room field of the form. For example, to join the StonewallFleet channel, enter "StonewallFleet" as the room.
- Password should be left blank.
If all goes well, you should now be in your chosen channel, and it should appear on your buddy list, under "
Chats."
If you want to automatically rejoin that channel ever time you start Pidgin, you can right-click the channel in the buddy list, and select "Auto-Join" if you didn't already select that option when adding it.
Feel free to hit me up if you run into trouble.
