OK here are our experiences to date:
Bear in mind with all this that I have access to 2 PCs (one older AMD chip nVidia 6600GT and one newer duocore 6600 with nVidia 6950GT) and two separate accounts on which Linolea (myself) and Neema play. We have both created alts and which we rarely play (I never play) and as of today we have both been affected by this issue. Both machines are wired into the same 4-port router (Belkin as supplied by our ISP iiNet).
To recap the issue... This is the one where a player can get to the character select screen, chooses a character and hits play, whereafter the loader bar does not appear until 90% or so loaded, then kicks back to character select rather than loading into the game. I should point out that when you have this issue you know 1 sec after hitting the play button, because normally the loader bar appears very quickly.
Until today Linolea always had access to VG on both machines. Neema on the other hand, had been sporadically locked out of Neema only after some server restarts (if she could login after a restart, then she could always login for the rest of the day until the next restart... after that the login die was rolled again to see if she could get into game). This affected Neema on both machines... it is not relevant where she attempted the connection. At all times Neema was able to login alts until the last instance, where she could no longer login Neema or her main alt. It seems to affect the character you played last.*
Generally Neema got access to the game again after the next restart from when the issue started. Last time, which was 3 restarts ago, she got locked out for two days. Then Targonor crashed midday (Aussie time) yesterday and she was able to login again. It is clearly linked to server restarts somehow.
Fixes we have tried include:
So we get the impression this is not client-side but server-side right? Well this is where it gets tricky...
Today I got locked out of Linolea for the first time ever (after this morning's restart). Ironically Neema has access to all her characters LOL on both machines. So I hop onto live support and get a TSR. After much chat he suggests deleting 4 game files (which did not help). So he eventually tries to login Linolea himself... he gets in! *bleep*? I try again and - FAIL... you guessed it.
This is the perplexing part... it seems clear to me that it is nothing to do with what I may or may not be running on our machine(s) - I will attempt clearing the system tray and logging Linolea in to satisfy the TSR, but I know in my heart that it will make no difference. Something after restarts is affecting the way clients are connecting to the servers, but for some reason the TSR is not affected by this. It probably explains why they have not been able to get to the core of this issue already. That plus the fact that it sporadically manifests itself (after any given restart) makes it hard to trace.
The TSR is going to send me an e-mail to run a series of connection tests this evening after I get back from work. Hopefully Linolea is still locked out and we can get to the bottom of this issue... if I have to lose a day's play to do it, then so be it. Thanks to the TSR being as persistent as me to nut this one out.
I will add to this thread until we get this issue sorted.
Sincerely,
Linolea
* Had a brainstorm = something I am going to try as a workaround is to login an alt as the final step going into a restart (can't avoid crashes of course). Hopefully that way the bug manifests itself in the last played toon, and not my main character... worth a try ...
Please post the VGClient log from one of the login attempts that fail. I'm pretty sure it's going to be a router issue but the more information we have the better.
Do you know if your router has the latest firmware available for it?
Firmware updates can be found here:
http://web.belkin.com/support/downl...lang=1&mode=
Since it is supplied by your ISP......check with them before doing any firmware upgrade.
[03/07/07 18:19:01] INFO: Log: Connecting to SDKVGO-14-16.vanguardsoh.net:10115 (chunk_n13_n10) [03/07/07 18:19:01] INFO: Log: Browse: SDKVGO-14-16.vanguardsoh.net:10115/Entry.vgr [03/07/07 18:19:01] NETWORK: DevNet: Game client on port 0, rate 10000 [03/07/07 18:19:01] NETWORK: DevNet: Resolved SDKVGO-14-16.vanguardsoh.net (64.37.176.255) [03/07/07 18:19:16] NETWORK: DevNet: Connection (64.37.176.255:10115) timed out after 15.000000 seconds (15.001001). TickDelta = 0.007000
There is the problem. The connection to the server timed out. Now we need to figure out why.
