I'm getting this issue as well. I'm fine if I'm in the zone (although I think my packet loss is really high for my connection, something to do with server location?), but a lot of times when I zone, it'll hang there.. awhile after it'll say Entering zone X... and then do nothing forever. If I alt-tab out and back into my SoD window, the window will have the "outline" with nothing inside, so I either Alt F4 or right click the tab on my taskbar and close.
My mobo is the EVGA 122-CK-NF68-A1 LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI, running nforce chipset drivers.
My connection type is unique, since I recently moved in with my father due to losing my home (long story). He lives "in the middle of nowhere" and uses some sort of wireless broadband ISP. It's not nearly as good as cable/dsl but way way better than dial-up, and should be more than enough for a MMORPG (I used to play EQ on dial-up np). I haven't played SoD fulltime in a long long time (back when it was WR), however a friend and I rolled some toons a few month ago, while I was on a cable connection, same computer listed above. I don't remember having any issues, strangely enough. Since that time though, I DID replace the mobo (with the same model, the old one died randomly) and reinstalled Windows + drivers. Back when I first played SoD I played on my old EQ AMD / ATI box and had no issues (even played it awhile on dial-up).
I'm not running any firewalls (besides my router) or antivirus. I tried bypassing my router for a straight connection to my PC and the issue remained.
DBG.txt from recent zone stall:
[Tue Dec 16 13:34:07 2008]02383:Zone addr [72.55.164.91:7487] received...
[Tue Dec 16 13:34:07 2008]02384:net_connect(), (g_rdp=0x00000000, g_world=0x00000000) before receive
[Tue Dec 16 13:34:07 2008]02385:net_connect: rdp 0x06df7b58 is connecting to 72.55.164.91:7487...
[Tue Dec 16 13:34:07 2008]02386:net_connect: I am connected to 72.55.164.91:7487...
[Tue Dec 16 13:34:07 2008]02387:net_connect: returning 0...
[Tue Dec 16 13:34:07 2008]02388:Connected to 72.55.164.91:7487...
[Tue Dec 16 13:34:07 2008]02389:Sent request to zone for EQPlayer.
THIS doesn't look good, but I've always seemed to have issues with the SoD server, and figure there's really no way to improve the connection, right?
Pinging 72.55.164.91 with 32 bytes of data:
Request timed out.
Reply from 72.55.164.91: bytes=32 time=353ms TTL=117
Request timed out.
Reply from 72.55.164.91: bytes=32 time=23ms TTL=117
Reply from 72.55.164.91: bytes=32 time=255ms TTL=117
Reply from 72.55.164.91: bytes=32 time=52ms TTL=117
Reply from 72.55.164.91: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=117
[About 7 more lines later]
Request timed out.
Reply from 72.55.164.91: bytes=32 time=146ms TTL=117
Request timed out.
Reply from 72.55.164.91: bytes=32 time=133ms TTL=117
Reply from 72.55.164.91: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=117
[etc]
Ping statistics for 72.55.164.91:
Packets: Send = 50, Received = 46, Lost = 4 (8% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 20 ms, Maximum = 796ms, Average = 132ms
If I can provide any additional useful info please let me know. thanks.