Non Stop Crashing when zoning or trying to log in.

S

Sonyaa(Graycen)

Dalayan Beginner
I've been crashing 95% of the time when I zone or try to log into the game. This has never happend to me before and I recently came back from a break. It's hard to deal with this as it's ruining my gameplay especially on raids where the whole raid has to wait for me once we wipe etc to get back on

Whats going on?

I have Windows 7 etc. And have always had windows 7 and this has never happend.
 
I have had the same exact problem for a while now. It seems considerably worse if I attempt to box.

So far this is what I have tried with little to no success:

1) I set affinity to 1 and disabled texture caching.
2) I uninstalled the full game, and did a fresh install with nothing copied over. Default UI and maps etc.
3) After the two above steps failed I tries loading on 4 different computers with 3 different opperating systems.
My main desktop is fairly new running Windows 8, my laptop is about 5 months old also running Windows 8. I also tried two older computers, one running Windows 7 and the other running Windows Vista.

All of this failed, so I got a new cable modem from Comcast, and even had a tech come out to check my cable line and replace a few cables.

The last thing I tried was alternating all 4 computers from a direct connection and using 2 different WiFi routers.

Nothing seems to help, and at this point I am having a hard time playing at all. It's increadably frustrating to have to close the client down and reload on nearly every zone.

If anyone has suggestions of something else to try please let me know.
 
One dude said he proxed and was able to play without issue. I think the thread is still on the first page. It would be nice to not crash on zoning...
 
I have been playing with a VPN program, and it seems to fix the issue of crashing. Without it I crash on nearly every zone, one time today I crashed 7 straight times trying to get back in which caused me to just give up. I am still running tests, but running from zone to zone all over the world I have yet to crash in 2 hours.

I don't completely understand what its doing, but in my research it seems like all it does is masks things sent and received from your computer from your ISP. Based on that, my best guess is this crash bug is caused by certain ISPs and the way they deal with packets received while we zone. I could be way off, but if anyone else is having these issues look into a VPN and see if it helps you with it.

Hope this helps.
 
Very interesting Soric.

Is the VPN TCP-based? If so, that may help explain it. Without going into too much networking nerdery, there are two types of packets - TCP and UDP. TCP is guaranteed delivery, UDP is not. Most of the game functions on UDP, which we can't do anything about. If an ISP sucks about deprioritizing/dumping UDP packets, whereas the VPN doesn't, that may help explain it. Then, if the VPN is TCP, you have guaranteed delivery. "Crash" problem disappears.

I don't know for certain if that's what's happening, but it makes some degree of sense.
 
The one I was playing with last night was Cyber Ghost, I tried a few others but that one seemed to work the best. From looking into their faqs and the info they have posted I believe it is TCP based but the whole networking thing has never been my strong suit.

I hope this helps you get to the bottom of the problem, if you have any other questions or want me to test anything please let me know.
 
In light of what Taryth said. All of you having the issue:

Are you using a router? If so, some routers have a firewall builtin. They will filter types of packets and some of them are UDP based. Example: Broadcasts. Now....I know that EQ doesn't use a broadcast packet but both use UDP as the protocol. I would make sure you didn't mess around with the firewall settings on the router too much because that could be it.

There is no way in hell it's an ISP. They wouldn't block point to point UDP or TCP packets, or inhibit them. It would be a local setting on the computer or the network equipment you are using to go through before hitting your ISPs connection.

Some Anti-Virus programs have what's called signature sniffing features in order to block potential network attacks. You'll have to research your AV or network protection application if you are using one to see if there is a feature that could cause UDP interference.

The reason a VPN or Proxy would work for you guys is that it bypasses the so called 'normal route or method' of connection. It would explain your successes when connecting to SoDs servers.

There is a program you can download called Port Query. It's straight forward to use. Try that out. You will be able to send a UDP and TCP packet from you to whoever on the internet/intranet (if you have one) on whichever port you want to send it on. Just remember that not everything will respond. Also, if you do this, you are doing it at your own expense/risk.

I hope this helps.
 
They may not block UDP, but they may deprioritize it. I run into this with ICMP every once in awhile - it makes testing very annoying. :)

I, too, get "crashes" more since switching ISPs - on DSL it NEVER happened, on cable, it happens rarely. So there's definitely something odd afoot, I just wouldn't anticipate a VPN would help, yet here we are.
 
Taryth said:
They may not block UDP, but they may deprioritize it. I run into this with ICMP every once in awhile - it makes testing very annoying. :)

I, too, get "crashes" more since switching ISPs - on DSL it NEVER happened, on cable, it happens rarely. So there's definitely something odd afoot, I just wouldn't anticipate a VPN would help, yet here we are.
Click to expand...

I agree with you about the 'may prioritize it differently', but the ISP will never admit it even if you give them proof. And getting that proof isn't as easy as running a PING or constant UDP packets to see how many fail compared to TCP. Overall I still think this is more of a localized issue instead of a general ISP issue. However, you did mention about switching from DSL to Cable and it happening. I assume you changed nothing local except hardware to connect from one service to another. That is strange....
 
Last post that explains stuff real well and a link to assist all of you in your understanding on how this stuff works.

"UDP is an unreliable protocol. In practice, most packets that are sent will get through, but you’ll usually have around 1-5% packet loss, and occasionally you’ll get periods where no packets get through at all (remember that there are lots of computers between you and your destination where things can go wrong…)"

http://gafferongames.com/networking-for-game-programmers/udp-vs-tcp/

That is an old article but informative.

And, is an EXCELLENT explanation of how TCP and UDP works and incorporates gaming, for us gamers. ;)
 
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I've long suspected that zone crashes were due to packet loss. I don't know how you guys would do it exactly as I've never looked into it and don't know how the server is set up, but if you were to set up some sort of a VPN/proxy on the SoD server which encapsulated packets into TCP for delivery then everyone could connect to it and the vpn/proxy could be used to talk to SoD.

Of course if 2.5 solves the problem anyways it might not be worth putting time into.
 
VPN on their end would generate CRAZY amounts of throughput. Overhead. Like so much it would be stupid to do.

Your idea is good, but if only 10 people played this game then sure.....

Plus, if they tunneled their traffic, then we'd have to connect through a VPN as well from our end. That's going in a wrong direction for a game like this.

2.5 has different network coding. MUCH better for them and us in general.
 
So I just made a new character to humor Deein, and I'm crashing every time I zone or try to log in. Like 14/15 times it crashed. Is something going on? This always used to work with no messing with it.
 
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