The Hidden Forest

Periodically *It seems to happen once a week or so* I cant zone into a specific zone.

To be more specific, all of my characters, on two different computers cant get into Skyfire tonight. Now everyone else in my guild is zoning into Skyfire with no issues, but my characters crash to log in. I have had this happen in VP previously and in DSK. I can use the stuck character mover to move them back to bind, and then try again, but they crash again. Files are fine.. by morning I should be able to zone in, typically.. any clues what could be causing me not to be able to get in one specific zone?

Again, convinced it isnt my computer because I play on two.. and they both do it. This implies internet issues to me, but why only one zone?!?

Odd. On one computer I would have said maybe disable texture caching.

What are you doing when this happens to try and correct it?

The initial time this happened I couldnt get them to load into VP. Micah was kind enough to come try to summon my characters into our guilds instance.. which didnt work. We tried rebooting the computer, and loading through a clean install. I dont recall if we tried clearing the DNS. Typically within a few hours.. without doing anything it clears up, and the zone will load for me.

Last night my guildies logged my toons in, took them through Skyfire and into VP at which point they loaded fine for me. The funny thing about last night is that I had already been in VP once yesterday, so I had been through the Skyfire zone only a couple hours earlier with no issues.

So with all that said, I'm completely perplexed how my internet could affect connectivity to only one zone on the server at a time. Originally I thought perhaps it was just instanced zones affected, but Skyfire, alas, is not instanced, which blows that idea away.

Happened again tonight in Veeshans. I am very very frustrated. I am able to move them back to bind and go anywhere else on the server I want to go, except VP. Does anyone have any ideas what could be causing this?!?!

windariah wrote:Happened again tonight in Veeshans. I am very very frustrated. I am able to move them back to bind and go anywhere else on the server I want to go, except VP. Does anyone have any ideas what could be causing this?!?!

Sounds like packet loss to me. Zone becomes really slow and/or just don't work at all.

I believe its F11 to bring up your ping bar and make sure it reads 100% for a few minutes steady before you try to zone.

If you're feeling frisky, bring up the command line window and type:



If you see several "request timed out" messages over say 5 minutes you're having internet issues.....

Preface: this is by no means meant to be read with a tone or personal attack please. Just trying to get to the bottom of it.

I am sorry, but I do not see a correlation between packet loss and being completely unable to load the zone. Additionally, it would only be appropriate if there was a server within the data-center that would be on the same router as the THF server(s). This is all of course just my opinion.

She can return to the forest and load into the zone without a problem. She obviously can make contact and load content from the server.

Any response or idea helps every little bit

-- Olde

If your guildies managed to load your toons fine into VP, it might be a local file issue.

How are your resources on your pc. Have you tried just using 1 toon and 1 copy of eq to ensure its not your PC struggling?

Have you tried a clean install and update from THF website to see if you have some file errors/hard disk corruption happening? Whenever I move to a new emu server, I allways start with a fresh copy of EQ, and patch from the emu server only for that installation. Stops 99.9% of weird errors most of the time.

Have you ran a scandisk checking for bad sectors? It might be a sign of a dying HDD struggling to read sectors. You could allways do a simple check and try to copy the folder locally to ensure that all the files can be read ok. Even try running your toon from the new copy to rule-out the data being on a bad part of your disk.

I am sorry, but I do not see a correlation between packet loss and being completely unable to load the zone.

No worries!

Start a download that you know will use your internet connections full download speed, this usually creates packet loss, if it doesn't start an upload at the same time. Now try to zone a few times while you're experiencing packet loss... You will see that it doesn't work very well if at all.

Regardless, this is only one possibility, and its not consistent with the fact that you're having zero issues zoning into other zones. The previous comment of trying a fresh installation is a very good one.

I'll look over the scripts to see if the zones are trying to push any information to the client on zone in that may be causing an issue. I experienced a similar issue with some of the upcoming group instances in T8 where the zone would load fine but clients would crash because the scripts were trying to push data to the client after the client had already initiated a zone request.

Other things you could try, I know you said that you already did, try a completely fresh install of eq. If that doesn work, try copying the VP/skyfire zones files from a different client (titanium/sof/sod/uf) it could be that the files are corrupted from where you are getting them from.

I am really appreciating the advice everyone. I was so frustrated last night...

To run down the list...

I have tried a fresh install, I can certainly do so next time it happens. I always keep a clean install on the computer anyway. However, I'm thinking it isnt corrupt files because it happens on two computer simultaneously, and clears up within a few hours.

I run 2 pcs, Both are less then 2 years old, one has 6gigs of Ram, the other 8. I run 2 toons on the 6 gig machine, and 4 on the 8 gig, I play with models off, spell effects down etc. I keep antivirus off, and background programs to a minimal. I should mention I never lose TS connectivity, or music streaming through rhapsody when this happens. My resourses look good when ever I check them.. it shouldnt be an issue.

I have not checked for HDD errors mainly because it is both computer systems at once. I do get a "Server is not responding" flash on the screen as it is trying to load, then crashes to login. Everything about this screams internet issue, except the fact it is ALWAYS only one zone, and that one zone changes from occurrence to occurrence. Really perplexing.