Intermittent Access Issues (July 15)

"Well one thing's for sure. This debacle has made it evident who does & who doesn't have any computer or networking skills/knowledge. It's been good for a laugh several times reading through this thread"--Gyurika

What a jerk! I've been a network administrator and programmer. I followed the hacks in this thread. They didn't work. So you got lucky and blame everybody else for being stupid. That's the textbook definition of a jerk.

EQ finally fired up for me today, after a complete outage of more than 72 hours. I'm very disappointed in the way SOE handled this. For example, there was never any official announcement, either here or on the help page, about the officially best way to try to work around the problem. I have mixed feelings about continuing.

I still cannot access game. Sometimes I make it as far as server select before being booted. 4 days??" Of course, I will be told that somehow this is all my fault and I need to be more patient. I think SOE is trying to tell me they do not want my business. Time to get the hint?

I had this experience on Sunday around noon PST, I reset my modem, rest my router, rebooted PC, did file validation, the SOE launchpad would fire up, the scrolling adverts wouldn't show up, that was my first sign that something was wrong, got to character selection, selected character, game would freeze at that point. Tried logging on in a separate laptop, same symptoms, crashed.

After a couple hours of messing around with it, I uninstalled the game, reinstalled, been running great after that.

still no access beyond a joke now what is going on ?

glad someone said it. people who CAN log in trolling people who can't, go figure. yeah, we're stupid because sony screwed up. makes sense.

grats on getting in. hopefully it'll be my turn soon.

still nothing !

24 hrs more and im off to guild wars again this is

so, yeah, about that 72 hour thing mentioned. it's looooong past that point. tick tock tick tock

How is it now that its 72 hours later and I can log into some of my accounts, but not all of them? Yet, I was just logged into all of them 2 hours ago...
When will you unfuck yourselves?

It has absolutely nothing to do with being a jerk. In 2014 with all the tools at your disposal if you can't adjust your network settings on your own & change your DNS like the numerous posts in numerous threads have shown throughout the forums then perhaps you have a bigger problem than not being able to access the game.

No reason to be offended or post in a negative manner (that's what I find funny) when all you need is a little patience & a bit of trial & error. By now all ISPs should be refreshed & everyone should be able to get back in. If you're still having trouble their may be another issue that is related to the DNS problems. PM me if you need any help & I'll be glad to do what I can to walk you through it. Here's a video to show you how to change your DNS settings in Windows 7. 8 is very similar, you just have to search for Network Settings in the Start Menu Search & adjust the settings the same

Here's one for Windows 8/8.1

"It has absolutely nothing to do with being a jerk. In 2014 with all the tools at your disposal if you can't adjust your network settings on your own & change your DNS like the numerous posts in numerous threads have shown throughout the forums then perhaps you have a bigger problem than not being able to access the game. "--Gyurika

Res ipsa loquitur.

I think you might be taking things too seriously Aelian unless that last bit was a joke. Quoting latin terms for various laws on a forum for an online MMORPG seems a bit overzealous. If you need help refer to the 2 videos I posted or if it's something else, please elaborate here or in a PM & I'll do what I can to help you.

And when you think about the actual cost per player.. even if you use the 15 dollar per month price, that's 50 cents a day using a 30 day per month average. Even if it hasn't resolved itself on your isp by tonite that's two dollars you've lost... and they've already decided to add two days to all accounts as compensation, so make it a even buck. Time to hire a lawyer indeed

And just to reiterate , they fixed what they could fix its up to the isp's that slack now to catch up, mine's been fine since Tuesday afternoon.

Yeah the initial issue was SOE's fault & was fixed pretty quickly but the way DNS propagates is automated & generally set at 48 hours to 72 hours by most ISPs. That particular aspect is out of SOE's hands & up the user to either manually refresh by following the videos above or the other guides posted or just waiting patiently for your ISP to refresh on their end. You can also run a command prompt (start - search - cmd) & type ipconfig /flushdns to refresh DNS cache on your system. That may or may not help depending on whether you reset your DNS to either OpenDNS or Google DNS or whether your ISP has refreshed their DNS cache at their end.

I was unable to log in until yesterday evening when I happened across a fix on Facebook. I put the numbers in the shown places and was able to log in to game. at about 730 ish EDT the following message came up in game

<SYSTEMWIDE_MESSAGE>:A new client has been pushed to the servers, please log out and run the patcher at your earliest convenience.

I changed the settings back to 'obtain' DNS setting and I did that. it 'hung' just prior to completely installing. I changed the numbers to what the previous video said. and again it hung just prior to completion, but this time I got this message.

Unable to write to Exception: Cannot open file - C:/Program Files/EverQuest/eqgame.exe (13) - http://eq.patch.station.sony.com/patch/sha/eq/eq.sha.zs/f3/723/51fb929a17f9f567e74e71b826ace143696. The file may be in use or you may lack the necessary permissions to install.

I am 65 yrs old, and did not grow up knowing how to program a computer. I know some, but definitely not enough to fix this without a handbook for dummies.


Is this something I've done wrong? or a step that I've overlooked? or something that will go away if I ignore it long enough?

In order to patch you must have all instances of EQ completely logged out. It can't overwrite files that are in use (if you're logged in at server select or beyond) so that is where the 2nd error is from.

I recommend setting your DNS to either of the following & leaving it that way permanently. These 2 sets are always the fastest to refresh & 100% stable.

8.8.8.8 - Google DNS
8.8.4.4 - Google DNS
208.67.222.222 - OpenDNS
208.67.220.220 - OpenDNS

Thank you for our response.
The only EQ that was running at the time was the launcher/patcher. I closed it with the task manager, and there was nothing else running.

I have the 2nd "open" set of numbers in my settings currently, so perhaps I should try the google settings.
Again, Thanks.

I apologize! When I closed the patcher using task manager, I was only on the Applications window. I just went to it to check and on the Processes window, there was running eqgame.exe. why it was still running after closing it, I have no idea, but that was the stopper. I am now able to get in game.

Thank you again.

You're welcome, glad I could help a fellow EQ player get back to EQing