these forums are slow as all hell and it's not our fault

Yep, I agree, good work.

Other options:
1. There's something goofy about your DNS (try https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/ maybe?)
2. There's something in your network or your ISP's network that has some bad cached data. (Try with your mobile device not connected to your network?)
3. There's something related to your account that is sending you on bad paths (Try while logged out or in a different account?).
4. That I get the same redirects, but something at my ISP is blocking them. I didn't look at my firewall for soe.com traffic.

Yep.

Switching to OpenDNS/Google was going to be my next step. Disabling the hosts file entries for testing...

Sorry for missing it. Thanks for going above and beyond to figure out the issue. I hope you find it and get the website devs to fix it (if it's on their end).

Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\Users\Abuser>tracert forums.daybreakgames.com

Tracing route to forums.daybreakgames.com [69.174.204.36]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms Wireless_Broadband_Router.home [192.168.1.1]
2 7 ms 6 ms 7 ms lo0-100.BSTNMA-VFTTP-356.verizon-gni.net [96.237
.116.1]
3 9 ms 12 ms 9 ms B3356.BSTNMA-LCR-21.verizon-gni.net [100.41.4.32
]
4 * * * Request timed out.
5 9 ms 9 ms 9 ms 0.et-10-1-0.BR1.BOS30.ALTER.NET [140.222.236.253
]
6 8 ms 6 ms 7 ms verizon.com.customer.alter.net [204.148.29.218]

7 76 ms 74 ms 74 ms ae-0-11.bar1.LasVegas1.Level3.net [4.69.148.125]

8 * * * Request timed out.
9 * * * Request timed out.
10 * * * Request timed out.
11 * * * Request timed out.
12 * * * Request timed out.
13 * * * Request timed out.
14 * * * Request timed out.
15 * * * Request timed out.
16 * * * Request timed out.
17 * * * Request timed out.
18 * * * Request timed out.
19 * * * Request timed out.
20 * * * Request timed out.
21 * * * Request timed out.
22 * * * Request timed out.
23 * * * Request timed out.
24 * *

Added entries for DNS:
8.8.8.8
8.8.4.4

Closed web brower.

Disabled and Enabled network connection.

Logged into the forums and it's working fine (with the HOSTS file entries commented out).

Shame on these ISPs for keeping faulty entries.

Thanks all.

Verizon is your ISP? bad verizon!

Verizon is terrible, they blocked e-mail ports for my attorney's office connection.

How the hell are you supposed to run a law office without e-mail?

I appreciate all the information on this. I'm going to pass along to our technical folks.

Navigating forums and subforums was just fine, but it took an additional 10-20 seconds to open any thread. The delay remained after completely clearing history and cookies. Blocking www.soe.com and www.station.sony.com via the hosts file completely cleared up the delay. My ISP is Cox. Logging into the forums via my phone (AT&T) never had any delays.
Hope this helps.

Try making a .bat file with
ipconfig /release
ipconfig /renew
ipconfig /flushdns

Or just open a command prompt (administrator) and type them in by hand.

This is very interesting. I'm going to pass this along because it does appear to be related to this ISP.

What about using another DNS server like Google's? I have no issue accessing the forums using google's DNS server. And if Cox's DNS server is still returning soe/sony stuff they have serious issues and should not be trusted at all

I also have Cox for my ISP and am experiencing the same issue. Trying to open any forum page and the bottom left corner of the screen clearly shows "connecting to www.soe.com". I takes anywhere from 20 - 45 seconds to get any page to display. I've checked cache and cookies for any references to soe.com and there are none. Using Firefox for the browser.

Same thing happens to me, can clearly see www.soe.com appear in corner and hang there for 10-20 seconds trying to open any thread, i am in UK and i use BT and using firefox. Not sure how to block those sites from host file

This has been an issue for a while now since Daybreak switched off the sony domain to daybreakgames.com. It's been reported many times. I blocked those domains on my ad blocker long ago and that fixes it as well but adding them to the host file does as well.

Yes, it's been an ongoing issue for months. I would just like to see this fixed at the source because it affects all platforms and not just Windows devices.

I see this as well, does not matter which of my machines I use, but the topics on the forums are just horribly slow to read, another one from the UK using BT.

Here's at least one case of whats happening:
From your source:

HTML:

<script src="js/merc/message_history.js?_v=bba17b4a"></script>

The server, when requesting https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/js/merc/message_history.js?_v=bba17b4a returns a 302, which returns a raw of

Code:

HTTP/1.1 302 Found
Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2016 16:28:16 GMT
Server: Apache
Location: https://forums.station.sony.com/forbidden.html
Content-Length: 305
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
 
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">
<html><head>
<title>302 Found</title>
</head><body>
<h1>Found</h1>
<p>The document has moved <a href="https://forums.station.sony.com/forbidden.html">here</a>.</p>
<hr>
<address>Apache Server at forums.daybreakgames.com Port 443</address>
</body></html>

So, there are 2 faults, First, a bad linking to a js, second your 404 handler is going to the wrong domain.


Still trying to find where its requesting https://www.soe.com/community which its doing as an image request, even though I don't have the issue.

Update:

That redirect, when my browser asks for it as a script, instead of image, becomes a 302, with raw header return of

Code:

Connection: Keep-Alive
Content-Length: 288
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2016 16:47:18 GMT
Keep-Alive: timeout=15
Location: https://www.soe.com/community
Server: Apache

So theres the soe.com reference

I have Verizon FIOS (Boston area) and I experience this same long delay when reading the forums. Been like this for months now.