So this most recent Thursday on June 18th I attempted to browse the Daybreak PS2 forums and found that I was getting an endless "Connecting..." response instead of the page loading, eventually resulting in a time out error. This was abnormal, and actually my first thought was a possible DDoS on Daybreak again. So, I attempted to log in to the game and the launcher wouldn't work properly either. I think it was just going to a black box or refusing to open in general. Confused, I start trying to browse other DB sites, including the help site, then it hit me. Yep, can't access any DB related site whatsoever, including the support. All get a connection time out. Has my university's network been IP Blocked or something? I live in a university owned apartment complex and I've never had issues with Planetside 2 or DB/SoE sites for the better part of a year since moving here. I normally use the residents only "Housing" network, but I notice that if I use the "Guest" network I can access DB sites again as normal, since my IP changes. (I still can't run the game though, for some reason I get a G99 error at 94% on the guest connection...) As far as I can tell, my actual character / station name has not been banned (nor should it be), so what gives? It still shows as "Status: Active" on DB's site. I was also playing in-game and browsing DB forums perfectly fine the day prior on the 17th of June. Does anyone have more advice or tips to try? Nothing I've been able to dig up on Google or the search function has helped. What I've tried per internet recommendations; Using the Google public DNS Adding PS2 / DB sites to my hosts file + an ipconfig /dnsflush command Ensuring Launchpad.exe, awesomium (or whatever).exe, and that 3rd .exe are all added as exceptions in my firewall per DB FAQ Setting all of the above exes to admin privileges Disabling antivirus / firewall temporarily ipconfig /release and /renew to get a new IP (doesn't work for me) My tracert to lp.soe.com from the apparently blocked connection seems to start timing out on the 11th hop after some route through Las Vegas decides to double my latency... 9 33 ms 34 ms 33 ms 5-2-5.ear3.Dallas1.Level3.net [4.34.184.161] 10 68 ms 67 ms 67 ms ae-0-11.bar1.LasVegas1.Level3.net [4.69.148.125] 11 * * * Request timed out. Does anyone else have any further recommendations that don't involve escalating things to a software level? I don't want to try spoofing or anything like that because I'm not sure what the university and/or DB will perceive that as. (potentially scummy?) Also, yes, I opened a support ticket on the same day, June 18th. Still anxiously awaiting a reply but I'm fearing it might be mid next week before I even get the first generic response. If a mod happens to drop by and thinks they can do anything to help or speed up this process I'd love to PM you my ticket reference #. Jonesing to get back into my favorite FPS. Thanks to all readers.
I don't think that's the problem because their Guest network is still able to visit the site with no problems. I might contact them on Monday as well if DB hasn't replied to my ticket yet. Is there actually a VPN that would support decent gameplay in Planetside 2 that's free and legitimate? I don't know that much about VPNs; they always seemed a bit sketchy since I assume they could intercept your passwords or other data.
Sorry, but how's that going to help me connect to Planetside 2 servers? Doesn't someone else have to provide the connection? If you mean just for DB websites I'm content to swap to the guest network to use them while this gets ironed out. If this works for actual gameplay, could you give more detail? Btw, I'm actually on Windows 7. I can follow the guide, I just don't know how it helps me play Planetside 2 without a 3rd party.
Could it be possible that a bad ps2. Player for example a hacker got your university home network banned? Or your university has started blocking ps2.
My theory is that someone was using one of the university's set of IPs and got banned for cheating or something and now mine has refreshed and acquired the blocked one. I don't think the university itself would block Daybreak. Their "residential network" resource / helpline will actually provide general technical support for gaming devices for people who live on campus. I'm probably going to give them a call in the morning and see if they can do anything to change my IP in the meantime since DB will probably be very slow to resolve this.
Maybe you have to call Daybreak to shove your $5 bucks into their face and tell them to unlock your IP.
If that could be the case, I'd stop trying to login with your game until you hear from the support or get your IP changed. I don't know of the innocence of the people in question, but some have posted claims of being banned just that way: obtaining a cheater IP and being banned as their secondary account. Also VPN and proxies are forbidden by the game ToS as they could enable cheating or circumventing the IP bans.
Ok, so I spoke to the university's network help desk. To make a longish story short, the technician seemed to believe there wasn't anything I could do that I haven't already tried and he said that he couldn't change my public IP on his end. Great. Also, tried pulling the same Wifi on my phone and it was assigned the same public IP as my computer. It also cannot connect to any Planetside or Daybreak related websites without a connection time out error. Sigh.
Another update. In a last ditch attempt, I tried tethering my phone to my PC as a mobile hotspot to try to get online. This actually worked, albeit with an unplayable connection. I was able to get past the launchpad for the first time and to the character selection screen. I also managed to log onto my character and spawn onto Esamir but I couldn't do anything due to terrible connection quality. However, this proves that my character/account is not itself banned. I tried changing over to my usual housing network again after using my phone's internet to get past the launchpad but to no avail. It just told me it was unable to connect to the server when I picked my character.
Here are the DBGC rules -- if an IP is banned it stays banned.. even if you are not the perpetrator of the problem, if you were playing on a WAN network ( none DSL ) I think you will be out of luck. DBGC specifically say you must use a standard DSL line. I got this feeling you were playing on something that was not DSL... ! Best of luck in your endeavors...!
Where are you reading that information? It would be a foolish policy considering your public IP can be reassigned to an innocent person and is also spoofable. Banning an IP is not only ineffective at thwarting the actual cheater but has a high chance to negatively affect legitimate users.
I don't make the rules.... man ...only spit back what the DEV's have said... they may consider Public WiFi as a none DSL and it may not be on a standard DSL line ... here again a Public WiFi may be a WAN network.... well with in the rights of DBGC to BAN those IP addresses. Just because it's WiFi does not mean it's DSL.. You can thank the Hackers for the crackdown.
It's not actually public wifi if that matters. It's a private, password protected, secured network for campus residents only. Also what are you talking about DSL? Most people where I live at least have cable, the university might even use fiber since it has really fast download / upload speeds. DSL is like the bare minimum, what other option is there? Dial-up? Are you trying to say I should use a wired connection instead of wireless? That would make more sense than WiFi vs DSL... It's probably well within the rights of DB to ban everyone right now and never operate Planetside 2 again, that doesn't mean it's in their best interest. Neither is it in their best interest to ban a loyal player like myself. I've been playing the game well over two years, if they decided to give me the middle finger and do nothing to help a legitimate player I'd be sure to never play another DB game again and recommend the same to my friends. I doubt they'll do that though.
I feel for you -- I really do.. I would be F#ing P##issed to. But I have seen DBGC ban an entire network over seas because of hackers. And no doubt the University network is not DSL for the most part. What the WiFi routers connect to could be any kind of a WAN network... that you have no control over. The crack down is because of the hackers and DBGC is just cleaning up the problem... ! Your just a causality of war. Sorry
Is that the case? Several DBG employees knew at some point that I use a VPN for a better connection including PromptCritical. It would be weird that none of them told me that it actually is against the ToS. I went through the ToS and I am right. There is no section about spoofing your identity, IP address, using VPNs or Proxies. There is however section 7.1 which states at one point: https://www.daybreakgames.com/terms-of-service?locale=en_US This means that ban evasion is not allowed, though I am not sure if that would apply if the user himself wasn't banned. I would rather say it doesn't.
Well so far I mainly just received the annoying generic form letter reply from Daybreak. When I explained that I already provided virtually all of that info they just come back saying to check with my ISP (which I already have) and are claiming that they are not blocking my public IP that is having issues. So here we have the classic game of each side pointing the finger at the other. Meanwhile, the customer is the one reaping the consequences. What am I supposed to do at this point? Two separate devices are confirmed to have trouble connecting to anything Daybreak related from that IP address so I tend to think it's not on my hardware's end, especially when I CAN connect with my phone's internet from both the phone itself and my PC when tethered. I also don't really think my university as the ISP has anything to do with it.
