I have just purchased FFxi 2008 pack for all of the expansions (on the pc). I have had no luck at all being to get into the game. I keep on getting the error 3001 message.

I have contacted POL regarding this and they sent me a document to read and have suggested that it is my router that is blocking some parts and stopping me from entering the game.

One of the things it mentions in the document is that various ports should be opened and one of them is port 25. now this is where the problem starts, AOL UK in its infinate wisdom has closed down port 25 to all users citing security issues as the reason, my netgear router does not have port forwarding in it so I therefore struggle to get into the game. I have spoken in length to netgear who say it is an ISP issue, The person I spoke to at AOL UK  asked if i could receive e-mails from my AOL account, apparently he thought that if I could then port 25 could not possibly be closed.

I would be interested to see if any other AOL UK users have had this problem and if so how did they overcome it?, I have asked how to get around it at POL but all they would say is that it is a connection issue and therefore not there problem.

Many thx

Chillx

You have my sympathies for having AOL. I have heard that something that AOL did makes it hard to play XI with it. You can try to google something, I don't know if that would help though. Best advice I could give is to get away from AOL, you're probably overpaying for the internet they give. I know it's like that here in the US. The only reason to use them are for certain things like parental restrictions and some of the community stuff. Anyway, hopefully someone will come up with something for you or you can find it on google or something. Best of luck to you.

Port 25 is SMTP ... which means if it were blocked you couldn't stand email. And what that would have to do with FFXI is beyond my knowledge.

I would first start with disableing your firewall and seeing if that helps. If it does then you can make sure POL and FFXI is on your Allow list and restart your firewall. Also you can try updating the firmware of your router if you have one and your modem.

This is part of the  doc they sent

Here is my suggestion to you, this worked for me:

1. On your router. If you have the option to add "Applications & Gaming" ports. Enter POLBOOT.EXE with port range of 50000 - 65535 protocols are “BOTH” (tcp/udp) and then what ever IP address of your machine is.

2. On your router, again. If you have the option to add "Applications & Gaming" ports. Enter POL.EXE with port range of 50000 - 65535 protocols are “BOTH” (tcp/udp) and then what ever IP address of your machine is.

3. On your firewall you must add the above two applications you set in your router, now on your firewall. You should be able to add polboot.exe and pol.exe to a list of programs your Firewall permits and denies. For these two programs you want to "Permit All" for their "Internet Access".

-This worked for me and it should work for you. This is not set in stone, but has been a proven solution. In addition, if anyone has another useful suggestion, please let us know.

Hope this helps everyone.

You could always try and turn your firewall off and see if that works.

yes ... POL needs port 25 ... it comes with an email feature. If you didn't have that then you couldn't send or receive those emails. Come to thing of it you probably couldn't send offline messages either ... um ... Yeah so you need it, but I don't think that is the cause of your problem. Try focusing on the other ports if you think it is a firewall issue.

Also, don't be running any P2P programs. This kinda craps out FFXI because too make packets are coming at once and you are creating a bottleneck on yourself. So when you are trying to update WoW and play FFXI make sure P2P is turned off. So you might want to stop downloading any music you are trying to download off those P2P sites or off bit torrent, becuase it is not only gonna bog you down, but it is illegal >.> .

Also run virus/malware scan.

Just a quick note - it makes perfect sense that POL would use Port 25, as it has an E-mail client built in.

Other than that, you may have heard that gamers avoid AOL like the plague - you now know why.