Well....

Long story short... good, bad , none ? :)

I can't even play the game...

Bad enough it took me 8 hours to update the thing (10mbit connection).

Now i am stuck with a login problem. I log in and start the game. I make a character and try to log on with it. Here is where the fun part starts.

When i am connecting right after i've made a character i get a black screen with only my cursor showing. After that i get disconnected.

When i try to log on again i get FFXI-3001 error (Connection has timed out). Do note that i get it immidietly after loging on with the character at the "now loading" screen. Timeout after 5 seconds? Give me a break...

When i try to log on again after 3001 error i get the "Character already in game error". And the history repeats itself full circle.

I tried everything. Port forwarding/triggering. Reinstalling (Mmeh). Connecting without the router. Different servers.

I even asked a friend of mine, who is working as a sysadmin at my isp, if they are blocking any of the ports, or filter traffic or do anything that might prevent the packets from getting through. The answer was "no. double no. and no*3" and "why the heck would we want to block standard HTTPS and or HTTP ports o.O"

I have played dozens of other online games and never had any problems with other games.

Even though im running Vista x64 everything up to "now" worked fine without any issues at all. And i do mean everything (well there was an issue with Lotro, but it was resolved).

So here i am with 2 days of trial gone and i have yet to play the game...

Check your firewall settings. Also, games don't run on HTTP ports. Applications require you to forward TCP/UDP ports(sometimes both, but TCP is usually enough). If any of the following ports are blocked on your router or by your ISP, you will have connectivity issues.

Ports to open:
TCP 25, 80, 110, 443 or 50000 - 65535
UDP 50000 - 65535

Also, if you're on Vista, I assume you've already downloaded the Vista version of POL. I don't have Vista, so I don't know what effects running the non-Vista version will have on your game.

Remember that there are two applications that need firewall permissions. POL and FFXI.

Thank you very much for your help.

Ports 80 and 443 are standard http and https ports respectively. Also i have no firewalls running at all just for test. Ports 25 and 110 are smtp and pop3 ports. I bet all of them are needed for some POL functions.

I am 100% sure none of the ports are blocked. I trust my friend. And as for the configuration on my end...

Heck i can make my router do tripple backflips and 5 star hardest stuff in guitar hero

But i've had same problem without my router.

Still thank you for your trouble and i am glad that there are people trying to help me out any way they can with a decent advice.

POL does make use of both HTTP/HTTPS(when you activate content IDs/enter billing info) and SMTP/POP3 for POL mail.

The game itself uses a rather strange and broad range of ports: 50000-65535. There could be a problem there. You sound pretty sure that the ports aren't blocked, and you said you have no firewall running, so there's no use in wasting any more time on that point(especially since you tried bypassing the router).

I'm not going to lie, if you contact the game's customer support, they'll tell you to contact your ISP. If you contact your ISP, they'll tell you to talk to support for the game, etc. etc.

Problems like this are particularly tough to troubleshoot for that reason. The servers are up and running, and people are connecting without any problems. As far as the game's tech support is concerned, it's a problem on your end(or your ISP's).

Unfortunately, I don't think we'll be able to offer much more help here. It's frustrating when things like this happen to me, because I'm also always sure that my networking configuration/router set-up is flawless. In the end it's always a little thing I've overlooked, or my ISP's fault. Unfortunately where I live I have no other choice of ISP, so sometimes my only solution to a problem is to cry quietly in the corner.

Sorry I can't offer more help than that.

Originally posted by NotArkard

I'm not going to lie, if you contact the game's customer support, they'll tell you to contact your ISP. If you contact your ISP, they'll tell you to talk to support for the game, etc. etc.

Indeed. For that reason i rarely contact support and haven't in this case either, since i know i'll have to deal with generic answers/questions that won't help me at all in current case.

Oh well i'll just keep on tampering with things and will double check my settings. Until i either give up from frustration or 'till i get it working. Hope the second option comes first.

Again. Thanks.

You did not tell weather using VISTA or not?

Secondly even if XP,your driver may be the problem,this is PC gaming,it has always been like that.For those that do have problems there was actually only one driver that was stable for FFXI,most did not have the problem,but i did on one of my machines.Google FFXI nvidia driver,assuming using Nvidia.

I know their clueless staff talks about opening up ports lmao BS,the only ports iP's ever think about blocking is the ones Torrents use,even then it is not likely to happen.

Sound drivers can also cause problems ,if using some after market sound blaster.I quit supporting SB years ago after they scammed out Aureal.

Just to make triple sure, did you download the Vista version of the playonline component from the official site? I couldn't play with the game at all when I got my new rig and almost threw my head through my monitor until I found out there was another POL version. :)

As for the Nvidia drivers not working properly, I haven't had that issue since 2006 or maybe 2007, but it's been a while.

Well...

I just reconnected the router and turned off port forwarding. I also turned on my kaspersky.

I downloaded the Vista version of POL, but didn't bother installing it since i need to reinstall FFXI again.

I went to config and set every single setting to max. After that i tried running the game and logging in just for the kicks.

I don't know what happened... but i got in...

I just sat there for a minute without even flinching trying to understand what the hell just happened.

Well i hope this is over :) And i won't have to deal with same odd problem day after tomorrow :)

Again thank you everyone for your help.