Greetings!

I downloaded the full client version and created a froob account.  I wanted to try things out before I invested in the expansions.  I had a number of technical issues I though I would see if anyone had any ideas on.

I run a fairly new rig with Windows Vista and dual GeForce 9800 GT video cards. 

It took me a lot of restarting the anarchy online launcher to finally get everything updated -it kept saying the desired patch couldn't be found and then if I restarted it, it somehow found it.  Weird.

Here is the problem most frustrating:

Often when I start the program, I can hear the music, see the program running in the system tray, but there is no visual -as if the game really didn't start.  When I start my task manager to manually shut down the program, the program just quits, which I also found weird.

Additionally, once I restarted the program, I couldn't log back in to my character -I would get a notice in the launcher window saying I was already logged in, try again in a few minutes.  I tried more than half an hour later and still couldn't get in. 

Anyone have any ideas?  I am trying a full re-install right now but I figure the same video issues are going to plague me. 

Should I wait for the graphics upgrade?  (Who knows when that will be.)

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

I have been wanting to try this game for a long time. I couldn't get over 5 fps on my system. Vista or Xp(neither helped), 8800 GTS 640 Mb, 4 gigs ram, Q6600 quadcore @3.2ghz. The fact your computer is not fairly old is working against you in this game. If you ever find a work around to make it work, please let me know. I tried everything but gave up. I will be able to play it once the graphics upgrade comes, but I say that it will be at least the end of this year (or longer) at this pace.

i've never had any problems running AO... but once in a light year i crash and when i log back in i can't log in my char either, just relog a couple times and it should solve it.

Don't give up on AO... Definitely one of the best games out there in my opinion!

I myself invested in the addons a couple years back. not sorry at all ;)

If you crash or lose connection or whatnot, your character is still online until it times out, you have to wait a few minutes until the system realizes you're no longer there and boots your character off before you can relog.  This can be a problem if you're in the middle of a fight when you lose connection, you'll probably end up dead before you can get back and finish the battle.

I've yet to have a problem running AO and I've done it both with an older machine under XP and a brand new, top of the line machine under Vista.  Both run fine, zero issues on my end, although I do hear about some people, especially running Vista and ATI video cards, who may have problems.  Maybe I'm just lucky.

In my experience "several minutes" is an exaggeration, with one caveat:

I've noticed that spamming login attempts never seems to connect, but if I wait 30 seconds after a failed connection attempt, it works almost every time.

Likewise I usually have no problems logging an alt account on the first attempt when the client is disconnected.

I can't help but notice that the logout timer is 30 seconds, so I suspect the logout timer resets on the server every time someone attempts connecting through the same account.   I don't know any deep dark secrets of how Funcom runs the servers, this is just something I've noticed over 7 years of playing AO.

Usually if I get booted, I just get up, go do something else and come back in a couple of minutes and I can connect just fine.  It may be a 30 second boot timer but it works just as fine after 5 minutes as it does if you get excited and only wait 31 seconds.