loading bar doesn't fill, no error message

[Duncani_Daho]

Here is an odd series of events. I have been playing since BETA and have had very few technical problems. Most of that 5 year span I played on pc's in Asian. The past three years I have been playing from Korea with very few problems on this system: Windows XP, 2 gig ram, Nvidia Geforce 7300.

Then suddenly five days ago, around March 18, I start having problems loading into the game. It says, "success..." but the loading bar never starts. The kbps rate starts about about 3.00 and then drops over the next 10 seconds to about 0.03. The numbers keep changing but it's always really low and I might wait 10 minutes but the loading bar never fills up.

So then I decided I wanted a bit better performance in general, so I reformatted my system and reinstalled Windows XP. The next day I changed my mind and opted to install Windows 7. I got online, downloaded DDO, and whamo! I enter my user name and password and the game data and examine files show the green check marks, and I click on Khyber.

But then I get the empty loading bar again, and the low and declining kbps rate. My internet connection is fine. Over the past few days I have actually made it into the game after choosing a character.

But the latency rate is around 440 and the loss % is around 26% with the character being basically stuck. The most I am capable of is typing into guild chat, "Sorry guys..."

I thought moving from Windows XP to Windows 7 would have fixed the problem, or at least presented me with a different one. But nope! Same exact problem.

Final note: I get no error message. I just says "success!" but the loading bar never begins to fill. And I almost never made it to the character page.

[Jiirix]

I guess with the updates the amount of content your PC has to load increases. More RAM or more swap file/page file could help. But thats just a guess…

[Duncani_Daho]

I guess with the updates the amount of content your PC has to load increases. More RAM or more swap file/page file could help. But thats just a guess…

It's odd because I went from fully functional one week ago-- quick launch to character page, and then loading times were decent, and play was also decent (though not great). To suddenly, about 5 days with no changes on my part, the game will not launch to my characters page. No loading bar. Just "Receiving Character Data..."

All of that was with Windows XP.

Then when I upgraded to Windows 7, same thing.

[DevHead]

It's odd because I went from fully functional one week ago-- quick launch to character page, and then loading times were decent, and play was also decent (though not great). To suddenly, about 5 days with no changes on my part, the game will not launch to my characters page. No loading bar. Just "Receiving Character Data..."

All of that was with Windows XP.

Then when I upgraded to Windows 7, same thing.

Run some ping tests to your NIC and your router to see if you're getting any loss. I'm not sure what you meant by your Internet connection being fine; please specify.

[Duncani_Daho]

Run some ping tests to your NIC and your router to see if you're getting any loss. I'm not sure what you meant by your Internet connection being fine; please specify.

Ok, thanks Dozkal.

I went to dslreports.com and did some broadband tests AND ping tests.

Here are some numbers from the ping tests (all were green check-mark rated)...

Four columns in the test; Loss 0%, Min Latency 211 ms, Average Latency 213 ms, Max Latency 222 ms. First hop ping 204 ms.


And the Speed Test from dslreports has me compare the broadband here to various cities in the US. latency was always around 114 ms, download was usually around 1150 kbs.

[Jybwee]

I'm actually out of town and don't have ddo on this machine so i can't check, but i'm perty sure the same servers host the website... tho i'm kinda just guessing here. you should get a more accurate view of your connection by tracert'n ddo.com in the command window.

start menu - run - cmd

type "tracert ddo.com"

if ya see any big pings there or a * (meaning a timeout) then you can get an idea of exactly where the problem is.
But then you usually get told to contact your isp if there is an issue... chances of something coming from that are not all too great.

Also If someone out there has a program like tcpview or somesuch they can loginto a server and get the exact ip address of a server.

Oh and also Windows 7 needs more system resources than XP so you might actually see a slight decrease in performance with only 2gb of ram.

win 7 sys req - http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/w...m-requirements
win xp sys req - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314865

[Duncani_Daho]

Here is the report from that ping. Also, I reinstalled DDO and am currently getting the exact same thing-- won't load to character page.

Tracing route to ddo.com [74.201.102.43]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 13 ms 14 ms 24 ms 10.249.160.1
2 26 ms 17 ms 56 ms 58.229.30.93
3 44 ms 11 ms 42 ms 58.229.28.13
4 33 ms 33 ms 144 ms 58.229.9.25
5 84 ms 23 ms 10 ms 118.221.7.38
6 384 ms 489 ms 416 ms 58.229.14.50
7 183 ms 205 ms 191 ms xe-11-2-0.edge2.LosAngeles9.Level3.net [4.53.228
.17]
8 164 ms 260 ms 237 ms ae-4-90.edge1.LosAngeles9.Level3.net [4.69.144.2
02]
9 240 ms 179 ms 198 ms sprint-level3-xe.losangeles9.Level3.net [4.68.11
1.170]
10 178 ms 184 ms 193 ms sl-st31-la-0-4-2-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.5.102
]
11 202 ms 201 ms 237 ms sl-crs2-ria-0-2-0-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.24.6
6]
12 205 ms 364 ms 200 ms sl-crs2-fw-0-9-5-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.8.155
]
13 320 ms 211 ms 229 ms sl-crs2-kc-0-0-0-2.sprintlink.net [144.232.19.14
1]
14 306 ms 244 ms 258 ms sl-crs1-chi-0-15-2-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.24.
204]
15 245 ms 236 ms 223 ms sl-crs2-akr-0-11-0-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.20.
163]
16 239 ms 255 ms 244 ms 144.232.19.135
17 255 ms 302 ms 257 ms sl-crs2-spr-0-0-2-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.25.2
3]
18 272 ms 293 ms 306 ms sl-st20-bos-0-0-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.8.48]

19 274 ms 324 ms 265 ms sl-internap-190725-0.sprintlink.net [144.223.45.
50]
20 301 ms 266 ms 259 ms border1.te8-1-bbnet2.bsn003.pnap.net [63.251.128
.107]
21 243 ms 283 ms 246 ms 74.201.102.105
22 256 ms 452 ms 255 ms 74.201.102.154
23 261 ms 255 ms 282 ms 74.201.102.43

Trace complete.

[Duncani_Daho]

Just bought and put in a new video card. Not top of the line but a definite improvement over my former Nvidia Geforce 7300 GS. This one is a Geforce GT 430. And I'm still having the SAME problem: can't get past the "Receiving Character Data..." message; loading bar stays at null.

Here's a whacky theory: the earthquake in Japan screwed with the route my connection takes to the game servers. Possible? I did speed tests on a couple of sites and my download speed was around 5 Mbps, or 5 seconds for a 5 Mb song. Upload however was horribly slow-- measureed at 0.36 Mbps, or something like that.

[Duncani_Daho]

A couple more twists to add here:

I downloaded Lamannia Test Server and am able to log into the character page without problem on the first try. Still NOT the case with Khyber. It takes me anywhere from 2-20 tries (the higher end more often) to get to my character list page. The loading bar will not fill up.

Experience a lot of lag on Lamannia and Khyber.

But I have tried other DDO servers lately and the Argo server lets me load the game quickly and play without much lag.

Is this a server population issue? I noticed that the +1 bonus loot for April Fool's Day weekend had more lag on my end.

Anyway, hope something is done about this...