Mass disconnection thread

Let me summarize my observations and my personal theory from the other thread. @orinj @thenamesdomino this might be helpful to pass along to your server folks.

1. It occurs in waves of mass DCs with periods of relative calm in between.
2. You are more likely to DC if you're in an instance. I have observed the behavior in DFSP and in Eden so far.
3. Whether or not you're using Arc has nothing to do with it (none of my computers use Arc, or Steam for that matter, to connect)
4. Most importantly, only certain characters/accounts are affected.

To explain #4... my main account contains four active characters, and my alt account contains one. Of these five, only the alt account character suffers from the DC problem. Any character on my main account remained on the server, even in DFSP during a mass DC incident. These conditions persist across many logins over multiple days, including periods of being offline which should be more than long enough for any relevant session data to expire. And yet, the issue continues to occur to the same character(s), while others on the same computer (which has no problem pinging the game server) are entirely immune.

My current theory - just an educated guess - is that multiple servers or sub-servers exist behind each of the publicly-visible ones (e.g. Etherblade, Tideswell), and the issue lies with one particular server in this group. These other servers would either be part of a specific game server (e.g. Etherblade would have a certain number of subservers to help manage its load), or they'd be separate from any of the game servers and are specifically used to handle logins, sessions/connections, etc.

Come to think of it, the latter setup seems more and more likely to me - because if it were just one of Etherblade's subservers, for instance, only Etherblade would be having the problem. Many games have separate login servers, and I wouldn't be surprised if PWE has multiple ones which you have to go through before you ever get to the game servers themselves. If even one of these is having issues, every character/account tracked through that server would suffer the result. Immediately after DCing, you can load up the server list and find that your game server is not pinging within the client - whereas if you were to ping it directly from the command prompt, you'd get a normal response (and again, in my particular case, only one of my clients - the one specifically running my alt account - is affected).

What's strange to me is how these tracking relationships persist across logins - I would think it randomizes which login server you connect to each time, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

What I would ask @orinj and company right now is this: Could you confirm if there are issues with any server(s) on your end? And if so, could we be enlightened as to what server(s) aside from the game server are involved in our connection to your side? And do any of them have external names/addresses we can ping, or are they all internal to your network?

No doubt there's a limit to how much they can reveal. And assuming there are sub-servers, many if not most of them will be internal only, meaning we couldn't ping them anyway. But if PWI has login servers at all, at least one of them should be pingable - if I understand correctly, anything that responds directly to external requests (i.e. our logins) should be pingable just like the game servers are. Having the names of all servers that handle external requests would be extremely helpful in giving us an idea of whether an issue lies with PWE or not. Some games even have unofficial server-status websites where you can check if one of the login servers, etc. isn't responding at the time.

Everyone is assuming that PWE/Arc cares about their customers experience. There is no indication that they do or they would officially address the issue here in the forums where their customers are complaining. PWI is the evil stepchild that PWE does not really want.

Everyone just has to get used to the DCs like it is part of the game.

I have been seeing issues and no responses for most of the 8 years I have been playing the game. The presence of GMs in PWI is like seeing a unicorn in real life. The current issue of DCs started on Friday.

I believe that these dc'so are happening too often and to too many people for it to be badluck on their end.
Definitely makes me not want to cash shop.

thenamesdomino wrote: »

Going to jump in here, we are aware of all the disconnections that are occurring. It's not limited to PWI, all of our Bejing titles have been affected. We believe that this is a Networking issue at our West Coast datacenter. Unfortunately I don't have more updates than that, but we are working on it. Have been for the past 3 days.

Thank you for the update. It is nice to know you are aware of the problem and trying to fix it. It is exactly the type of response that most of us have been wanting. I do understand that network issues can be complicated. I am a retired network administrator.

thenamesdomino wrote: »

Going to jump in here, we are aware of all the disconnections that are occurring. It's not limited to PWI, all of our Bejing titles have been affected. We believe that this is a Networking issue at our West Coast datacenter. Unfortunately I don't have more updates than that, but we are working on it. Have been for the past 3 days.

Thank you Domino.​​

Thank You for the update.