Turbine doesn't want me to play apparently.

[Bulbous]

honestly OP, i would not be using Windows 8. playing outdated games with relatively new OSes leads to a world of problems on some machines. And besides windows 8 is garbage, pretty much Vista 2.0

Try lotro with windows 7.

I would agree, though I would say that Windows 8 is much crappier than Vista. Vista got a lot of bad press but wasn't actually that bad of an OS. They didn't really change THAT much in Vista to produce the excellent Windows 7. But Windows 8 is pretty much dead already. Microsoft will be offering free upgrades to Windows 10 next year.

[REMalachi]

hm, you make a good point. In that the new OS may be some how making a problem. I could try compatibility win7 mode. another solution attempt I had not fully considered. I'll get back with the results.

[REMalachi]

Logged into new character after changing to compat win7 mode, new character plays. Switch to next character, no load, frozen at loading screen fails to connect to server. Same problem in essence. no change at all.

The entire problem is isolated to lotro, to respond to one of the replies. All other websites and games play fine.
Have been playing Warframe made by digital extremes for 6 hours without any problems at all. Downloading games from steam to flesh out my library again as well.
Lotro is the only one I am having problems with, both their website and the game.

Edit: now testing winxp sp3, Can't hurt to try, although it played for 2 weeks without any of these changes being needed before, but I'm willing to try anything pretty much at this point.

winxp fails to run as well. really odd to me that I can log into a new character, or a given character one minute, then cannot log in at all the next.

If I log into hughe manne my lvl 58 hunter, I cannot log into tucklebery fynn. or erinor sidhe, If I log into erinor, i cannot log into the to the other two.
if by some chance it does let me do it, it will log me out with in minutes, usualy shortly after talking in chat. although that is only coincidental. I think.
I made a new toon, ellezah kees, she plays fine, in tutorial, cannot now log into any other toon on the server.
in point of fact today I have not been able to log in at all, except on that level 5 in tutorial.

[welden]

I had a similar problem with one of the computers I play Lotro at home on ( I have 5 total). This particular computer used to play lotro just fine but then started repeatedly crashing without any warning. I tried everything I could think of...updated video drivers, went and tried earlier versions of those drivers, deleted lotro then reinstalled it, reformated hard drive then reinstalled it. After all that I finally switched out the video card from another computer that Lotro was running pretty stable on and "voila" it worked!

My guess is that as the game is updated and upgraded from time to time it goes through various code and hardware changes that sometimes dont play well with previously working video card and motherboard/video combos out there. I however, have an advantage since I own several computers that I can swap out parts with. This option may not be available for you to try, but if you could manage to find someone with another system that will run Lotro fairly stable on and who willing to let you do some part swapping then you might just find a solution to your dilemma?

I am hoping you eventually find some solution whatever it may be because this is a great game that more people should and would play if they could give it an honest try!

good luck

Welden

[REMalachi]

My dear gods in heaven, Now that same character I can log into in tutorial is getting ejected, and won't load out when transitioning from tutorial. Ive crashed twice at the end of the cut scene waiting for load screen.
Seriously. this is getting tiresome.

another interesting note, none of the link tabs on the client respond at all.

[Ziane]

Maybe reinstall DX9.0c?

[Amennator]

I am just curious but are you running Windows 8 32bit or 64 and how much ram do you have?

[Gandolf_TheOld]

Did a trace route other day noted that I drop at node 2, and 8. Not sure exactly what that means , and obviously I should probably talk with proper tech support rather than the one who answers the phone when I call my ISP. ( i need tech not an operator who typically handles billing problems)

Ping test shows not loss how ever. Even with game running waiting for error out no change in internet ping at all.

When you call your ISP complain about the quality of service not that your tracert shows an issue with some ip address. Never complain about some ip address always complain about quality of internet service, that is what you are paying for. You ability to see each ip along the route is just incidental and supports your poor quality of service claim. When you call to complain ask for a tech and talk about BER, lag, dropped packets this helps get you to the techs. Oh, remember to be polite.

[Nymphonic]

honestly OP, i would not be using Windows 8. playing outdated games with relatively new OSes leads to a world of problems on some machines. And besides windows 8 is garbage, pretty much Vista 2.0

Try lotro with windows 7.

I pretty muich have to go with Frost on this one. I've had every windows since 3.1, and this is the first to give me headaches.

[REMalachi]

I am just curious but are you running Windows 8 32bit or 64 and how much ram do you have?

win8 64 bit, 8gb ram.

Maybe reinstall DX9.0c?

Installed latest directx, perhaps trying x9 specifically might do something, although I'm not sure what, will try it.
edit-directx9 is overridden by directx11.2 which is bundled in win8.1, my current OS.

When you call your ISP complain about the quality of service not that your tracert shows an issue with some ip address. Never complain about some ip address always complain about quality of internet service, that is what you are paying for. You ability to see each ip along the route is just incidental and supports your poor quality of service claim. When you call to complain ask for a tech and talk about BER, lag, dropped packets this helps get you to the techs. Oh, remember to be polite.

yea, the guy who answers the phone when you first call tech support is never going to give any real assistance beyond what the teleprompter says to them. I need to escalate the issue to tier 2 tech support, the guys in the back who actually do all the work. Its the weekend now, so I'm having to wait it out, again. I get tired of talking to them mostly because they talk with the assumption that every person on my side of the phone is senseless and doesn't know how to do more than turn on the computer, at least thats the attitude i hear in their voice when they talk. Most times the things they are telling me to do, test, look at, I already did 4 times before calling them. ISP's are a pain to talk to no matter what company you go through.

[Gandolf_TheOld]

Pretty much agree about Win 8, however Win 8.1 seems to be better behaved and you can get away from that @^&%(* $%#@@ (*&^ 7564 screen of ^$!* ^%&#)( ^% $##$^!@ blocks.

[REMalachi]

Pretty much agree about Win 8, however Win 8.1 seems to be better behaved and you can get away from that @^&%(* $%#@@ (*&^ 7564 screen of ^$!* ^%&#)( ^% $##$^!@ blocks.

yea, I turn off all of those security things windows puts in now. I actually very much dislike a program excluding the users preference from applying. I don't use the UAC, Firewall, Windows Defender, components at all, they are completely disabled in services to eliminate them from interfering with me.
I have a friend who keeps arguing how much "danger" i'm in like that, I keep pointing out to him the computer isn't going to come to life and attack me. I Don't live in fear, I will not operate my computer as though I am afraid of it.
I personally think firewalls and all of that are frauds, Oh look Norton scanned my computer, sent a signal to its database, populated a list to tell me what it found there, and claims its protecting me. Isn't that special. lol.

I haven't actually run a firewall, antivirus, malware, or any other form of "protection" for 2 yrs, and I have not had a single issue with internet threats.

(someones bound to try to equate this problem with Lotro to a sign of one, I'll counter with lotro (game and website) are the only place I am having a problem, so unless a virus is directly impeding my ability to go specifically to this game, I stand by my statement)

As far as my ISP is concerned, if I were having connectivity issues on other places I might be more inclined to challenge them, How ever every other game and website I go to works flawlessly. So logically it cannot be the ISP, as a signal problem or tower failure would not exclusively effect Lord of The Rings Online.
I also do not believe it is a firewall issue, My firewall is wide open, I set all ports to open with forwarding, both inbound and out. and then turned off the firewall in services. I also disabled the windows defender, and the UAC. I downloaded Warframe last night, played it with no problems, no drops, no interruptions, not even lag. Warframe is only 2 yrs old, in beta and needs more requirements than Lotro has currently. If that game can play it stands to reason that this one should. I'm quite certain the problem is in the servers here, I don't know what, or how, but I've exhausted all possible avenues, everything everyone is posting to try are elements I have either tried or eliminated due to it not applying ( I don't have a modem for example) I use clearspot voyager hotspot, a portable wifi/wired device that fits in my pocket, it picks up 4g networking just like your smartphone or android, and works very nicely every where I go. I have had it for 3 yrs now.. I get 10-12mbps download speed, and .95 upload speeds, for 55$ a month, anywhere I want to go.
I can play World of Warcraft, Everquest 2, DCUO(DC Universe online), Rift, Defiance, League of Legends, Warframe, 9dragons, Path of Exile, Diablo 3, Neverwinter, and my steam client has 40 games on my favorites list alone, out of 60 total I own, flawlessly. I honestly do not believe it is my computer or my internet.

[Hurin]

As far as my ISP is concerned, if I were having connectivity issues on other places I might be more inclined to challenge them, How ever every other game and website I go to works flawlessly. So logically it cannot be the ISP, as a signal problem or tower failure would not exclusively effect Lord of The Rings Online.

No, it's not your ISP directly. Your connection to them directly is likely sound. However, the particular route that your ISP takes across the internet to that particular datacenter (the one housing LotRO's servers), across various other providers, may in fact be problematic at a certain point.

If you are able to run a traceroute and isolate which of the hops first gives you trouble (the hops earliest/closest to you in the list), a decent ISP will often coordinate an effort to investigate the problem with that hop. It may not be their connection to that hop. It may in fact be that they hand off to (picking/inventing names at random) Sprint, and Sprint hands off to CentralTelecom, and it's a link between CentralTelecom and NewEnglandISP where the problem actually resides. But since neither CentralTelecom nor NewEnglandISP are likely to take a call from Joe Blow calling from home and complaining about his game's performance, you need to enlist the aid of your ISP. They will/should listen to an ISP reporting the problem. But your ISP will need to take your call seriously first which means you're going to need to have your ducks in a row and some decent evidence to present that a hop along this particular route is problematic.

Regarding Windows 8. With about twenty minutes of customizing (with built-in tools, nothing third-party), you can get everything behaving pretty much how you want and get all that "metro UI" stuff cleared off. Now with 8.1 and the recent "desktop" update, it's even easier and more desktop-user friendly. There are a lot of worthwhile changes and enhancements to Windows 8 that I like (from latest version of Hyper-V, to System Refresh, to the improved file copy GUI, etc.). And once set up competently, its GUI and behavior is hardly distinguishable from Windows 7.

Incidentally, the Start Screen is actually sorta nice once you get used to it. And few people realize this, but once you clear out the metro-fullscreen/tablet apps, it's no more intrusive or distracting than the old school Start Menu. Think about it. . . in Windows 7, if you wanted a program from the Start Menu, you clicked Start, and then navigated to the program you wanted, and then clicked it. At which point the program loaded and you were shown it on your desktop in a window. With the Windows 8 Start Screen, if you want a program from the Start Screen, you click Start, and then navigate to the program you want, and click it. At which point the program loads and is shown on your desktop. The exact same behavior. Just looks different (and once you're used to it, some like it better). But people hate change.

I've explained/demonstrated this to several people when I've put Windows 8 on their computers. Every one of them has eventually come around.

The removal (and eventual reinstatement) of the Start button itself was silly however. Will grant the H(win)8ters that though.

--H

[Nymphonic]

Hurin, I looked at your signature and actually had to look that word up. Learn something new everyday!

[Hurin]

Hurin, I looked at your signature and actually had to look that word up. Learn something new everyday!

I had been misusing it for years. And everyone was too kind to correct me.

To the OP, I realize you've done some rudimentary tracerouting, etc. Remembered it vaguely and now have gone back and reviewed.

Try this. . . do a traceroute while connected to your ISP.
Then do a traceroute from your neighbor's ISP (assuming you have permission of course).
If you both use the same ISP, we wouldn't expect any improvement or change since the route should be identical.
If you use different ISPs but the two routes eventually converge on a similar route across that region to the datacenter housing LotRO, that would explain why you have the issue on both connections even though they are different ISPs.

I may goof around and see if I can find a good free tool for diagnosing this sort of thing. Someone posted one in another thread on these forums recently. It's been years since I've had to track something like this down and often tracert and ping will suffice. But keep in mind that not all devices will even respond to a ping (they can be told not to do so) and that connectivity issues to hop #8 can actually be caused by issues at a prior hop. Which is why you have to isolate the closest/earliest problematic hop.

--H

[Hurin]

Hard to believe. . . but UOTrace still exists and can be downloaded from EA here.

I used to use this utility a lot because it gets around the ping limitations of the built-in Windows command. Especially the ability to shorten the interval between ping attempts so that you can ping 1000 times in just a few seconds rather than in several minutes. And, of course, it takes all the busy-work out of running your own tracert and ping commands.

Some instructions, tips, and caveats. . .

• It's hosted by EA directly and came up clean in virustotal so it's almost certainly okay.
• When it first launches it's going to ask if you want to download the server list (for UO!), say no.
• Immediately go to "Options" and enable "Advanced Mode"
• type gls.lotro.com in the provided field, and then click "Trace Route" button. Wait for the trace route to complete.
• Expand the window (drag lower-right) down if needed so you can see all entries.
• Right-click any "hop" along the way and choose "poll" to ping (rapidly!) that hop.
• After a while, right-click again and choose "stop polling. . ."
• Do NOT use the graphical "poll" button along the top. That will poll all hops sequentially. This could have its uses, but isn't necessary and will take a very long time to build up useful data.
• You can see how many packets were sent and received on the right in "Pkt r/s" column. Keep in mind that you might interrupt the polling before a sent packet can be returned. So one lost packet or so isn't necessarily even technically "lost." Obviously, the percentage of lost packets is also listed for you.
• If one hop doesn't respond, see if the hop after it does respond. In this way, you can determine if the first hop is having trouble, or if it is just merely configured not to respond to pings (or deprioritizes them to the point where it often drops ping packets w/out harm to actual traffic).
• Work your way outward until you isolate the hop that is dropping a significant number of packets (again, making sure to try the hops on either side of it too).
• It's normal for the first hop or two to not respond. For some reason, my ISPs' never do.
• The program will often crash when exiting. If I recall, it also sometimes locked up when you'd "stop polling". . . hey, it's free. No complaints!

Brings back memories!

[Hurin]

Quick UOTrace example. . .

Using the instruction above, here's what I get (note beforehand that I'm not having any connectivity issues to LotRO). . .



A couple of things to note here. . .

• I blacked out my local ISP's IPs and hostnames. Just because I'm a paranoid/private person.
• I first decided to check out hop #7 (right-click and "poll". . . then right-click and "stop polling"), and as you can see, it's doing great.
• Farther along the route, hop #12 is also fine.
• At Turbine's border (hop #14, highlighted in yellow), you might think there's a problem at first glance, because it gives 100% packet loss. Yikes!
• And yet that's a false indicator. Because the hop immediately after (#15) it responds fine and has 0% packet loss. So #14 is just configured to ignore ICMP packets (ping, etc.). You can't get to #15 without going through #14. So #14 is fine.

Q: So if that's what a healthy route looks like, what do I look for with a bad route?
A: You look for a hop that has significant packet loss and all hops afterward also have significant packet loss. A hop with packet loss followed by a hop without packet loss is (usually/generally) fine and not the culprit for any connectivity issues.

[REMalachi]

That was an extensive explanation , I will download that program and give that a go.
be back with the results in a while.

[REMalachi]

Host Name IP Address Hop Ping Time Ping Avg % Loss Pkts r/s Ping best/worst
clearspot 00000000000 1 1ms 1ms 0% 40 / 40 1ms / 1ms
* Unknown Host * 0.0.0.0 2 0ms
* Unknown Host * 10.41.172.197 3 85ms 85ms 0% 40 / 40 70ms / 139ms
75-94-255-161.gar.clearwire-wmx.n75.94.255.161 4 87ms 97ms 0% 40 / 40 74ms / 157ms
75-94-255-130.gar.clearwire-wmx.n75.94.255.130 5 84ms 98ms 0% 40 / 40 74ms / 243ms
sl-st50-atl-.sprintlink.net 160.81.234.57 6 89ms 96ms 0% 40 / 40 69ms / 212ms
* Unknown Host * 144.232.11.26 7 89ms 92ms 0% 40 / 40 87ms / 148ms
* Unknown Host * 0.0.0.0 8 0ms
internap-gw.customer.alter.net 152.179.134.214 9 114ms 115ms 0% 40 / 40 111ms / 171ms
border1.te7-1-bbnet1.bsn003.pnap.63.251.128. 43 10 116ms 119ms 0% 40 / 40 99ms / 182ms
turbine-7.border1.bsn003.pnap.net64.95 .76.202 11 118ms 100% 0 / 39
* Unknown Host * 74.201.102.154 12 100ms 104ms 0% 39 / 39 98ms / 156ms
* Unknown Host * 74.201.102.12 13 114ms 117ms 0% 39 / 39 94ms / 184ms

copy of my traceroute data using that program, this is the second run, I used polling on the first one for several minutes on each node, displaying this one simply to show the results, no loss of packets.
would it be effected by me connecting to the game itself? would I be able to run some sort of scannig program to detect loss at the time of error, and perhaps see where that is occuring?
*altered IP on node 1, personal IP.

running a 3rd one now, polling to 1k to see average ping time

new test with polls at sections:
Host Name IP Address Hop Ping Time Ping Avg % Loss Pkts r/s Ping best/worst
clearspot 0000000000 1 1ms 1ms 0% 3 / 3 1ms / 1ms
* Unknown Host * 0.0.0.0 2 0ms
* Unknown Host * 10.41.172.197 3 82ms 79ms 0% 3 / 3 74ms / 83ms
75-94-255-161.gar.clearwire-wmx.n 75.94.255.161 4 88ms 90ms 0% 3 / 3 88ms / 94ms
75-94-255-130.gar.clearwire-wmx.n 75.94.255.130 5 89ms 87ms 0% 3 / 3 84ms / 89ms
sl-st50-atl-.sprintlink.net 160.81.234.57 6 84ms 111ms 0% 3 / 3 84ms / 159ms
* Unknown Host * 144.232.11.26 7 102ms 98ms 0% 1014 / 1014 65ms / 228ms
* Unknown Host * 0.0.0.0 8 0ms
internap-gw.customer.alter.net 152.179.134.214 9 130ms 116ms 0% 993 / 993 54ms / 293ms
border1.te7-1-bbnet1.bsn003.pnap 63.251.128.43 10 114ms 120ms 0% 999 / 999 58ms / 314ms
turbine-7.border1.bsn003.pnap.net 64.95.76.202 11 115ms 100% 0 / 2
* Unknown Host * 74.201.102.154 12 111ms 119ms 0% 1059 / 1059 58ms / 244ms
* Unknown Host * 74.201.102.12 13 114ms 114ms 0% 2 / 2 114ms / 114ms

[Hurin]

I think what I would do at this point is keep that program up while playing (play in windowed mode if you can) and as soon as the issue start to materialize, use UOTrace to "poll" hop #12 (74.201.102.154). See if there is packet loss at that point. If none, not much left to do on that end of things. If there is some, work your way a few hops back and try to isolate which one is acting up per the tips/instructions prior.

Sorry if this has been asked and answered before. . . but what is the type of internet connection to your home? Cable, DSL, sightline wireless? And, what is the type of connection between your computer and your home network? Wireless I presume?

--H

Edit: To answer your question, you could play the game while running a DOS command line with the following running:
ping -t gls.lotro.com

The -t makes it ping continuously. You can press CTRL-PAUSE|BREAK to see a quick readout of statistics so far while continuing the pinging. Or, you can press CTRL-C to stop pinging and get the final statistical readout.

[REMalachi]

I think what I would do at this point is keep that program up while playing (play in windowed mode if you can) and as soon as the issue start to materialize, use UOTrace to "poll" hop #12 (74.201.102.154). See if there is packet loss at that point. If none, not much left to do on that end of things. If there is some, work your way a few hops back and try to isolate which one is acting up per the tips/instructions prior.

Sorry if this has been asked and answered before. . . but what is the type of internet connection to your home? Cable, DSL, sightline wireless? And, what is the type of connection between your computer and your home network? Wireless I presume?

--H

Using clear.com hotspot mobile, which is basicly like a cell phone signal, wifi, its called clearspot voyager, tiny grey box fits in your pocket, lol, ...I can connect to it wirelessly or direct USB to my laptop. Which operates on ethernet when connected via USB.

Redownloading game now, with the program running , so I can monitor the entire process, it doesn't hesitate to be a problem, from the moment I log in, so it really shouldn't take long to detect something if there is something to detect.

[Hurin]

Using clear.com hotspot mobile, which is basicly like a cell phone signal, wifi, its called clearspot voyager, tiny grey box fits in your pocket, lol, ...I can connect to it wirelessly or direct USB to my laptop. Which operates on ethernet when connected via USB.

Okay, we're going to just have to agree to disagree here and I'm not saying I'm giving up just based on this. . . but I'm the type of guy who insists on using wired connections to everything whenever possible. Ran cat5e through my ceiling so that my server in the hall closet would be GbE wired, and same for my wife's computer, and all the other devices I could reach. So, in our house, the only things running on wireless are those that have to be wireless. And that's residential wi-fi coming from my router rather than a cellular signal.

All of which is to say that I positively cringe when I hear that you're trying to game on that connection. But since all your other games work fine, I guess we just shelve that and move forward. . .

At this point, we're just trying to rule things in or out. Please do keep that ping going in a Command Prompt box (see the edit in my last post above your reply) and see what happens at the time you get booted.

Now, if I really wanted to get to the bottom of this, I'd consider doing the following. . .

1. Take your computer to a different location with a different ISP (preferably terrestrial!). And see if the problem persists.
2. I would never suggest that you share your credentials with someone for testing purposes. We are forbidden from doing so. Yet that would be a very good test here to rule out your suspicions that it is your account that is somehow affected. To that end. . .
3. Have you considered setting up a new free account and seeing if that all-new account is also affected. That would be my next step. Just to set the paranoia at ease and put us firmly back into the realm of technical issues.

[REMalachi]

Okay, we're going to just have to agree to disagree here and I'm not saying I'm giving up just based on this. . . but I'm the type of guy who insists on using wired connections to everything whenever possible. Ran cat5e through my ceiling so that my server in the hall closet would be GbE wired, and same for my wife's computer, and all the other devices I could reach. So, in our house, the only things running on wireless are those that have to be wireless. And that's residential wi-fi coming from my router rather than a cellular signal.

All of which is to say that I positively cringe when I hear that you're trying to game on that connection. But since all your other games work fine, I guess we just shelve that and move forward. . .

At this point, we're just trying to rule things in or out. Please do keep that ping going in a Command Prompt box (see the edit in my last post above your reply) and see what happens at the time you get booted.

Now, if I really wanted to get to the bottom of this, I'd consider doing the following. . .

1. Take your computer to a different location with a different ISP (preferably terrestrial!). And see if the problem persists.
2. I would never suggest that you share your credentials with someone for testing purposes. We are forbidden from doing so. Yet that would be a very good test here to rule out your suspicions that it is your account that is somehow affected. To that end. . .
3. Have you considered setting up a new free account and seeing if that all-new account is also affected. That would be my next step. Just to set the paranoia at ease and put us firmly back into the realm of technical issues.

Yep, part of my frustration in fact is that the website www.lotro.com fails to load unless i click a link multiple times to send several requests, and the register new account page appears to be down entirely.

to the other elements, I did in fact (confessions aside) let a good friend log in to my account from his computer, it played fine. which of course rules out bad people with bad intentions doing bad things,,,darn you strider!!.....
which also asks the question what is happening, because while I do feel my internet is working, and for 2 weeks I played the game very well. It does mean that both my account is safe and plays on other internets other than my own. I am just at a loss as to what could be causing random drops. it doesn't make sense to me, I assume that if I had an ISP problem it would show up when more frequently and in other places as well. I just don't see how a ISP problem could be limiting my access to only this website and its corresponding elements.

and on a side and slightly personal note, I agree completely, if I had my way I'd be hard wired on some significantly stronger signal, but, the clear mobile does work effectively, surprisingly so.

[AccessDenied]

If I log into hughe manne my lvl 58 hunter, I cannot log into tucklebery fynn.

Ok, not sure I'm reading this correctly, but thought I would ask for the sake of clarity.
Are you saying you've got one game account, but are trying to log in twice? So that you can play two characters from the same account at the same time?

[REMalachi]

Ok, not sure I'm reading this correctly, but thought I would ask for the sake of clarity.
Are you saying you've got one game account, but are trying to log in twice? So that you can play two characters from the same account at the same time?

no, not at all. I'm saying I cannot log in effectively to any character. Its not possible to log into multiple characters on the same account.