Problem - Universal Chat keeps me out, help please (1 Viewer)

[Redfrog]

For months now, since around November-ish, I cannot connect to the General Chat for more than 5-10 min or less.
When I log in or one it reconnects for anywhere in that time or even 30 seconds. Sometimes I get the Universal Chat Service is unavailable red text, sometimes nothing. If I do/list same thing, sometimes it shows up sometimes nothing. When I do connect, after a zoning, I see people talking and such. I really hoped since every patch day it would fix itself, but nothing yet. So I am here asking for help or to see if you guys experience this as a normal as well?

This happens on 3 different computers, one with a fresh install of EQ. I don't have any internet issues connecting to the game or web browsing or anything like that, no VPN running. Happens on Gold, Silver and Bronze accounts across 3 computers. On the bronze I know I can't see General, but most of my guys are Silver and 3 Gold.
I CAN see OOC , for some reason that does NOT stop working, or its not part of the way UCS works? I do NOT miss seeing all the leveling Sales Spam, haha, but I also cannot ask questions, simply communicate or sell items/give things away. This happens on Live and TLP for me.

 

[Redmonkey]

If this is on FV - its notorious for bad chat channels. But we seldom get the error about universal chat being unavailable. We just get all the channels full and no second ones populate so we can hardly ever get in General chat. For those we make a hot key "join general" and keep mashing it till you get in.

The following are not my suggestions but what I have found, so follow them at your own risk.

Other posts in the past have suggested to connect to the LAN without going through a router and check if the problem is resolved.. Or router settings, maybe in advanced settings. Others say the hot spot on their phones work better

another suggestion
On your Router or firewall change the UDP Connection Inactivity Timeout value to 60 seconds.
(On outbound UDP connections)

Common issue with your using sonicwall or firebox.

 

[Redfrog]

If this is on FV - its notorious for bad chat channels. But we seldom get the error about universal chat being unavailable. We just get all the channels full and no second ones populate so we can hardly ever get in General chat. For those we make a hot key "join general" and keep mashing it till you get in.

The following are not my suggestions but what I have found, so follow them at your own risk.

Other posts in the past have suggested to connect to the LAN without going through a router and check if the problem is resolved.. Or router settings, maybe in advanced settings. Others say the hot spot on their phones work better

another suggestion
On your Router or firewall change the UDP Connection Inactivity Timeout value to 60 seconds.
(On outbound UDP connections)

Common issue with your using sonicwall or firebox.

I do have a character on FV, the same issue happens there too, but most of my guys are on other live servers and a TLP. Since its common across all characters/accounts/different computers...I had to wonder it may be internet issue. I know the other issue you are talking about, which is full channels on General and the fix to spam a /leave General1 and /join General until you get in. So many people have bots in the General I think..different issue though. I'll se if any changes to my router would do anything..no changes on my end have happened, nor new equipment though for 3 years. Its always possible my provider (Xfinity) changed something with upgrading the area. Though I have no issues to anything else online, EQ or otherwise besides the chat. Connecting for a tiny bit and dropping, shows it does work..so odd. Thank you for the ideas RM !

 

[Doc James]

This has been a long standing issue with EQ. The reliability of the chat service varies from horrible to stable with very little helping on the client side (networking, etc). I have never seen it consistently stable all of the time. And I doubt DBG will put any real effort to fixing it.

EDIT: I seem to recall once upon a time some people had success setting their router DMZ to the PC that is running EQ which seemed to yield better results. The alternative was to connect directly to the WAN connection on the modem. This did not solve the issues completely, but it did help. So far, I do not know of anything anyone did to get it to resolve completely on the client side.

 

[Redfrog]

The reliability of the chat service varies from horrible to stable

I agree, that's always been the normal, but resolves in time. They have had bad times and fixes, but this is odd as I don;t see anyone else mentioning it as an issue, here nor people in General in game.

 

[Doc James]

I agree, that's always been the normal, but resolves in time. They have had bad times and fixes, but this is odd as I don;t see anyone else mentioning it as an issue, here nor people in General in game.

To be honest, it's likely because people have accepted this as the way it is. I don't even pay attention to how poorly it works anymore.

 

[skywalker]

this exact same thing has been happening to me too for the last few months on test & live