Okay, so my wife is out of town this weekend. This means I'll be 'bach-ing' it, all alone. Well, some guys might have a porn night with the guys, or invite strippers over or something. Me, I do something much more sinister....
I play FFXI all weekend long.
Or at least, I would... if I could only get online in the game.
Turns out there's this nasty little error whereby you can log into PlayOnline successfully, but then when you start the FFXI client you get to the "Acquiring Player Data" screen and everything hangs.
It hangs for easily a minute or two.
Eventually, it times out and you get the following error:
Error code: FFXI-3113 Protocol time out error.
Now, the annoying thing is, many people are having this exact error... and yet Squeenix is wanting to blame it on things outside of their network.
GAH!
Well, it's been 9 hours now, and it hasn't changed. If I don't get to play this weekend, heads will roll.
Bastards...
Maybe I'll go play PSU....
Follow-up
Well, it's now been ~11 hours and I still can't get on.
Apparently, they've been getting so many reports of this exact error that they've put up the following statement:
We understand some players are currently experiencing connectivity issues. Our team of technicians investigated and confirmed that our FINAL FANTASY XI servers are working properly, and our service is not experiencing any technical difficulties at this time.
If you are having connectivity issue at this time, try connecting to FINAL FANTASY XI again at a later time.
What an insulting response to this!
You have tons of paying users who all experience the exact same problem in the exact same section of the login, on the day you push out two updates (1, 2), and you blame the collective "internets" because your servers seem to be "working properly?"
Perhaps someone needs to explain to them how the internet works and how incredibly unlikely it is that so many different diverse ISPs would be having the exact same problem in exactly the same location in the connection chain.
GAH!
I should record this shit and upload it if it doesn't get resolved ASAP.
Video of the problem
Squeenix has said that the current "FFXI-3113" errors have been caused by routing problems between the FFXI clients and Squeenix's servers. ... all » Since the problem hasn't gone away, I feel this is them just hand-waving over the issue, and that there must be a bug present inside the FFXI client and/or server code.
As an experiment, I tried logging in with my ISP on my XBOX 360 version of the game to first show the "FFXI-3113" error in question. I then took my account information to a friend's home and tried to connect using his connection and his system (a PS2). Note that this friend has no problems connecting with his account on his ISP.
The result was that I still got the same error (FFXI-3113) even though I was running from a known working connection.
Thus, the problem is not a routing one, but rather some bug that needs to be fixed.
Google link: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7114443772696410126
Resolution
Okay, apparently the problem was Asian Telco company KDDI's. I've been trying to track down an official press release from them on the subject, but I can't.
From what I've heard, they had a problem with one of their central hubs. Thousands of Asian and non-Asian users were blocked and prevented from seeing whole subsections of eachother's networks.
The day they resolved it, my problems cleared up.
Even still, Squeenix still hasn't mentioned this. They really should at least put out a press release that there was some major networking error that is now resolved and people should try again.