Cannot play old characters?

[Jacien]

<p>I am returning to EQ2 after a year hiatus but have encountered a problem and hope someone can offer help with it.</p><p>Whenever I try to load an established toon (character I played a year ago) the game seems to freeze at the final stage of 'zoning'...I think it's: Loading UI or something. After about a minute I get disconnected and my internet connection cuts out. I have to reset my Modem at this point. I don't have a custom UI, everything is default EQ2 stuff, just freshly installed the game and patched it today.</p><p>Brand new shiny and freshly made toons I don't have any problems with. They load into the game fine. I can change zones with them, no problem. My only issue is with  characters that are well established.</p><p>I have this same problem with World of Warcraft but I learned a work around. With WoW the problem is my cache files, specifically the itemcache file. Whenever they patch the game the cache is deleted and in order to play my established toons I need to roll a new toon and use an item snoop (AtlasLoot) mod to load items from the game into my cache (propigate my cache file).</p><p>I know I have an older modem, Speedstream, and Blizzard (and like Sony will too) tells me to contact my DSL provider to get a new modem. But I'm the type of guy that has issues with things like this. I mean, EQ2 worked just fine on my computer a year ago, I didn't need new hardware then...why do I need it now?</p><p>Anyway, I hope someone can offer me a helpful suggestion outside of getting a new modem. Thanks.</p>

[Jacien]

<p>Sorry, I should have tried more ways to resolve my issue before posting as I seem to have fixed it.</p><p>I added EQ2 to windows firewall and now everything is perfect.</p><p>Sorry for the post, I'd delete this is I could.</p>

[Jacien]

<p><grumble></p><p>I'm still having problems. Adding EQ2 to the firewall, seemed to fix things. But it didn't. For whatever reason, after doing this I was able to load an older toon and play it for many hours before logging. Today, I cannot play it.</p><p>Apparently this problem with playing established toons is intermittent. It actually seems worse today, I cannot log any of my older toons. I deleted the new toon I rolled yesterday, I'm going to roll a new one right now. And I'm starting to think I won't be able to play this new one after I log off and relog to the game.</p><p>I did get Wireshark, an internet protocal analyser, specially to see what was going on internet wise. From what it's showing, whenever I try to load a toon into the game I get a firestorm of Checksum Errors. I gather this is what's killing my modem.</p>

[TSR-KenC]

<p>If you can PM me with a screenshot of said firestorm, that may help  in determining the cause of the issue. When actually loading into the game with a lower level character that works - do they not appear at all?</p>