Calling all Testers! Streaming Client Now Available! [Archive]

Rothgar

10-21-2009, 01:06 AM

Introducing the New EverQuest II Streaming ClientWe've recognized for awhile that the current size of the EverQuest II installation (about 10gb) is a pretty large barrier to entry for many people. We've seen the posts on the forums where many players excited about trying the game never make it in due to the large download and sometimes unreliable patcher performance.We've been working on a solution to this issue and are proud to announce the Beta of the new EverQuest II Streaming client. Unlike "other games" where their streaming client only functions in a trial area, our client is full capable of running the entire game and taking you anywhere you want to go in Norrath. When the streaming client leaves beta we will not be forcing it on any existing players. You will always have the choice of running the existing patcher and downloading all assets prior to entering the game. The streaming client will provide a nice alternative for new installations or for computers that you don't update often. With the streaming client you'll only need to download a resource when its required.How can you help?We're looking for as many players as possible to download this new streaming client and give it a try. We're asking that you do a fresh installation into a new directory and see how fast you can get into the game. We want your feedback and suggestions. The streaming client is currently available for the Test Server only. As soon as we feel confident that the kinks have been worked out, the client will be introduced to the "Live" environment.Our marketing department has an aggressive campaign over the next few months leading up to the expansion with the primary goal of acquiring new players for EverQuest II. The streaming client is an important part of this campaign and we would love your help evaluating this new technology.What do you need?Your existing EQII computer will work just fine. Make sure you have at least 10gb of disk space and download the streaming client located here.<a rel="nofollow" href="http://launcher.station.sony.com/games/eq2/test/launcher_setup.exe" target="_blank">http://launcher.station.sony.com/ga...ncher_setup.exe</a>We recommend an internet connection speed of cable modem or faster for good performance. However, we'd like your feedback if you are using DSL or slower connections. We'd like to support connections of all types but keep in mind that your zoning times will be slower on low-speed connections.Please post your feedback in this thread and keep in mind this product is still in beta. Thanks again for your help!

Xalmat

10-21-2009, 01:20 AM

I'll check it out first thing in da morning!Question: Is the download indicator compatible with 3rd party UIs? Or are we required to use the Default?

Pervis

10-21-2009, 01:33 AM

Assuming this is ready for release in time, will this client mean no more large downloads before we are able to log in after an expansion release?

Dreyco

10-21-2009, 01:35 AM

Installed! Will test it after class tomorrow! <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

Rothgar

10-21-2009, 01:43 AM

<cite>Pervis wrote:</cite><blockquote>Assuming this is ready for release in time, will this client mean no more large downloads before we are able to log in after an expansion release?</blockquote>Yes, the patcher will only download the executable and support files necessary to start the client. All resource files will be downloaded on-the-fly.This also means you get all of the optional voice-over files without downloading them in advance.

Calthine

10-21-2009, 01:43 AM

Me too! Exciting stuff! (Did you say "Agressive Marketing"??)

Rothgar

10-21-2009, 01:43 AM

<cite>Xalmat wrote:</cite><blockquote>I'll check it out first thing in da morning!Question: Is the download indicator compatible with 3rd party UIs? Or are we required to use the Default?</blockquote>Should work fine with custom UI's.

Aneova

10-21-2009, 01:45 AM

First, I just want to say the new Launcher lay out and appearance is awesome, I love that it now saves the log in info which was also very useful, and i see that as a possible saver as it would lower the chances of a trojan possibly keylogging to get account info.Second, getting into game was very fast, fresh install, i was in under 30 minutes, character made and questing. the little dragon was not noticeable while I was playing a short while. I didn't zone to much after I had finished the install, but I'm quite impressed with things so far.Good work so far guys!!

Paladin776

10-21-2009, 02:11 AM

Well, for some reason, it's not working for me. I downloaded the installer, installed it to my D drive, which dropped 4 files in that folder. I got the splash screen a couple of times, but nothing further. I'm watching it right now in Task Manager and it's sitting idle, at 00 CPU and 3596K mem usage. It's been sitting like that now for about 5 minutes, with no other activity visible.One thing I have noticed, when Launcher.exe gets into this state is that you cannot kill the process through the Task Manager (on my system, anyway.) I was only able to kill it by reseting my system.The basic specs on my system are:Pentium 4 Prescott at 2.8GHz2 GB RAM250 GB HDD, two partitions, D has around 70GB freeGeForce 7600 with 512 RAMSB AudigyDSL connection, rated at 3MB down.I can post any other information if needed.

Grugg

10-21-2009, 02:14 AM

How does/should the streaming client work?

Dannnybones

10-21-2009, 02:15 AM

Seems pretty rad honestly, not having to ghetto install to new pc's or after installing a new os? Pretty boss...especially with Windows 7 coming out. Keep up the good work. Disclaimer: Don't expect super fast zone times people, but it seems to be an effective alternative!

Tenamdar

10-21-2009, 02:35 AM

Spent a short time testing a fresh streaming-install on Time Warner Cable's Road Runner Turbo cable modem (testing at 9.8Kbps down / 1.4Kbps up tonight) on Windows Vista 64-bit, 2.50Ghz Intel Q9300 Core2QuadCPU, single 7200RPM disk, 4GB RAM, with the following results:* Patcher Download START to STOP = 1min 50sec* Patcher Download STOP to Character Select Screen = 2min 13sec* Patcher Download START to Character Select Screen = 4min 3sec* Character Select to Entered Game (in "The Silent City" zone) = 1min 48sec* Patcher Download START to Entered Game (in "The Silent City" zone) = 5min 51sec* Start Load of "The Sinking Sands" to entered game in zone = 10min 16sec* Start Load of "Graystone Yard" to entered game in zone = 1min 29sec* Start Load of "two room apartment" (w/ 109 actual items) to entered game in zone = 1min 3secADDITIONAL FEEDBACK NOTES:* The dragon in the lower right-hand corner would disappear when the loading screen indicated "Fetching Assets", then would return for "Loading entity resources". It would make more sense to use one indicator or the other and not switch between the two. (I prefer the dragon indicator)* It would be better from a player standpoint to have the client determine all of the assets it needs to fetch and the file-sizes in advance of beginning the fetch, then can show an actual total MB countdown. Having it continuously complete one file and suddenly load another 10MB or so for the next, really disappoints. As a player I'd like to be able to roughly gauge how much time I have before the game loads, so I can get coffee or what not. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />* Legends of Norrath would not load as it indicated the need to be flagged on the patcher in advance. I suppose making that stream would be additional work for a later date, but it WOULD be nice to have that stream as well when accessed, vs. having to make patcher selections.All in all, so far so good.. and well done guys! <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

jjlo69

10-21-2009, 02:35 AM

ok i got up and running was very fast imholoaded toon that was copied onto test getting iinto the game was a lil longer then expected like 3-5 minutes once loaded though ran very smooth... second zone from everfrost to TS i crashed on loading zone information(id assume due to not having been there before) once i reloaded no issues proformance seems to be very very well.. i went on a fun run from ts dock to where avatar of storms pops settig was i had the game on balanced very smooth over all.. i went back to everfrost test zoneing it was pretty smoth and fast there and back this time.. now went to feerroot same thing happened so now to assume when you first start playing with streeming youll have to go and load the zones once to have them cached to me this will cure it self the ffirst day or two out.. last thing i did was i called to ro to check out maj dul and sinking sands same loading issues but once your in it seemed smooth.. i did not load my custom ui figuired id do that inthe morning since it was late toying with thisUncle

Mythal_EQ2

10-21-2009, 02:43 AM

Pretty sure it's a moot question but... we will still be able to choose to download everything in advance, yes?

Rothgar

10-21-2009, 02:45 AM

<cite>Dylara@Crushbone wrote:</cite><blockquote>Well, for some reason, it's not working for me. I downloaded the installer, installed it to my D drive, which dropped 4 files in that folder. I got the splash screen a couple of times, but nothing further. I'm watching it right now in Task Manager and it's sitting idle, at 00 CPU and 3596K mem usage. It's been sitting like that now for about 5 minutes, with no other activity visible.One thing I have noticed, when Launcher.exe gets into this state is that you cannot kill the process through the Task Manager (on my system, anyway.) I was only able to kill it by reseting my system.The basic specs on my system are:Pentium 4 Prescott at 2.8GHz2 GB RAM250 GB HDD, two partitions, D has around 70GB freeGeForce 7600 with 512 RAMSB AudigyDSL connection, rated at 3MB down.I can post any other information if needed.</blockquote>Can you do me a favor and make sure you have the latest version of Flash installed on your computer? You'll need to check using Internet Explorer, not Firefox.Please go to this website with IE and if necessary, install the Flash update and try again. The patcher requires flash and it sounds like its not displaying due to an out-of-date flash player.<a href="http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/</a>

Rothgar

10-21-2009, 02:49 AM

<cite>Tenamdar wrote:</cite><blockquote>Spent a short time testing a fresh streaming-install on Time Warner Cable's Road Runner Turbo cable modem (testing at 9.8Kbps down / 1.4Kbps up tonight) on Windows Vista 64-bit, 2.50Ghz Intel Q9300 Core2QuadCPU, single 7200RPM disk, 4GB RAM, with the following results:* Patcher Download START to STOP = 1min 50sec* Patcher Download STOP to Character Select Screen = 2min 13sec* Patcher Download START to Character Select Screen = 4min 3sec* Character Select to Entered Game (in "The Silent City" zone) = 1min 48sec* Patcher Download START to Entered Game (in "The Silent City" zone) = 5min 51sec* Start Load of "The Sinking Sands" to entered game in zone = 10min 16sec* Start Load of "Graystone Yard" to entered game in zone = 1min 29sec* Start Load of "two room apartment" (w/ 109 actual items) to entered game in zone = 1min 3secADDITIONAL FEEDBACK NOTES:* The dragon in the lower right-hand corner would disappear when the loading screen indicated "Fetching Assets", then would return for "Loading entity resources". It would make more sense to use one indicator or the other and not switch between the two. (I prefer the dragon indicator)* It would be better from a player standpoint to have the client determine all of the assets it needs to fetch and the file-sizes in advance of beginning the fetch, then can show an actual total MB countdown. Having it continuously complete one file and suddenly load another 10MB or so for the next, really disappoints. As a player I'd like to be able to roughly gauge how much time I have before the game loads, so I can get coffee or what not. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" />* Legends of Norrath would not load as it indicated the need to be flagged on the patcher in advance. I suppose making that stream would be additional work for a later date, but it WOULD be nice to have that stream as well when accessed, vs. having to make patcher selections.All in all, so far so good.. and well done guys! <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /></blockquote>Thank you for posting your results and your feedback so far!Having the download indicator give the full picture of remaining assets is something we've discussed internally as well. The downside is that the client fetches files on-demand and known everything it needs before it starts is very difficult. This is something we'll continue to look into though.Since LoN requires DLL's and other files that can't be streamed, we are going to make it an optional install from the patcher. This isn't active yet, but when complete you'll be able to select an option from the patcher window which will make sure LoN is installed and up-to-date. Since LoN adds about 500mb, we decided to leave it out of the initial package.Thanks again for the feedback!

Rothgar

10-21-2009, 02:52 AM

<cite>jjlo69 wrote:</cite><blockquote>ok i got up and running was very fast imholoaded toon that was copied onto test getting iinto the game was a lil longer then expected like 3-5 minutes once loaded though ran very smooth... second zone from everfrost to TS i crashed on loading zone information(id assume due to not having been there before) once i reloaded no issues proformance seems to be very very well.. i went on a fun run from ts dock to where avatar of storms pops settig was i had the game on balanced very smooth over all.. i went back to everfrost test zoneing it was pretty smoth and fast there and back this time.. now went to feerroot same thing happened so now to assume when you first start playing with streeming youll have to go and load the zones once to have them cached to me this will cure it self the ffirst day or two out.. last thing i did was i called to ro to check out maj dul and sinking sands same loading issues but once your in it seemed smooth.. i did not load my custom ui figuired id do that inthe morning since it was late toying with thisUncle</blockquote>Just to be sure I understand you correctly, you only crashed the one time, correct? You definitely shouldn't be crashing every time you zone. What you noticed is that the first time you zone in, the files are downloaded and cached to your hard drive in the "assetcache" directory. Once they are on your drive they are loaded off disk and performance should be identical to the non-streaming client.

Tenamdar

10-21-2009, 02:55 AM

FYI: I just checked my Flash version and discovered I'm running old version "10,0,12,36".

Paladin776

10-21-2009, 03:02 AM

<cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Dylara@Crushbone wrote:</cite><blockquote>Well, for some reason, it's not working for me. I downloaded the installer, installed it to my D drive, which dropped 4 files in that folder. I got the splash screen a couple of times, but nothing further. I'm watching it right now in Task Manager and it's sitting idle, at 00 CPU and 3596K mem usage. It's been sitting like that now for about 5 minutes, with no other activity visible.One thing I have noticed, when Launcher.exe gets into this state is that you cannot kill the process through the Task Manager (on my system, anyway.) I was only able to kill it by reseting my system.The basic specs on my system are:Pentium 4 Prescott at 2.8GHz2 GB RAM250 GB HDD, two partitions, D has around 70GB freeGeForce 7600 with 512 RAMSB AudigyDSL connection, rated at 3MB down.I can post any other information if needed.</blockquote>Can you do me a favor and make sure you have the latest version of Flash installed on your computer? You'll need to check using Internet Explorer, not Firefox.Please go to this website with IE and if necessary, install the Flash update and try again. The patcher requires flash and it sounds like its not displaying due to an out-of-date flash player.<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/" target="_blank">http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/</a></blockquote>Done. And still no go, though it did load to 3604K. After clicking install, the window disappears, and a quick splash screen showing the Dark Elf and Anashti pops up, then goes away. After a minute or two, the splash screen shows up again and slowly fades out, and that's where we sit.Next? <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

Rothgar

10-21-2009, 03:11 AM

<cite>Dylara@Crushbone wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Dylara@Crushbone wrote:</cite><blockquote>Well, for some reason, it's not working for me. I downloaded the installer, installed it to my D drive, which dropped 4 files in that folder. I got the splash screen a couple of times, but nothing further. I'm watching it right now in Task Manager and it's sitting idle, at 00 CPU and 3596K mem usage. It's been sitting like that now for about 5 minutes, with no other activity visible.One thing I have noticed, when Launcher.exe gets into this state is that you cannot kill the process through the Task Manager (on my system, anyway.) I was only able to kill it by reseting my system.The basic specs on my system are:Pentium 4 Prescott at 2.8GHz2 GB RAM250 GB HDD, two partitions, D has around 70GB freeGeForce 7600 with 512 RAMSB AudigyDSL connection, rated at 3MB down.I can post any other information if needed.</blockquote>Can you do me a favor and make sure you have the latest version of Flash installed on your computer? You'll need to check using Internet Explorer, not Firefox.Please go to this website with IE and if necessary, install the Flash update and try again. The patcher requires flash and it sounds like its not displaying due to an out-of-date flash player.<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/" target="_blank">http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/</a></blockquote>Done. And still no go, though it did load to 3604K. After clicking install, the window disappears, and a quick splash screen showing the Dark Elf and Anashti pops up, then goes away. After a minute or two, the splash screen shows up again and slowly fades out, and that's where we sit.Next? <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /></blockquote>I'm stumped. The patcher is handled by another team at SOE. I'll point them to this thread and see if we can come up with some other options to find out what is happening.

Paladin776

10-21-2009, 03:23 AM

<cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Dylara@Crushbone wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Dylara@Crushbone wrote:</cite><blockquote>Well, for some reason, it's not working for me. I downloaded the installer, installed it to my D drive, which dropped 4 files in that folder. I got the splash screen a couple of times, but nothing further. I'm watching it right now in Task Manager and it's sitting idle, at 00 CPU and 3596K mem usage. It's been sitting like that now for about 5 minutes, with no other activity visible.One thing I have noticed, when Launcher.exe gets into this state is that you cannot kill the process through the Task Manager (on my system, anyway.) I was only able to kill it by reseting my system.The basic specs on my system are:Pentium 4 Prescott at 2.8GHz2 GB RAM250 GB HDD, two partitions, D has around 70GB freeGeForce 7600 with 512 RAMSB AudigyDSL connection, rated at 3MB down.I can post any other information if needed.</blockquote>Can you do me a favor and make sure you have the latest version of Flash installed on your computer? You'll need to check using Internet Explorer, not Firefox.Please go to this website with IE and if necessary, install the Flash update and try again. The patcher requires flash and it sounds like its not displaying due to an out-of-date flash player.<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/" target="_blank">http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/</a></blockquote>Done. And still no go, though it did load to 3604K. After clicking install, the window disappears, and a quick splash screen showing the Dark Elf and Anashti pops up, then goes away. After a minute or two, the splash screen shows up again and slowly fades out, and that's where we sit.Next? <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /></blockquote>I'm stumped. The patcher is handled by another team at SOE. I'll point them to this thread and see if we can come up with some other options to find out what is happening.</blockquote>That's what Beta is for, right? <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />Whatever help I can give, just let me know.

Bkschrad

10-21-2009, 03:35 AM

Did a brief test run of this tonight: Running with Astound cable over a network, don't know the speeds up and down at the moment.The initial install from streaming client to launch to char select to making a new toon and logging in took about 20min - and a fair amount of that was due to lingering on character creation.What I really wanted to know was the time it would take to load a fresh zone that typically lags my comp. So, I made the toon in Darklight and then traveled to Neriak. The load time for Neriak was about 5 minutes, with the majority of that being asset fetching. The zone was no more laggy than usual for me, but maybe for different reasons this time - I was still loading various assets as I wandered through doing the teleport pad quest, and I was the only player character in the zone.Afterwards I checked on the load time to get back into Darklight. As promised, it was my normal load speed since I had already been in the zone.

Silkem_20

10-21-2009, 05:34 AM

launcher_setup.exe does not run under 64bit Windows XP... - Silkem

Magyge

10-21-2009, 05:50 AM

Tested this morning using a Dell optiplex 780 over business broadband link via cisco firewall/router. 20 minutes from patcher download start to logged in character. Have not tried too much zoning etc. yet but will re-test on home network/laptop this evening. Looking very good so far, especially with Windows 7 rebuilds looming tomorrow <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

Feebil

10-21-2009, 07:07 AM

I will get on there and test it some time today. How will this effect zoning into raid zones with a 24 person raid? VP Raid tonight please be there at 7:30 to zone in raid starts at 9. I am sorry but 20 minutes to zone into a new zone, isn't that a little excessive? I understand that downloading a zone is a one time only deal, so we end up with the data on our computers anyway so how does this actually save the current player any time? Are you planning of getting rid of DVD/CD distribution of expansions?Please give us the option of installing/downloading everything first. I have a nice big hard drive and don't mind the space EQII takes up. In fact I have seperate folders for Beta Server and Test Server so that is x2 the space.I will give it a try today!

Feebil

10-21-2009, 08:15 AM

I couldn't wait to try it out so I did, from starting the launcher to Character Select was 4 minutes. Then from Character Select to Fens only took 3 minutes. I did notice a giant lag spike during my first combat while it was downloading something.Logged out, created a new Fae, from Character Select to Character Creation to Greater Fay was a miniscule 5 minutes. Zoning from Greater Fay into Mushroom instance was maybe 30-45 seconds longer than normal. Zoning out of Mushroom to Greater Fay was very negligible. I ran from the Nursery to the bank in Kelethin and there was some delay coming out of Echo Echo Cavern and running through Greater Fay to the first lift and into the city. I wouldn't call it bothersome in any way though.Inspecting the directory where the streaming download is, the total size from just those places is 808MB.I don't think I am running anything spectacular as far as a system goes;Pentium 4 3.2 GHz with HT3 GB RAM300 GB Hard Drive Game installed on secondary drive (80 GB) SATAeVga GeForce 8600 GTS 256MB DDR3 MemoryWindows XP ProI must say that my overall impression is an "A". Sorry for the negativity in my previous post, everything seems to be spot on.

Mystfit

10-21-2009, 09:25 AM

<cite>Feebil wrote:</cite><blockquote>I will get on there and test it some time today. How will this effect zoning into raid zones with a 24 person raid? VP Raid tonight please be there at 7:30 to zone in raid starts at 9. I am sorry but 20 minutes to zone into a new zone, isn't that a little excessive? I understand that downloading a zone is a one time only deal, so we end up with the data on our computers anyway so how does this actually save the current player any time? Are you planning of getting rid of DVD/CD distribution of expansions?Please give us the option of installing/downloading everything first. I have a nice big hard drive and don't mind the space EQII takes up. In fact I have seperate folders for Beta Server and Test Server so that is x2 the space.I will give it a try today!</blockquote>From Rothgar's initial post:"When the streaming client leaves beta we will not be forcing it on any existing players. You will always have the choice of running the existing patcher and downloading all assets prior to entering the game. The streaming client will provide a nice alternative for new installations or for computers that you don't update often. With the streaming client you'll only need to download a resource when its required."

Hiburp

10-21-2009, 09:33 AM

Can we have the streaming content window made movable now on live. It's been there since 9/23.

Kryoni

10-21-2009, 10:03 AM

wewt

Saihung23

10-21-2009, 10:30 AM

All in all, very nice.Downloaded the patcher in under two minutes.Everything else was roughly 2-4 mins., the loading of zones that is.Felt smooth.No crashing. And I am on a honkin slow internet connection and my old gaming computer.The design of the launcher is pretty nice.I like it.

micahjames

10-21-2009, 10:39 AM

1. On a 20mb connection from comcast at 9:23am, completed initial download at 9:24am.2. Clicked play got an excellent epilepsy warning..lol3. See little dragon bottom right with kbps of downloading for character select screen..4. Got to finally view character select at 9:25am5. 9:27am clicked play and heading to timerous deep on my sk <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> (GOD THIS IS SO MUCH FASTER!!!)6.9:29am made it into TD...VERY fast!! I love it <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />7. GJ devs!!

Chefren

10-21-2009, 10:42 AM

<cite>Mythal_EQ2 wrote:</cite><blockquote>Pretty sure it's a moot question but... we will still be able to choose to download everything in advance, yes?</blockquote>I would hope that the streaming client would also offer the option of downloading whatever content is missing from the launcher. A new player will be able to get quickly into the game, but when he decides to stay he will still have a lot of zones he has never gone to and may be experiencing long zoning times for months to come.Same for new content, people may want to download all of an expansion at once even if they originally got the streaming client.Basically a switch between streaming/old style client where the download type is an option would be great with streaming being the default for new installations.Not that I don't think this is a great new feature though, it is. Just planning ahead in case I ever need a reinstall myself <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

Wullail

10-21-2009, 11:01 AM

Started new install at 3:45 , finished at 3:49...Pressing play GAVE me epilepsy...talk about long text with an in-your-face font right when you didn't expect it...I'm now sitting waiting for kelethin to load....10+ minutes and it's sitting at 'fetching assets' at around 1% every 30 seconds or so...Working well..I'm moving around with the little 'loading' dragon appearing every now and again...doesn't seem to affect gameplay at all...I'm pretty impressed...<img src="/eq2/images/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" />One bugbear I would say is the time from pressing 'Enter game' to the initial zone loading up , seems to take a long time...I was really beginnning to wonder if there was a problem by the time it loaded first time.Now , zoning....zoning for the first time takes much longer the first time you go into a new zone...Perhaps pre-fetch the base data for zones with connections to the current zone if thats possible while the person is running arund the newbie zone would be a good idea.Now , once the data has been downloaded , the zoning into a zone I've been in before actually seems a LOT faster than the 'original' client.

Quicksilver74

10-21-2009, 11:23 AM

So we can test the streaming client and it gets us into Beta? SF beta here I come! =P Much earlier than expected i might add!

Cyberlink

10-21-2009, 11:40 AM

Download location: Bern, SwitzerlandDownload Time: 02:00 PDTConnection: Cable 10'000 Kbit/s DL / 1'000 Kbit ULOperating System: Windows 7 Ultimate x64 RTMTestrun 1<ul><li>Client Download: 7s</li><li>Installation -> Login Screen: 20s</li><li>Initial Update: 1min 34s</li><li>Login -> Charselect: 5min 10s</li><li>Charselect -> Qeynos Harbor: 8min 18s</li></ul>Issues<ul><li>No character display in CharScene (appeared after a camp to Charselect)</li><li>Dragon disappeared while fetching the assets and reappeared on loading zone ressources (already reported by <a href="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?start=0&topic_id=461076#5142942" target="_blank">Tenamdar</a>)</li><li>One of the Qeynos Harbor guards disappeared instantly and reappeared again after a full path circle.</li></ul>FeedbackI would rather prefer some additional minutes of DL on the intial update than waiting for the first login to the character select screen.Personally I prefer downloading the whole game at once or maybe something between Streaming and Downloading.ex. it could be very frustrating for new players waiting several minutes just to enter the game and then again, wait until they can enter the world. A good solution from my point of view would be an inclusion of the starting areas within the initial download. This way new players can enter the world and doing their first quests which will take several hours and will give the game enough time to stream the next zones.I don't know how flexible the system is but let me give you an example:<ul><li>Initial Download: Core system, Charscene, Characters, The Queen's Colony, Outpost ot the Overlord, Gfay starting place, DLW starting place, Timorous Deep starting place.</li><li>=> Player decides to start at Queens colony, race = Highelf</li><li>=> Background stream of Castleview, Qeynos Harbor, Deep Below, Oakmyst Forest and then the other parts of Qeynos</li><li>=> Background stream of Antonica then Thundering steppes aso.</li></ul>Ok I know this doesn't help current players but it makes sure new player wouldn't notice the streaming process...but well as said that's just an idea and maybe it already works like this <img src="/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />I'm going to do some additional tests within the next few days but yes, great work so far <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/e8a506dc4ad763aca51bec4ca7dc8560.gif" border="0" />

Vraeth

10-21-2009, 12:14 PM

as cyberlink noted, one of the characters isnt displayed in the char select screen, probably the last one logged inonce i zoned into south qeynos for the first time there were still some invisible npcs that i ran into and were only loaded laterit took me about 20 minutes to zone into my fairly loaded 5-room house, bit more than 10 minutes to load an almost empty t3 guild hall, but id imagine more than 30 minutes load time zoning into a fully loaded t3 gh

Wilderbeast25

10-21-2009, 12:44 PM

Took about 4 mins to call back to SQ and a 2-3 to get into my SQ house (has about 120 items in it). It is about what I expected. I was very impressed to be able to log into the game within 5 mins from a new install. I saw that you mentioned that "As soon as we feel confident that the kinks have been worked out, the client will be introduced to the "Live" environment. ", but is the new client simply not compatible with Live or are you more concerned about complaints from ill informed people? Just personally I would rather be in Live seeing how this works. I have a few Test toons but I don't play them much and what little time I have to play it usually is on Live. Anyway just wondering and nice job on this. When I first saw this talked about I was sorta worried about it but so far so good - thumbs up!

Calthine

10-21-2009, 12:55 PM

<cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite></cite>Can you do me a favor and make sure you have the latest version of Flash installed on your computer? You'll need to check using Internet Explorer, not Firefox.Please go to this website with IE and if necessary, install the Flash update and try again. The patcher requires flash and it sounds like its not displaying due to an out-of-date flash player.<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/" target="_blank">http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/</a></blockquote>Oi, we have to have an updated version of IE with Flash installed? Yukko!

Calthine

10-21-2009, 01:29 PM

<cite>Einina@Runnyeye wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Mythal_EQ2 wrote:</cite><blockquote>Pretty sure it's a moot question but... we will still be able to choose to download everything in advance, yes?</blockquote>I would hope that the streaming client would also offer the option of downloading whatever content is missing from the launcher. A new player will be able to get quickly into the game, but when he decides to stay he will still have a lot of zones he has never gone to and may be experiencing long zoning times for months to come.</blockquote>Answered in Rothgar's OP - the old patcher will still work.

EQPrime

10-21-2009, 01:42 PM

<cite>Calthine wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite></cite>Can you do me a favor and make sure you have the latest version of Flash installed on your computer? You'll need to check using Internet Explorer, not Firefox.Please go to this website with IE and if necessary, install the Flash update and try again. The patcher requires flash and it sounds like its not displaying due to an out-of-date flash player.<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/" target="_blank">http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/</a></blockquote>Oi, we have to have an updated version of IE with Flash installed? Yukko!</blockquote>The way I read it is that the launcher requires the latest version of Flash to be installed on the computer. Rothgar goes on to say that the way to check your Flash version is to use IE to go to Adobe's site. He didn't seem to indicate that IE is actually necessary for the launcher though.I plan on trying this out tonight. It would be nice if the patcher continued to download new files in the background when it's done loading the current zone. That way after playing for a few days it would have downloaded all of the files, rather than wait for the first attempt to zone in to each zone.

ArivenGemini

10-21-2009, 01:48 PM

<cite>Uguv@Mistmoore wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Calthine wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite></cite>Can you do me a favor and make sure you have the latest version of Flash installed on your computer? You'll need to check using Internet Explorer, not Firefox.Please go to this website with IE and if necessary, install the Flash update and try again. The patcher requires flash and it sounds like its not displaying due to an out-of-date flash player.<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/" target="_blank">http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/</a></blockquote>Oi, we have to have an updated version of IE with Flash installed? Yukko!</blockquote>The way I read it is that the launcher requires the latest version of Flash to be installed on the computer. Rothgar goes on to say that the way to check your Flash version is to use IE to go to Adobe's site. He didn't seem to indicate that IE is actually necessary for the launcher though.I plan on trying this out tonight. It would be nice if the patcher continued to download new files in the background when it's done loading the current zone. That way after playing for a few days it would have downloaded all of the files, rather than wait for the first attempt to zone in to each zone.</blockquote>They use embedded IE for their current launchpad for rendering some of the stuff. This tells me they most likely access flash for this installer using the same methodology.. so if you have flash installed in FireFox (for example) it cant be seen by the IE install since they use different locations.I tried this out on a 1.5mb link.. it took a while for each area to load up, as was expected.. but was fairly all right for moving around in lavastorm once I finally loaded up. But, I would think that a good pre-fetch idea would be to download the assets for everything in your inventory ahead of time instead of waiting til it is needed... loading up a preview (ctrl click) of something took a few seconds.. billy doll illusion took less.. but after 2 minutes of calling my mount and then wandering off to the docks I still didnt have my mount.. yet was running at full speed as if I was on it. (please give me a /hidemount option on the live server, it would be "nice" <tm> <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> )Other than that it was smoother than I would expect given that it has to get some of the assets on the fly, and once I get home and can fiddle with it on a better connection I expect it to behave better.

brammator

10-21-2009, 01:49 PM

Launcher loaded his entities through proxy (defined in IE), good. Streamed entities doesn't use proxy, not so good -- I have 600kbit 'straight' connection in addition to 200+ Mbit proxyfied. Well, that's quite unusual setup, but still.Checked option 'remember me', no effect (win7, maybe not enough rights for launcher process to write to registry?)First loading into Lavastorm was something like 10 minutes (600kbit used at 100%), then I get up from x2 entrance, waited for 2 or 3 minutes to load quest-givers.Then died on run to docks, got another 4-5 min on revive screen -- what, for 30 meters?Then walked to nearest stable master, again waited like 2 or 3 minutes to get him loaded.Then, horse-flied to the temple of Ro, a lot of terrain on the way wasn't loaded. At the destination point, got small step and fall through still not loaded terrain. Again 4-5 minutes of loading for revive at zone evac point.I think something is poorly prioritized, like terrain or npc. Maybe load NPCs quickly with some default outlook? Also, when I stay still at one point, I prefer at least terrain for distant part of current zone be loaded. Maybe add option switch for that?

Xalmat

10-21-2009, 02:01 PM

The patcher needs to install in the Program Files or Program Files (x86) subfolder, not the Users/whatever folder that Microsoft wants programs installed. Everyone is used to it installing in the Program Files folder, and it's been the norm for EQ and EQ2 for 10 years, there's no reason to change it now.Plus its nigh impossible to find the installation in the Users Folder. Compare:C:Program FilesSonyEverQuest IIvsC:UsersSoandsoAppDataRoamingSony Online EntertainmentDigestsEverQuest II StreamingThe very first thing I did with the installer is change the install path.

Rothgar

10-21-2009, 02:07 PM

<cite>Hiburp wrote:</cite><blockquote>Can we have the streaming content window made movable now on live. It's been there since 9/23.</blockquote>Yes, it's coming. We've already updated the window to be movable but it was not promoted for a hotfix. I apologize for that and I'll see about getting it promoted for next week's hotfix.

Dethdlr

10-21-2009, 02:17 PM

Tried this out today and it looks really good. Great work. This will definitely make it easier for new players trying out the game.As I was trying it out, I made some notes. Some of these have been mentioned above by others already.<ul><li>When you run the launcher, the initial focus should be in the Station Username text box so you can start typing without having to click into the box first.</li><li>My Characters doesn't seem to be populated with any of my characters. I tried the button near the bottom to refresh the list but that didn't work either, even on my second and third time running the launcher.</li><li>The Ginormous Epilepsy warning should probably have an OK button so you know you can click it to continue. </li><li>While the initial load is taking place in the launcher (only the first time), it might be good to grab a music file and start playing it to entice the new players a bit instead of just watching the boring progress go across. Maybe not. Just a thought.</li><li>While loading zones, the dragon animation was a bit choppy. Guessing it's not allowing other events to fire as often as it could to try and get the download done as fast as possible. I'm guessing this is also what kept me from doing Alt-Enter. Took me a few Alt-Enters before it registered one and dropped me out of full screen (spaced out, I wasn't spamming Alt-Enter but waiting a good 30 seconds between them).</li><li>When loading a zone, as said above, it would definitely be nice to see how much more needed to downloaded so you could estimate how long you're going to have to wait. Can I go make a sandwich or will it be done in 30 seconds? Counting down and then jumping back up to several megs isn't nice to see and could cause new player frustration. Would it be possible to compare the assets needed to load the zone to what is currently on the players hard drive and then build a manifest of what new assets need to be downloaded? Then add the file sizes of all assets in the manifest and you have the total size that needs downloaded. Obviously this has to take place before the zone is loaded, it's just a matter of what order your doing it in. I'm guessing of course since I've never seen the code so I could be way off.</li><li>As said above, it would be nice to have an option for the streaming client to continue to download the entire game. This is fantastic for getting new players into the game quickly and getting them hooked but if EVERY time they hit a new zone, they have to wait for the zone to be downloaded, that could quickly become a turn off. These days, I don't think a lot of people are worried about having enough disk space and even if they were, it would be kinda messed up to go to zone in somewhere to finish a quest after playing for a few weeks and find out that you can't zone in because you don't have enough disk space to download the zone. Perhaps do some predictive downloading? Like, if you're in Qeynos Harbor, start downloading Greystone Yard, South Qeynos, Elder Grove, etc., the zones you can get to from the one you're in.</li></ul><div>All in all, fantastic job. I hope you guys get the time to really polish this thing and to really do an aggressive marketing campaign. You've got the best MMO out there hands down. It's just getting people to try it and even know it exists that's the problem. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> Sounds like this could lead to fixes on both of those fronts.</div><div></div><div>And as someone said above, let me know when I can log into the SF beta as a reward for testing this out. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> lol</div><div></div><div>Decimatr/Dethdlr</div>

Rothgar

10-21-2009, 02:24 PM

Rothgar

10-21-2009, 02:37 PM

<cite>Uguv@Mistmoore wrote:</cite><blockquote>I plan on trying this out tonight. It would be nice if the patcher continued to download new files in the background when it's done loading the current zone. That way after playing for a few days it would have downloaded all of the files, rather than wait for the first attempt to zone in to each zone.</blockquote>We're actually already working on this. I'll go ahead and fill you in on the things we are still trying to do in the next few weeks.<ul><li>The patcher will continue to download assets before you hit the "Play" button so if you walk away from the computer it will continue working. The assets it downloads will be a prioritized list starting with character select assets, then starting zone assets.</li><li>We will force download of the default character/race during the zoning into character select. This way you don't start character select with a missing model.</li><li>During the race-selection part of character select we will fetch the other races in the background</li><li>During the class-selection part of character select we will fetch the other class assets in the background</li><li>While you're in a starting zone we will prefetch assets to destination zones. </li></ul>We should have another update going to test server today with a feature intended for slower connections. Aggro mobs will render as a "red ghost" if they can't be drawn within a certain amount of time and we're still waiting on their textures to download. The goal is to let you see the mobs that would attack you as soon as possible if you're on a really slow connection.Thanks for all the great feedback so far! Please keep it coming.

Xalmat

10-21-2009, 02:38 PM

Trying to bring up the character select screen, my download process goes something like this:22.3MB22.2MB22.1MB22.0MB21.9MB22.3MB22.4MB22.3MB22 .2MB22.4MBSee the problem?

Rothgar

10-21-2009, 02:42 PM

<cite>brammator wrote:</cite><blockquote>Launcher loaded his entities through proxy (defined in IE), good. Streamed entities doesn't use proxy, not so good -- I have 600kbit 'straight' connection in addition to 200+ Mbit proxyfied. Well, that's quite unusual setup, but still.Checked option 'remember me', no effect (win7, maybe not enough rights for launcher process to write to registry?)First loading into Lavastorm was something like 10 minutes (600kbit used at 100%), then I get up from x2 entrance, waited for 2 or 3 minutes to load quest-givers.Then died on run to docks, got another 4-5 min on revive screen -- what, for 30 meters?Then walked to nearest stable master, again waited like 2 or 3 minutes to get him loaded.Then, horse-flied to the temple of Ro, a lot of terrain on the way wasn't loaded. At the destination point, got small step and fall through still not loaded terrain. Again 4-5 minutes of loading for revive at zone evac point.I think something is poorly prioritized, like terrain or npc. Maybe load NPCs quickly with some default outlook? Also, when I stay still at one point, I prefer at least terrain for distant part of current zone be loaded. Maybe add option switch for that?</blockquote>Its very strange you had missing geometry. This concerns me because we prefetch all ground geometry during zoning to insure this won't happen. It sounds like we have a bug that wasn't found in QA. I'll have them specifically try this in Lavastorm with the horse mounts to see if they can reproduce it. Thanks for the feedback!

DanKinney

10-21-2009, 02:45 PM

Actually, you should NOT have to install Flash to use this anymore. That issue should be resolved.When the launcher runs, it should download a small DLL (!if.needFlash.dll) to determine whether you already have Flash available on your system. If you do, everything's groovy. If you do not, it will download another file (LauncherFlash.dll) which has a version of Flash that the application will use so that you don't have to install it.If this doesn't match what you are seeing, I'd like to know immediately.-dan

Rothgar

10-21-2009, 02:45 PM

<cite>Xalmat wrote:</cite><blockquote>The patcher needs to install in the Program Files or Program Files (x86) subfolder, not the Users/whatever folder that Microsoft wants programs installed. Everyone is used to it installing in the Program Files folder, and it's been the norm for EQ and EQ2 for 10 years, there's no reason to change it now.Plus its nigh impossible to find the installation in the Users Folder. Compare:C:Program FilesSonyEverQuest IIvsC:UsersSoandsoAppDataRoamingSony Online EntertainmentDigestsEverQuest II StreamingThe very first thing I did with the installer is change the install path.</blockquote>I think this decision had something to do with permissions to write files when using a browser-based install application. I'd have to check with our patcher guys, but I know we discussed this a couple of weeks ago. We have to try to maintain compatibility with all operating systems, so this could be a requirement for Vista, but I'm not positive.

Lord_Dalam

10-21-2009, 02:48 PM

I had downloaded it right now, and its say : Cannot connect to login server

Xalmat

10-21-2009, 02:49 PM

<cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote>I think this decision had something to do with permissions to write files when using a browser-based install application. I'd have to check with our patcher guys, but I know we discussed this a couple of weeks ago. We have to try to maintain compatibility with all operating systems, so this could be a requirement for Vista, but I'm not positive.</blockquote>I assume it's based on the same technology that Free Realms uses? That's my biggest complaint about Free Realms as well, it's nigh impossible to find the folder on my hard drive. It's also why I don't like "browser-based installs". What was wrong with just a regular .exe like the regular EQ2 patcher?

DanKinney

10-21-2009, 02:52 PM

<cite>Xalmat wrote:</cite><blockquote>The patcher needs to install in the Program Files or Program Files (x86) subfolder, not the Users/whatever folder that Microsoft wants programs installed. Everyone is used to it installing in the Program Files folder, and it's been the norm for EQ and EQ2 for 10 years, there's no reason to change it now.Plus its nigh impossible to find the installation in the Users Folder. Compare:C:Program FilesSonyEverQuest IIvsC:UsersSoandsoAppDataRoamingSony Online EntertainmentDigestsEverQuest II StreamingThe very first thing I did with the installer is change the install path.</blockquote>You may install this anywhere you like. The value there is the default location only. You may put it into "Program Files", but only if you have the permissions to write and update files in that location.Windows UAC - for Vista and now Windows 7 - is a fact of life which is why we default to this location. It is a requirement that you should not have Administrator privileges to update or launch this game.If you want to change the directory, you may simply move it. When you start the Launcher.exe file, it will update the files to the directory where it lives.-dan

DanKinney

10-21-2009, 02:56 PM

<cite>Xalmat wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote>I think this decision had something to do with permissions to write files when using a browser-based install application. I'd have to check with our patcher guys, but I know we discussed this a couple of weeks ago. We have to try to maintain compatibility with all operating systems, so this could be a requirement for Vista, but I'm not positive.</blockquote>I assume it's based on the same technology that Free Realms uses? That's my biggest complaint about Free Realms as well, it's nigh impossible to find the folder on my hard drive. It's also why I don't like "browser-based installs". What was wrong with just a regular .exe like the regular EQ2 patcher?</blockquote>This does use the same tech that Free Realms uses - but with TONS of improvements. It uses it from a regular .exe file though. The installer has only one screen - a way to choose where you want to put the game. You may put it anywhere you have privileges to write into.The default location that shows up there is a location that is guaranteed to be writable.-dan

Josgar

10-21-2009, 03:03 PM

Streaming Client + College Campus with people who waste bandwidth = *FLASHBACK EVERQUEST 1*Zoning.... Please Wait*Time to make dinner*Done Zoning.I am guessing that the streaming issues I am having revolve around the fact im on a college campus.From patcher to Character Select screen was about 12 minutes.From Patcher to Antonica (with a stop at the character select screen) is so far 30 minutes.

Toughone

10-21-2009, 03:08 PM

I keep crashing on loading entity resources and cant get past it, running windows xp.

Xalmat

10-21-2009, 03:13 PM

Been stuck downloading the same 400 KB of data for the last hour. The download indicator keeps jumping between 23.3 MB and 23.7 MB, even after closing the client completely and restarting.

Lord_Dalam

10-21-2009, 03:16 PM

Still cant log in :

Aneova

10-21-2009, 04:02 PM

Radomness...Dan is the man with the master plan. He did, does do a great job with the station launcher app, and knowing he's helping with this, we're going to see some awesome stuff <img src="/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

Xalmat

10-21-2009, 04:13 PM

After 2 hours of trying, I'm giving up. I've been stuck downloading the same 400 KB of data for 2 hours. Deleting the assetcache folder doesn't help, reinstalling doesn't help. Restarting the client multiple times doesn't help. Can't even make it to the character select screen.

Cyberlink

10-21-2009, 04:39 PM

Xalmat

10-21-2009, 04:43 PM

<cite>Cyberlink wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Xalmat wrote:</cite><blockquote>After 2 hours of trying, I'm giving up. I've been stuck downloading the same 400 KB of data for 2 hours. Deleting the assetcache folder doesn't help, reinstalling doesn't help. Restarting the client multiple times doesn't help. Can't even make it to the character select screen.</blockquote>I had the same issue using a Netgear Router, it crashed at 400kb..and yes crashed, I had to restart it manually. Try a direct connection with your modem if you should use a router, it helped in my case.</blockquote>Impossible for me because my router and my modem are the same device.

ArivenGemini

10-21-2009, 04:44 PM

<cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Xalmat wrote:</cite><blockquote>The patcher needs to install in the Program Files or Program Files (x86) subfolder, not the Users/whatever folder that Microsoft wants programs installed. Everyone is used to it installing in the Program Files folder, and it's been the norm for EQ and EQ2 for 10 years, there's no reason to change it now.Plus its nigh impossible to find the installation in the Users Folder. Compare:C:Program FilesSonyEverQuest IIvsC:UsersSoandsoAppDataRoamingSony Online EntertainmentDigestsEverQuest II StreamingThe very first thing I did with the installer is change the install path.</blockquote>I think this decision had something to do with permissions to write files when using a browser-based install application. I'd have to check with our patcher guys, but I know we discussed this a couple of weeks ago. We have to try to maintain compatibility with all operating systems, so this could be a requirement for Vista, but I'm not positive.</blockquote>It installed its files in a wonky location for me too.."C:Documents and Settingsname.domainApplication DataSony Online EntertainmentInstalled GamesEverQuest II Streaming"And it put the shortcut for the launcher into the games folder in my start menu, not in the everquest II folder that was there or a SOE folder..It also doesn't "stick" the username and password when I check the box to tell it to.This is on XP pro, connected to a domain controller where I have full administrative rights.

DanKinney

10-21-2009, 04:55 PM

<cite>Aneova@Kithicor wrote:</cite><blockquote>Radomness...Dan is the man with the master plan. He did, does do a great job with the station launcher app, and knowing he's helping with this, we're going to see some awesome stuff <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" /></blockquote>Why thank you very much! -dan

DanKinney

10-21-2009, 04:57 PM

<cite>ArivenGemini wrote:</cite><blockquote>It also doesn't "stick" the username and password when I check the box to tell it to.</blockquote>That is still "coming soon". When you check the "Remember me...", it will bypass the login screen altogether on subsequent visits until you "Log out". Adding the account name history is not there yet.-dan

Xalmat

10-21-2009, 04:58 PM

Weird, my secondary computer was able to load the client and get to character select without issue. But my primary computer can't.Secondary is running Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit, Primary is Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit.

DanKinney

10-21-2009, 05:07 PM

Xalmat...How far do you get on the primary?-dan

Xalmat

10-21-2009, 05:09 PM

<cite>DanKinney wrote:</cite><blockquote>Xalmat...How far do you get on the primary?-dan</blockquote>I don't even make it to character select. Like I've said, I'm constantly stuck downloading the same 400 KB of data. See my previous posts on this thread.

Treflor

10-21-2009, 05:17 PM

It works good for me.With a 20mbit internet connection :launcher 10 secstop start 1:30load to character select 3:30load qeynos harbor 8 minutesload graystone 3 minutesload antonica 8 minload kylong plains 8 minload moors 17 minRemark :With the first chest drop it took about 20 secs for the chest to visually appear

Rothgar

10-21-2009, 05:23 PM

<cite>Xalmat wrote:</cite><blockquote>Trying to bring up the character select screen, my download process goes something like this:22.3MB22.2MB22.1MB22.0MB21.9MB22.3MB22.4MB22.3MB22 .2MB22.4MBSee the problem?</blockquote>Technically? No. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> Because I know that this value is the numer of mb queued for download, and I know that we are constantly adding resources to the queue as fast as we remove them.From a layman's perspective, yes, I understand that this can be confusing. We are looking into ways of making it more intuitive without incurring a huge performance hit by pre-scanning all the resources first just to get a total.

Xalmat

10-21-2009, 05:25 PM

Well that's the thing though, it was doing that for roughly 2 hours before I closed the client. I never made it to the character select screen. I'll post a screenshot I guess.

Rothgar

10-21-2009, 05:29 PM

<cite>Xalmat wrote:</cite><blockquote>After 2 hours of trying, I'm giving up. I've been stuck downloading the same 400 KB of data for 2 hours. Deleting the assetcache folder doesn't help, reinstalling doesn't help. Restarting the client multiple times doesn't help. Can't even make it to the character select screen.</blockquote>Thats very odd, we haven't seen this behavior at all. I was going to suggest deleting the assetcache folder but it sounds like tried that. So this rules out a corrupted assetcache.Do you remember how large the cache file was when you removed it? I wonder if its getting hung on a specific asset that one of your characters has equipped. Do you have a second account or someone with another account in your household that can try logging in on the same computer? This would rule out anything that's account based. And if it is account based, we should be able to copy your characters to find the problem.

Rothgar

10-21-2009, 05:31 PM

<cite>Xalmat wrote:</cite><blockquote>Weird, my secondary computer was able to load the client and get to character select without issue. But my primary computer can't.Secondary is running Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit, Primary is Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit.</blockquote>Ok, that's good info. So we know its not account-related and must be something specific to your primary computer. Hopefully we can determine if its a permissions issue or something like that. Did you check the obvious stuff like available disk space? Also are you logged in as an administrator?What if you try changing install locations or keeping it at the default location?

Xalmat

10-21-2009, 05:34 PM

<cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote>Do you remember how large the cache file was when you removed it? I wonder if its getting hung on a specific asset that one of your characters has equipped. Do you have a second account or someone with another account in your household that can try logging in on the same computer? This would rule out anything that's account based. And if it is account based, we should be able to copy your characters to find the problem.</blockquote>I've seen it as low as 38 megs and as high as 80 something megs. When I close the client the asset1.vdb file gets bigger, usually by about 1 megabyte or so.It can't be a specific asset because my other computer loads just fine, can it? I'm double checking both of my accounts on both computers just to be sure though, I'll get back to you with my results.

Xalmat

10-21-2009, 05:36 PM

<cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote>Ok, that's good info. So we know its not account-related and must be something specific to your primary computer. Hopefully we can determine if its a permissions issue or something like that. Did you check the obvious stuff like available disk space? Also are you logged in as an administrator?What if you try changing install locations or keeping it at the default location?</blockquote>267 gigabytes of free disk space. Running as administrator. UAC is completely disabled on both computers.I tried changing install locations, both to Program Files and to the default location, no help on the primary machine.

NikkiT

10-21-2009, 06:02 PM

<cite>DanKinney wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Xalmat wrote:</cite>You may install this anywhere you like. The value there is the default location only. You may put it into "Program Files", but only if you have the permissions to write and update files in that location.</blockquote>That's good. That's one thing I hate about FreeRealms: it just installs into C:UsersusernameAppDataLocalLowSony Online EntertainmentInstalled GamesFree Realms with no (obvious) way of getting it to install elsewhere.Problem is: my c: drive is a 30 GB SSD...that's barely enough room for the operating system. I do not want to install 30 GB of SOE games there...good that you are not making the same mistake with EQ2.

Rheem

10-21-2009, 06:20 PM

Ok, I have a bit of a weird thing happen to me. Was running fine, called back to the guild hall I have set up on test previously. As I hadn't paid upkeep in a while, I got booted out to North Qeynos while zoning. I paid the upkeep, hit the zone in button, and nothing happened. Tried again via normal access, right clicking enter, and right clicking tour, nada.Here is where is gets weirder, I checked the guild window to make sure I was still in a guild, my guildhall was still there, etc, when I noticed that it didn't have me logged in on the members online now list (but i still appeared on the all members filter just as offline.) /camping to char select and logging back in fixed both problems.So I'm thinking there might be an issue when you change zones while already zoning in the new client. I have not had this issue on the old one, so I don't know if this is due to on the fly patching or not.That said, I love the new patcher, and am going to keep this second install for test server purposes, as I am not on that server often and this seems PERFECT for it. Quick question though, will we be able to use this new system in conjunction with Station Launcher when it goes live? I feel the need to be able to talk with people when out of game (It makes me feel less guilty about slacking as a guild leader *wink*) Keep up the good work ~Rheem

Xalmat

10-21-2009, 06:23 PM

Primary computer: Even after deleting all characters on the Test server and Test Copy server (using the regular Test client), I am still unable to load character select. Gonna try deleting the install once more, and redownloading once more.Secondary computer: Character Select was loading fine, and even displaying my characters on my secondary account (prior to me deleting them). Primary account would not load to character select.

feldon30

10-21-2009, 06:24 PM

<cite>Xalmat wrote:</cite><blockquote>I assume it's based on the same technology that Free Realms uses? That's my biggest complaint about Free Realms as well, it's nigh impossible to find the folder on my hard drive. It's also why I don't like "browser-based installs". What was wrong with just a regular .exe like the regular EQ2 patcher?</blockquote>Because Microsoft says in Windows Vista and Windows 7:Thou Shalt Not Write/Self-Modify the Program Files folder.<a href="http://www.hanselman.com/blog/VistasShowCompatibilityFilesAndTheScrumptiousWonde rThatIsFileVirtualization.aspx" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://www.hanselman.com/blog/Vista...ualization.aspx</a><a href="http://blogs.scb.rit.edu/dave/2007/02/09/windows-vista-virtualized-files/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://blogs.scb.rit.edu/dave/2007/...tualized-files/</a>

Xalmat

10-21-2009, 06:26 PM

<cite>feldon30 wrote:</cite><blockquote>Because Microsoft says in Windows Vista and Windows 7:Thou Shalt Not Write/Self-Modify the Program Files folder.<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.hanselman.com/blog/VistasShowCompatibilityFilesAndTheScrumptiousWonde rThatIsFileVirtualization.aspx" target="_blank">http://www.hanselman.com/blog/Vista...ualization.aspx</a><a rel="nofollow" href="http://blogs.scb.rit.edu/dave/2007/02/09/windows-vista-virtualized-files/" target="_blank">http://blogs.scb.rit.edu/dave/2007/...tualized-files/</a></blockquote>Remind me to shoot the next Microsoft representative I meet. And lynch the next Vista/Windows 7 dev.

Xalmat

10-21-2009, 06:37 PM

After the 50 bajillionth fresh install, I finally got my primary computer to load the character select/create screen on my secondary account (which had all characters deleted). /grumble.I'm pleased to say that the character create is pretty quick at loading character resources.Computer performance, however, ground to a halt once it started Fetching Assets for the Queen's Colony. Fraps was showing only 2 FPS, and even regular computing tasks (like opening or closing notepad.exe) took an inordinate amount of time. This is on a quad core CPU running at 2.5GHz with 8gb ram.I guess download speeds are reasonable for a 1.5Mbps DSL connection.

Xalmat

10-21-2009, 07:23 PM

Never made it into the Queen's Colony. Loading Entity Resources stopped an 90%, and the same "redownloading the same 400KB of data" thing occured again.Closing, and re-loading the client, and Loading Entity Resources is stuck at 76% trying to get into character select, with it trying to download the same 500KB out of 13MB (the number is moving between 12.6 and 13.1 MB)Incidentally, asset1.vdb in the assetcache folder is a whopping 183 megabytes right now. In the root EQ2 folder there is no Paks or Music subfolder at all, as everything is only in the assetcache folder.I'm close to calling it a lost cause for me.

Mynervia

10-21-2009, 07:59 PM

Although this probably doesn't come as a surprise, the Streaming client doesn't run at all on Win2k SP4. The installer (launcher_setup.exe) works fine. Attempting to run the actual patcher (Launcher.exe) results in "nothing" - the program seems to immediately quit without any kind of error or feedback, and doesn't even run long enough to show up in the Processes tab of Windows Task Manager.Given that this is how FreeRealms largely behaves on Win2k (it just doesn't run, without any kind of error or feedback or explanation), I'm assuming it comes from their shared heritage. I just hope the old-fashioned (nonstreaming) client stays Win2k-compatible ><

Xalmat

10-21-2009, 08:10 PM

You really should upgrade to XP. I think Win2k is even less supported by Microsoft than XP is at this point, isn't it?

Elinewt

10-21-2009, 08:11 PM

Sorry, I didn't think to check seconds, so I was only going by the clock on the desktop task bar for times.Internet: Comcast Cable internet, 14.85mbps download, 5.85mbps upload. Tested at speedtest.netOperating System: Windows 7 Ultimate x64 RTM3:16pm - ran program for first time3:20pm - reached character selection screen3:20pm - Clicked "enter game" with existing character3:32pm - appeared in North Qeynos3:34pm - clicked bell to zone into Nettleville3:35pm - appeared in Nettleville3:36pm - clicked bell to zone into Antonica3:48pm - appeared in Antonica3:49pm - clicked bell to zone to Antonica Guild Hall3:54pm - appeared in Guild Hall3:55pm - clicked to leave guild hall3:55pm - appeared in Antonica3:58pm - clicked bell to zone into The Caves3:59pm - appeared in The CavesOverall, I think this is awesome. A few months ago, we installed EQ2 on a cheapy Dell laptop using this internet connection on a crappy wireless card. It took half the day to get to be able to log in for the first time (10 hours of patching at least, after installing from TSO cd out of the box we bought at Fan Faire).I am also going to try it on my laptop which uses my same internet connection but on a wireless card, so the up and down speeds won't be nearly as fast as my tower. I also didn't notice if anyone has tested out the character creation process on the streaming thing, so I'll check that out too.

Xalmat

10-21-2009, 08:14 PM

Character create process you have to load each race and gender individually (gnome male, gnome female, human male, human female, etc), but he downloads for each race/gender is no more than 2 megabytes apiece.Then you have to download the armor for each class (plate, leather, chain, cloth) as well as corresponding colors and textures for each class. Overall you're looking around 100 megabytes from this alone.That said the files seem to download pretty quick for character create.

Xalmat

10-21-2009, 08:27 PM

<img src="http://www.mattcrews.com/images/eq2/queen-colony-dl-asset-stuck.jpg" />That number changes from 20.3 to 20.8 and every number inbetween. This also occurs on two separate computers. Progress bar won't go higher than 93% and the download never goes below 20.3 MB.How about instead of showing how much download there is to go, you display how much has been downloaded out of a total, for example:5.5/7.2 MB (76%)

Garavic

10-21-2009, 08:32 PM

This has been commented, but I thought I'd post to verify. The installer is not recognizing Windows XP x64 as a valid "Windows XP or newer" OS.Would love to help test this out so hopefully that gets corrected soon.

Xalmat

10-21-2009, 08:50 PM

OK don't ask me how, but I finally got the Queens Colony to load.One thing thats blatantly missing: Voiceovers!

Rothgar

10-21-2009, 09:04 PM

<cite>Xalmat wrote:</cite><blockquote>OK don't ask me how, but I finally got the Queens Colony to load.One thing thats blatantly missing: Voiceovers!</blockquote>I think I know what the problem is, we'll take a look at it.

tkia

10-21-2009, 09:24 PM

Okay, I played with this a lot today as my ratonga carpenter on test needed to do her mushroom rings and all the zoning that would involve seemed like a perfect testbed for the new client.I'm running on a Core Duo E7400, XP Pro 32 bit with 4GB of RAM.Located in the UK and using ADSL2+, download @ 3277 kbps, upload @ 875 kbpsGame was running on the default High Quality settingsIt went in very smoothly - from starting setup to getting to character select was a total of 13 minutes, including all the faffing of changing the install path and entering account details etc.. All the downloading at this point was using the full available bandwidth too, which was nice. At this point I had 295MB of data files down.My ratonga was parked in Enchanted Lands so I picked her off character select, logged her in and then ran her around zones as needed to complete the 5 moonlight events with the following results on loading times for first time zone loads:character select to EL - 25 mins, all fine up to 585MB of dataEL to naiad grotto - 2 mins, 666MBEL to Nek via spires - 33 mins [Note: this transition time included 2 connection drops when my line decided to resync. The first time it came back up fast and I only dropped to character select. The second time it dropped completely and I had to relaunch the patcher. In both instances when I got back it happily carried on from where it had left off with no issues]Nek to grotto - 2 minsNek to commons via spire - 10 mins (see below)commons to darklight - 13 mins, up to 959MB of data nowdarklight to brownie grotto - 2 minsbrownie grotto to Temple street - 3 minsNek to Steppes - 9 minsSteppes to Antonica - 2 minsAntonica to Dryad grotto - 1 min, 1197MB data loadedSteppes to Butcherblock via boat - 11 mins (see below)Butcherblock to Gfay - 3 mins, 1370MBGfay to Fay grotto - 1 minGfay to Sinking Sands - 11 minsAfter that I only loaded previously downloaded zones and currently have a total of 1.6GB of game data on my disk.Loading back to zones that had been previously loaded used fairly normal zoning times and the asset downloading that was happening while running around zones didn't seem to hamper performance much at all. My first chest drop was fun as I got the clunk sound and then it took a second or two for Chuckles (my dragon!) to retrieve the chest assets before it magically appeared in front of me. Similarly clicking on a chat link for a dressing room item gives a few seconds of blank window until the item is retrieved and pops in. And my second time loading into Temple Street I had time to run from the docks to the bank and back before the NPCs loaded in. All trivial stuff and presumably as expected.During all that I encountered only 3 real problems, 2 of which are definitely patcher issues the third one I'm not so sure about but will include it anyway.Problems:The first time I zoned into commons from the Nek spire I ran to the darklight woods entrance, stealthed at 15% run speed - took a little while. When I got there the geometry just ended at the zone edge - no wall, no entrance, just void and a few floating rocks. I had enough time to stand at the edge of the void, pan around a bit and wonder if it would appear if I moved when it finally popped in and I successfully zoned through to darklight.Second problem was the real biggie and I got the screenshot to show you the extent. This was when I zoned into Butcherblock on the boat and found a whole bunch of missing geometry and assets - including my boat! It zoned me in at 0, 0, 0, orientation 190, 0, 0. Not sure if that's the normal point as I've never had cause to check it before. I waited around a good while without moving here, panned around some, took pictures and generally hoped the geometry might appear - it didn't. I wasn't moving at all so the game obviously didn't consider me to be on the boat any more. When it was obvious nothing else was going to happen I opted to move and it took me 3 steps to fall through the world. When it reloaded me it dropped me at the Gfay zone line at -1028, 97, -404 and everything was perfectly fine although the reload was a normal sort of load following a fall through the world, with no sign of any additional asset fetching being done.Here's the <a href="http://eq2players.station.sony.com/image_view.vm?imageId=997043" target="_blank">graphical evidence</a> - this is where I landed when it zoned me in.Third problem was a quest issue in the brownie grotto and I'm not sure if it was a normal glitch or patcher related. On the crafter quest I did the harvesting and asked the brewer for the recipe. He responded as if he'd given it to me but it wasn't in my bags. I went to the brewing stump anyway as I should have had the recipe scribed from last month on that character, but it didn't show up in the recipe book either. All the other recipes in my book seemed to be intact though. I tried talking to the brewer a few times and re-activating the stump but nothing changed so I left. After I'd done the other grottos I zoned back in here and spoke to the brewer again, who gave me the recipe again and this time it appeared in my bags as normal. I'll leave it up to Rothgar to decide if that was an asset fetching glitch or something entirely different <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />Comments:When fetching assets it's not using the full bandwidth, in fact the download rate varies wildly at this stage - could it be fetching multiple files simultaneously if there is bandwidth spare? The dragon animation stutters some at this point and performance is sluggish. Once it reaches loading zone and entity resources performance is back and it's using full bandwidth again.When it's fetching large amounts behind loading screens I would like to see the filenames it's fetching, which would be very helpful for troubleshooting stuck files and things. (I'd like this in the launcher too please, Dan!) Obviously we don't want that detail displayed in game though when it's background loading.Could we have a simple button on the launcher screen to request a download of remaining data files that we could hit on logout? It's nice to get into game fast but would also be nice to have an obvious way to tell it to carry on while we go sleep in order to avoid multiple sessions of long zone loads for first time use.I was a bit surprised at some of the bigger zones taking much less download times than other equivalent zones - did the earlier slow ones grab stuff that helped the later ones come down faster maybe?In summary - brilliant job, guys! This works very well and should be a huge help for people trying to get into the game for the first time or re-installing from scratch when they come back or upgrade to a new system.

Rothgar

10-21-2009, 09:43 PM

<cite>tkia wrote:</cite><blockquote>Okay, I played with this a lot today as my ratonga carpenter on test needed to do her mushroom rings and all the zoning that would involve seemed like a perfect testbed for the new client.I'm running on a Core Duo E7400, XP Pro 32 bit with 4GB of RAM.Located in the UK and using ADSL2+, download @ 3277 kbps, upload @ 875 kbpsGame was running on the default High Quality settingsIt went in very smoothly - from starting setup to getting to character select was a total of 13 minutes, including all the faffing of changing the install path and entering account details etc.. All the downloading at this point was using the full available bandwidth too, which was nice. At this point I had 295MB of data files down.My ratonga was parked in Enchanted Lands so I picked her off character select, logged her in and then ran her around zones as needed to complete the 5 moonlight events with the following results on loading times for first time zone loads:character select to EL - 25 mins, all fine up to 585MB of dataEL to naiad grotto - 2 mins, 666MBEL to Nek via spires - 33 mins [Note: this transition time included 2 connection drops when my line decided to resync. The first time it came back up fast and I only dropped to character select. The second time it dropped completely and I had to relaunch the patcher. In both instances when I got back it happily carried on from where it had left off with no issues]Nek to grotto - 2 minsNek to commons via spire - 10 mins (see below)commons to darklight - 13 mins, up to 959MB of data nowdarklight to brownie grotto - 2 minsbrownie grotto to Temple street - 3 minsNek to Steppes - 9 minsSteppes to Antonica - 2 minsAntonica to Dryad grotto - 1 min, 1197MB data loadedSteppes to Butcherblock via boat - 11 mins (see below)Butcherblock to Gfay - 3 mins, 1370MBGfay to Fay grotto - 1 minGfay to Sinking Sands - 11 minsAfter that I only loaded previously downloaded zones and currently have a total of 1.6GB of game data on my disk.Loading back to zones that had been previously loaded used fairly normal zoning times and the asset downloading that was happening while running around zones didn't seem to hamper performance much at all. My first chest drop was fun as I got the clunk sound and then it took a second or two for Chuckles (my dragon!) to retrieve the chest assets before it magically appeared in front of me. Similarly clicking on a chat link for a dressing room item gives a few seconds of blank window until the item is retrieved and pops in. And my second time loading into Temple Street I had time to run from the docks to the bank and back before the NPCs loaded in. All trivial stuff and presumably as expected.During all that I encountered only 3 real problems, 2 of which are definitely patcher issues the third one I'm not so sure about but will include it anyway.Problems:The first time I zoned into commons from the Nek spire I ran to the darklight woods entrance, stealthed at 15% run speed - took a little while. When I got there the geometry just ended at the zone edge - no wall, no entrance, just void and a few floating rocks. I had enough time to stand at the edge of the void, pan around a bit and wonder if it would appear if I moved when it finally popped in and I successfully zoned through to darklight.Second problem was the real biggie and I got the screenshot to show you the extent. This was when I zoned into Butcherblock on the boat and found a whole bunch of missing geometry and assets - including my boat! It zoned me in at 0, 0, 0, orientation 190, 0, 0. Not sure if that's the normal point as I've never had cause to check it before. I waited around a good while without moving here, panned around some, took pictures and generally hoped the geometry might appear - it didn't. I wasn't moving at all so the game obviously didn't consider me to be on the boat any more. When it was obvious nothing else was going to happen I opted to move and it took me 3 steps to fall through the world. When it reloaded me it dropped me at the Gfay zone line at -1028, 97, -404 and everything was perfectly fine although the reload was a normal sort of load following a fall through the world, with no sign of any additional asset fetching being done.Here's the <a href="http://eq2players.station.sony.com/image_view.vm?imageId=997043" target="_blank">graphical evidence</a> - this is where I landed when it zoned me in.Third problem was a quest issue in the brownie grotto and I'm not sure if it was a normal glitch or patcher related. On the crafter quest I did the harvesting and asked the brewer for the recipe. He responded as if he'd given it to me but it wasn't in my bags. I went to the brewing stump anyway as I should have had the recipe scribed from last month on that character, but it didn't show up in the recipe book either. All the other recipes in my book seemed to be intact though. I tried talking to the brewer a few times and re-activating the stump but nothing changed so I left. After I'd done the other grottos I zoned back in here and spoke to the brewer again, who gave me the recipe again and this time it appeared in my bags as normal. I'll leave it up to Rothgar to decide if that was an asset fetching glitch or something entirely different <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" />Comments:When fetching assets it's not using the full bandwidth, in fact the download rate varies wildly at this stage - could it be fetching multiple files simultaneously if there is bandwidth spare? The dragon animation stutters some at this point and performance is sluggish. Once it reaches loading zone and entity resources performance is back and it's using full bandwidth again.When it's fetching large amounts behind loading screens I would like to see the filenames it's fetching, which would be very helpful for troubleshooting stuck files and things. (I'd like this in the launcher too please, Dan!) Obviously we don't want that detail displayed in game though when it's background loading.Could we have a simple button on the launcher screen to request a download of remaining data files that we could hit on logout? It's nice to get into game fast but would also be nice to have an obvious way to tell it to carry on while we go sleep in order to avoid multiple sessions of long zone loads for first time use.I was a bit surprised at some of the bigger zones taking much less download times than other equivalent zones - did the earlier slow ones grab stuff that helped the later ones come down faster maybe?In summary - brilliant job, guys! This works very well and should be a huge help for people trying to get into the game for the first time or re-installing from scratch when they come back or upgrade to a new system.</blockquote>Thank you for all the great feedback! We are still troubleshooting an issue with the zoning screen where it should be requiring that you download all of the zone geometry before letting you in. Multiple people are having issues where it appears it didnt download everything.During the "Fetching Assets" stage of zoning, the client is going through our entire scenegraph and calculating all of the assets that it needs to request. During this time, its using a lot of CPU but not queing a lot for download yet. We'll look into methods of optimizing this.

Dreyco

10-21-2009, 09:51 PM

Tried it out this evening. It's a great start! Here's some of the stuff that I found out while testing.Issues with the Launchpad:<ul><li>Extra Linebreaks are displayed between paragraphs on the EULA.</li><li>There is no way to select a server other than test at the moment, which makes it hard to test it beyond zoning and soloing due to the sparsity of Test Server.</li><li>Is there or will there be a way to tell the game to switch out of "Streaming" mode?</li></ul>Issues with Loading/Streaming<ul><li>The clock-down timer right now seems pretty pointless. You get a flurry of numbers like "150KB" over and over again without any real viable way to tell when you're going to finish downloading information. Is this due to the fact that there is more than one file associated with a particular zone?<ul><li>Maybe include "File Count" and "File Name" with the zoning timer? IE: Recieving File 1/5 "EverQuest2.exe". 10 MB Remaining.</li></ul></li><li>There is NO Download information with "Fetching Assets", which is among the longest parts of zoning itself.</li><li>Fetching assets at the start makes the download animation stutter quite a bit.</li></ul>On a positive note:, once you are zoned into the zone itself, the background downloading seems seamless and barely noticeable. I was able to browse all my UI Elements without a hitch, open my quest journal, map, achievements, character window, etc, without a single problem.Issues with Content/Files/Sound/Graphics<ul><li>Sound appears to be one of the biggest shortcomings of the streaming audio.<ul><li>Certain sounds aren't playing at all until AFTEr a long download has finished WITHIN the zone itself. This includes...<ul><li>Footsteps, Combat Noises, Jumping</li><li>This is a problem because once a player gets into the game, and they start running around.. if footsteps aren't playing, the mind immidiately goes to "Is my sound bugged?"<ul><li>Consider making these sounds part of a download associated with the zone files.</li></ul></li></ul></li></ul></li><li>As someone else pointed out, there are no VO's.</li></ul>ZoningTo test out zoning times, I went straight to the large zones to try the streaming download zoning! <ul><li>Zoning takes FOREVER even on a cable connection. Times into these zones are as follows below. THIS IS WHILE "FETCHING ASSETS" <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /><ul><li>The Commonlands<ul><li>10 Minutes 54 Seconds on Test Server</li></ul></li><li>Kylong Plains<ul><li>12 Minutes 18 Seconds on Test Server</li></ul></li><li>I didn't try anything else beyond this due to how long it was taking to zone.</li></ul></li></ul>Other Things that were Noticed<ul><li>There is a single file that is apparently handling all the zone/asset information? "Asset1.vdb" in the AssetCache Folder. Why isn't the client dumping this information into a normal "Pak" file as it usually would after the intiial download?<ul><li>This file totalled 400 megs about when going from Big Bend, to South Freeport, to Commonlands, to Kylong Plains.</li></ul></li></ul>So far so good otherwise. Just got some things to iron out. I'll play around with it more and continue to post stuff I find here.

Darkshadow

10-22-2009, 12:13 AM

My feedback for the initial install and bootup won't be as technical, but I hope it's no less helpful.Download and install was nice and smooth. Took less than 5 minutes to get from Updating to Play. Couple of minutes to get to the character select screen. I seemed to have a bit of trouble getting from the char screen into the game. My character was in the Commonlands last. It started by loading very quickly, going from 0% to something like 60% in a minute or two, but then spent an eternity getting from there to 100%. Where previously it had flown through the megs, it was now crawling along at a tenth at a time. Then it took a minute or two adding the character to the zone.Once in the zone I tried a few settings. Starting with High Performance... there was no problem, and I had expected it to run well. Setting it to Balanced was also equally as smooth. High Quality gave me a small problem, for about 2 minutes after setting it my character would move throughout the zone without moving his limbs.I zoned from Commonlands to West Freeport in High Performance but it was still a bit slow, taking several minutes. But when rezoning to Commonlands, it took mere seconds. I set it to High Quality and zoned back into West Freeport, again within a few seconds.So while there seems to be some initial slowness, possibly on either my end or having to do with other people testing it, or as just part of the program, once it is loaded, and everything is cached, it seems to run fairly well.

DanKinney

10-22-2009, 12:32 AM

<cite>Garavic@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote>This has been commented, but I thought I'd post to verify. The installer is not recognizing Windows XP x64 as a valid "Windows XP or newer" OS.Would love to help test this out so hopefully that gets corrected soon.</blockquote>Yup...we missed that. A new installer will be provided in the morning.-dan

DanKinney

10-22-2009, 12:35 AM

<cite>Dreyco wrote:</cite><blockquote>Issues with the Launchpad:<ul><li>Extra Linebreaks are displayed between paragraphs on the EULA.</li><li>There is no way to select a server other than test at the moment, which makes it hard to test it beyond zoning and soloing due to the sparsity of Test Server.</li><li>Is there or will there be a way to tell the game to switch out of "Streaming" mode?</li></ul></blockquote>The EULA formatting bugs me too. I'll get it cleaned up.This version is ONLY for the Test server until we get the kinks worked out.This build is only for the streaming model, but it isn't really limited to that. We are going to add that later - our focus has been on this specific scenario.-dan

DanKinney

10-22-2009, 12:38 AM

<cite>Mynervia@Guk wrote:</cite><blockquote>Although this probably doesn't come as a surprise, the Streaming client doesn't run at all on Win2k SP4. The installer (launcher_setup.exe) works fine. Attempting to run the actual patcher (Launcher.exe) results in "nothing" - the program seems to immediately quit without any kind of error or feedback, and doesn't even run long enough to show up in the Processes tab of Windows Task Manager.Given that this is how FreeRealms largely behaves on Win2k (it just doesn't run, without any kind of error or feedback or explanation), I'm assuming it comes from their shared heritage. I just hope the old-fashioned (nonstreaming) client stays Win2k-compatible ><</blockquote>Yup...this isn't compatible with Windows 2000, for the reason you suspected. It has been on our list to support but the priority has been low because the population of W2K folks is relatively small (not helpful for you, I know). It isn't impossible, but it is a little more than a simple re-compile. Keep pushing us for it.-dan

Dreyco

10-22-2009, 12:55 AM

Speaking of launchers though... this launchpad is extremely nice. Will EQ2 be seeing this launcher hit the non-streaming client? <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> (Hate to make an aside)

Dreyco

10-22-2009, 01:04 AM

<cite>DanKinney wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Dreyco wrote:</cite><blockquote>Issues with the Launchpad:<ul><li>Extra Linebreaks are displayed between paragraphs on the EULA.</li><li>There is no way to select a server other than test at the moment, which makes it hard to test it beyond zoning and soloing due to the sparsity of Test Server.</li><li>Is there or will there be a way to tell the game to switch out of "Streaming" mode?</li></ul></blockquote>The EULA formatting bugs me too. I'll get it cleaned up.This version is ONLY for the Test server until we get the kinks worked out.This build is only for the streaming model, but it isn't really limited to that. We are going to add that later - our focus has been on this specific scenario.-dan</blockquote>1.) Awesome!2.) That's a shame. It would be nice to be able to go out with a few friends, run an instance, see how it performs there.3.) I didn't mean that it should be that way -now-. More that, in the future, asking if there will be a way to switch it "off" and just finish downloading the rest of the files! <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />Keep up the good work!

Kalthare

10-22-2009, 05:21 AM

Bit of a UI issue in the streaming launcher: it says I have 17 days remaining on my account, when, by my reckoning, it's more like 174. Adding room for it to display another digit would presumably be non-trivial, but then, someone who has more than 3 months of time in their account probably doesn't need reminding yet. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" />Edit: Clicking on the subscribe button opens a browser window to an error page with an armadillo logo, something like 'CAS single sign on'. Is it linking to an internal version of the account page or something?

Flara

10-22-2009, 05:33 AM

I'm not a techie type person, but then lots of players aren't, so I thought I'd use the new streaming goodie instead of the old one to get the test server going on my secondary computer and give a little feedback. It's an off the shelf Velocity Micro with Vista Home Premium 32 bit, Intel Core 2 Duo CPU E6550 @ 2.33 GHz, with 2 GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce 8600 GT video card and on board sound. The client ran smoothly. No glitches and only a few minutes to character select. My latest character, a test_copy add, didn't have a model on the character select screen (I saw that you're aware and fixing this), but it worked to log her in. I'd left her in Feerrott when I added her to the server, and it took 21 minutes (cable modem with the highest speed offered by Cox) to zone in there. Not bad considering what a huge and extremely populated zone that is. From Feerrott to Thundering Steppes it took 4 minutes. No glitches. I took the boat from the T.S. dock to Butcherblock Mountains. It took about five minuts, but I arrived standing in mid air with a ton of missing geometry. I took one step, fell through the world, zoned, and landed at the entrance to Greater Faydark. I took the boat from Butcherblock Mountains to Nek Forest. About 8 minutes. No glitches, except one that I periodically get on live server where the boat reaches the dock, and then goes back a bit and arrives again. I hope that description makes sense. From Nek dock to Mara about one minute, no glitches. Called home from Mara to South Qeynos. Two minutes. It seemed to work pretty well. (It's a laggy zone for me. I've been experiencing the super lag and memory problems, so some zones are really bad, I often crash when I've zoned around a bit, but the client seemed to work smoothly and I didn't crash) From South Qeynos to Antonica dock, 5 minutes. No glitches. From Antonica dock to Qeynos Harbor about one minute. No glitches. From Qeynos harbor to Sinking Sands via the carpet 6 minutes. No glitches. I just zoned around pretty much. I didn't spend a lot of time in the zone, so I don't know how much of the zone rendered. That's all I've had time to do so far. If you set this up so that you can either stream or pre-load, or switch between the two, that would really be awesome!

DanKinney

10-22-2009, 11:18 AM

<cite>Kalthare wrote:</cite><blockquote>Bit of a UI issue in the streaming launcher: it says I have 17 days remaining on my account, when, by my reckoning, it's more like 174. Adding room for it to display another digit would presumably be non-trivial, but then, someone who has more than 3 months of time in their account probably doesn't need reminding yet. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" />Edit: Clicking on the subscribe button opens a browser window to an error page with an armadillo logo, something like 'CAS single sign on'. Is it linking to an internal version of the account page or something?</blockquote>Good point on the counter. I'll get that logic updated.The subscription button is pointing to a part of the system that has not been updated yet. Expect that next week.-dan

ailees

10-22-2009, 11:30 AM

I installed, started, chose language 'english' but "news" were the french one (yes, I am in France, but I play in english on Splitpaw)

ShadowedFlame

10-22-2009, 02:43 PM

Took 10 minutes to the "Play" button.... awesome!Another 5 to get to character creation. Seems good so far. Maybe something pointing out to users what the dinosaur means would be good.

suzita

10-22-2009, 03:23 PM

Very impressed - the initial download through to having a new character running round DLW took just under 30 mins. My first zone to Neriak took 10 mins, but going back into DLW seemed a normal zone time.If I were starting this game as a new player, this streaming download is fantastic for getting you in the game quickly and generally I guess new players would mainly be hanging around in their starter area for a fair while so the streaming wouldn't be too noticeable. If its possible though, it would be great to have an option to download the rest of the install at the end of my play session instead of continuing with the streaming download in future play sessions. (sorry if this has already been discussed or if i've missed something <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" />)great job <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" />(Celinette on Test)

DanKinney

10-22-2009, 08:04 PM

Dreyco wrote:<blockquote>Issues with the Launchpad:<ul><li>Extra Linebreaks are displayed between paragraphs on the EULA.</li></ul></blockquote>The cleanup of the EULA is done. This will cause everyone to see the updated EULA since technically, it has changed. Just formatting however.-dan

frelingo

10-22-2009, 08:54 PM

This will sure help new playing try out the game.. but for old player, i dont know if I want want to wait 10-15 min for every zone <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" />some issue on startup and fixed:- after installation it freeze my screen for 3-5min - windows option was still working,- restart my pc and reinstall flashwith mozilla- reinstall the streamer- then it took 3-5min again but this time no freezing and the streamer option start download. - whoops i press the play option!! well after 20min of dl/scanAfter that no problem, take 10-15min to load a zone, after zoned loaded it normal load time.i also noticed, that you always downloading - and I noted that item in game, like carpet in dlw and some npc take time to rendering when you get closer, i did had to wait 30-45 second before all in wanderlust fair was finish rendering.and when the *dragon* stop moving, and i move like 10-15 meter away, i start getting that little dragon <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" />... so i just wonder if you loading the area in you avartar field of view?My system:AMD Phenom(tm) 9950 Quad-Core Processor 2.60ghz8,00gb Ram64-bit systemWindows VistaNvidia GTx 280 GforceConnection:24mbit dsl (location DK )

Caldreya

10-23-2009, 12:31 AM

Awesome so far - 1 hitch.I was going to moors for the first time from SS, i got on the airship, and zoned, enter 20 min download. No big deal, I finish the download, and I'm on the airship, leaving Moors. When I reach the "zoneline" I an ported about 100 feet above firmroot. I moved & fell & died.It would be nice if the game detected you were streaming & zoned you onto the dock instead of keeping you on the boat.

Landiin

10-23-2009, 12:53 AM

Over all it is a good idea, here is my thoughts. I used two connections to test with. 5G connection (avg speed from speedtest.net); From install to zone in wasn't bad at all. I was pleased to be in the game and running around with out much worry. WISP connection; Every thing worked well and as intended. However you really really need to give some sort of progress for slower connection other then the normal progress bar. Had I been a new user interested in the game and trying it out, I would of gave up and moved on. Why you ask? Because I never knew how much longer it would be to enter the game. I would think something was wrong with my connection or your server as many times it looked like the file was starting over and over due to the files being streamed down was so close in size. Overall; Besides not knowing or having an estimated clue on a slower connection when I was going to enter the game every thing seemed ok. The dragon is cute but really make it something that says please wait.. That is something I would expect to see in a child's game not a game of this age range.

Rothgar

10-23-2009, 01:19 AM

<cite>Caldreya@Najena wrote:</cite><blockquote>Awesome so far - 1 hitch.I was going to moors for the first time from SS, i got on the airship, and zoned, enter 20 min download. No big deal, I finish the download, and I'm on the airship, leaving Moors. When I reach the "zoneline" I an ported about 100 feet above firmroot. I moved & fell & died.It would be nice if the game detected you were streaming & zoned you onto the dock instead of keeping you on the boat.</blockquote>It should be doing this already. When we added the boats, the plan was for you to be ported to the docks in BB if you "missed the boat". <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> Sounds like there's a bug so we'll look into it.

Siskiyou

10-23-2009, 01:19 AM

I don't have the details that the others have. Suffice to say, the first time I go anywhere I have to wait FOREVER for things to finish downloading. I have a Vista 64 machine with 6gb of memory, yada, yada, that runs eq2 very respectably - two at once even. Crashed a couple times zoning, which, most interestingly, I then logged back in at the zone I was going to. It almost seems like it was hanging up - not downloading like the little dragon thought he was. I am really upset that it took from 3:30 to 6:00 pm to get to SS from SQ... I missed the party... I am currently on my mothers wireless (linksys router and cable modem - one of each, not combined) and I'll run a speed test to see how much I'm loosing from the distance to the router. But so far I am disappointed with waiting each time for the zone to download.

Rothgar

10-23-2009, 01:21 AM

<cite>Toran@Oasis wrote:</cite><blockquote>The dragon is cute but really make it something that says please wait.. That is something I would expect to see in a child's game not a game of this age range. </blockquote>But the baby dragon was the original pre-order reward and has always been iconic for EQII! <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

Caldreya

10-23-2009, 01:23 AM

Rothgar

10-23-2009, 01:26 AM

<cite>Siskiyou wrote:</cite><blockquote>I don't have the details that the others have. Suffice to say, the first time I go anywhere I have to wait FOREVER for things to finish downloading. I have a Vista 64 machine with 6gb of memory, yada, yada, that runs eq2 very respectably - two at once even. Crashed a couple times zoning, which, most interestingly, I then logged back in at the zone I was going to. It almost seems like it was hanging up - not downloading like the little dragon thought he was. I am really upset that it took from 3:30 to 6:00 pm to get to SS from SQ... I missed the party... I am currently on my mothers wireless (linksys router and cable modem - one of each, not combined) and I'll run a speed test to see how much I'm loosing from the distance to the router. But so far I am disappointed with waiting each time for the zone to download.</blockquote>Based on the times you gave it sounds like your internet connection is fairly slow, coupled with a wireless router made it worse. I'm sorry you were disappointed by the experience. Keep in mind that we can't do anything about a slow connection. Our game has large assets and that is not going to change. So whether you sit at the zoning screen or sit at the patcher, you've unfortunately got to sit somewhere while things download.The big advantage to the streaming client is that you only have to wait for it to download your first zone and then you're in the game and playing without it downloading the other 200 zones in the game. Since you immediately logged in and tried to hop across 3 or 4 zones you needed to download a lot of files.As soon as we have some more prefetching logic in there, it might even speed up your transitions to other zones assuming you stay in the first zone long enough for it to download more files.

Dreyco

10-23-2009, 01:47 AM

Rothgar,The biggest road block seems to be the "Fetching Assets". Even on a fast system, it's extremely slow! From what you're saying, this is mainly a CPU Process where the client is trying to figure out what assets it needs. Is there any way to speed this process up? Once it actually gets to downloading something, the process literally speeds by.

Praktikala

10-23-2009, 10:37 AM

what im missing on the normal patcher and the streaming patcher is a bar where i can see the bandwidth of the download ....i hate it to miss such a important information

Praktikala

10-23-2009, 10:52 AM

and another idea to accelerate the download time from the normal patcher:give player the choice to pick a update scenarioe.g. "new to the game" so the patcher would only patch the citys and t1 and t2 zones.or "t8 only" and the patcher only patches t8 zones and zone where t8 zones are in (cl, ef, ls ...)i know alot ppl that have only 2 lvl 80 chars and no more toons. its senseless for those ppl to patch the whole game.and when someone with a t8 patched game goes to a zone he didnt patch so the game downloads the zone like the streaming client does.greetings Praktikala / Anokal

Nathdorl

10-23-2009, 11:33 AM

<img src="http://i33.tinypic.com/23vgjuh.png" width="478" height="389" />you can circumvent this by running the setup in "xp compatibility mode" but erm... i think you somehow forgot to put xp_64 to the list of valid windows versions <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

Landiin

10-23-2009, 12:25 PM

<cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Toran@Oasis wrote:</cite><blockquote>The dragon is cute but really make it something that says please wait.. That is something I would expect to see in a child's game not a game of this age range. </blockquote>But the baby dragon was the original pre-order reward and has always been iconic for EQII! <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /></blockquote>Yes I agree, But still not very informative. Maybe a world with a baby dragon running around it....

DanKinney

10-23-2009, 01:24 PM

<cite>Nathdorl wrote:</cite><blockquote>you can circumvent this by running the setup in "xp compatibility mode" but erm... i think you somehow forgot to put xp_64 to the list of valid windows versions <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" /></blockquote>We've updated the installer to correct this oversight. I thought it would have been out yesterday, but it will go out later this morning (California time).-dan

tkia

10-23-2009, 01:25 PM

<cite>Toran@Oasis wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Toran@Oasis wrote:</cite><blockquote>The dragon is cute but really make it something that says please wait.. That is something I would expect to see in a child's game not a game of this age range. </blockquote>But the baby dragon was the original pre-order reward and has always been iconic for EQII! <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /></blockquote>Yes I agree, But still not very informative. Maybe a world with a baby dragon running around it....</blockquote>Noooo! Leave Chuckles alone! I grew very fond of him after 8 hours of playing with this. Now I just need to be able to move him out from behind my group window .... <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />But seriously, I don't think we want anything more than the dragon for background loading or it could get very intrusive in the game interface. However, if they were to echo back the file names being fetched on the loading screens as some of us have suggested, would that satisfy your need for more information too?

Attercop

10-23-2009, 02:30 PM

i was having the same issue and updated the flashplayer 10 and had immediate success ...i use a cellphone modem and it's cloudy and rainy here in Spokane WA today so I don't think my speed gives any representation of what it's supposed to be like.

DanKinney

10-23-2009, 02:48 PM

<cite>DanKinney wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Nathdorl wrote:</cite><blockquote>you can circumvent this by running the setup in "xp compatibility mode" but erm... i think you somehow forgot to put xp_64 to the list of valid windows versions <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" /></blockquote>We've updated the installer to correct this oversight. I thought it would have been out yesterday, but it will go out later this morning (California time).-dan</blockquote>The updated installer is now available. Try it now.-dan

DanKinney

10-23-2009, 02:49 PM

<cite>Praktikala@Venekor wrote:</cite><blockquote>what im missing on the normal patcher and the streaming patcher is a bar where i can see the bandwidth of the download ....i hate it to miss such a important information</blockquote>We will be adding more information to the patcher (at least within the Launcher) in the coming weeks.-dan

tkia

10-23-2009, 03:20 PM

<cite>DanKinney wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>DanKinney wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Nathdorl wrote:</cite><blockquote>you can circumvent this by running the setup in "xp compatibility mode" but erm... i think you somehow forgot to put xp_64 to the list of valid windows versions <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" /></blockquote>We've updated the installer to correct this oversight. I thought it would have been out yesterday, but it will go out later this morning (California time).-dan</blockquote>The updated installer is now available. Try it now.-dan</blockquote>Does this build contain any other changes besides the XP 64bit correction?

Toughone

10-23-2009, 03:24 PM

I am crashing even faster with this new version, soon as i load to the black screen it crashes out.

Landiin

10-23-2009, 03:37 PM

<cite>tkia wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Toran@Oasis wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Toran@Oasis wrote:</cite><blockquote>The dragon is cute but really make it something that says please wait.. That is something I would expect to see in a child's game not a game of this age range. </blockquote>But the baby dragon was the original pre-order reward and has always been iconic for EQII! <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /></blockquote>Yes I agree, But still not very informative. Maybe a world with a baby dragon running around it....</blockquote>Noooo! Leave Chuckles alone! I grew very fond of him after 8 hours of playing with this. Now I just need to be able to move him out from behind my group window .... <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" />But seriously, I don't think we want anything more than the dragon for background loading or it could get very intrusive in the game interface. However, if they were to echo back the file names being fetched on the loading screens as some of us have suggested, would that satisfy your need for more information too?</blockquote>An animated image is an animated image no matter what it is, as long as the size is kept the same. A dragon running in place just isn't a very good indicator to me. Adding more information as DanKinney says may just be enough we'll see.

Xalmat

10-23-2009, 03:37 PM

It seems that the streaming client works much better in Windows 7 than it did in Windows Vista.Interesting thing, while loading into the Outpost of the Overlord, the download indicator disappeared, but it's still "Fetching Assets".

DanKinney

10-23-2009, 04:37 PM

<cite>tkia wrote:</cite><blockquote><blockquote>The updated installer is now available. Try it now.-dan</blockquote>Does this build contain any other changes besides the XP 64bit correction?</blockquote>It isn't even a build of the app - it is a change only to the installer. It had a list of supported OS's that was missing XP x64. There is no difference once you start running Launcher.exe.-dan

Xalmat

10-23-2009, 04:37 PM

I'm getting client crashes trying to load into Baubleshire from the character select, when trying to use ProfitUI. Looks like it's the Default UI or nothing for me. <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

Xalmat

10-23-2009, 05:41 PM

Loading into my house in south qeynos, the download process stalled again. My house is at capacity, 700/700 items."Loading entity resources" got to 98%, but the download stalled at 5.7-6.0 megabytes like it was doing at other points. I click "Exit" in the load screen and the came freezes up and crashes, and doesn't unload from memory. I have to use Task Manager to dump the process.Reloading the client, I'm able to finish loading into my house after a brief download.I also notice that sound effects from my house load and start playing long before I finish zoning. Very annoying, I had to turn my computer speakers off.For my poor 1.5Mbps DSL connection I definitely don't recommend the streaming client; it's just too slow.I noticed a rather significant delay in loading up NPCs in Qeynos Harbor. I had to wait for the character models to download. I would almost recommend that PC character models be part of the initial download for the game, as well as armor textures.

Rayne Singer

10-23-2009, 07:01 PM

Being completely new to this whole test thing ....I just dont' get it. I clicked the test server button it downloaded in like 3 hours? I think. I create a character just like I would on the regular game. /shrug don't notice what's supposed to be happening that's any different.

Rothgar

10-23-2009, 07:14 PM

<cite>Xalmat wrote:</cite><blockquote>Loading into my house in south qeynos, the download process stalled again. My house is at capacity, 700/700 items."Loading entity resources" got to 98%, but the download stalled at 5.7-6.0 megabytes like it was doing at other points. I click "Exit" in the load screen and the came freezes up and crashes, and doesn't unload from memory. I have to use Task Manager to dump the process.Reloading the client, I'm able to finish loading into my house after a brief download.I also notice that sound effects from my house load and start playing long before I finish zoning. Very annoying, I had to turn my computer speakers off.For my poor 1.5Mbps DSL connection I definitely don't recommend the streaming client; it's just too slow.I noticed a rather significant delay in loading up NPCs in Qeynos Harbor. I had to wait for the character models to download. I would almost recommend that PC character models be part of the initial download for the game, as well as armor textures.</blockquote>We're making some of these changes already and future versions will do better at prioritizing downloads.

Rothgar

10-23-2009, 07:16 PM

<cite>Rayne Singer wrote:</cite><blockquote>Being completely new to this whole test thing ....I just dont' get it. I clicked the test server button it downloaded in like 3 hours? I think. I create a character just like I would on the regular game. /shrug don't notice what's supposed to be happening that's any different.</blockquote>Sounds to me like you used your existing patcher instead of following the instructions in my original post! <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />You would need to download the NEW patcher to test the streaming client. If you're using the old patcher, you just downloaded all of the PAK files from the patcher leaving nothing else to stream.

Rayne Singer

10-23-2009, 08:48 PM

Oopsie..too much time elapsed between reading post and deciding to give it a try. Anyway, downloaded the way I was supposed to and yeah, only a few mins, but now I just clicked from character select to play and it's still loading NQ, think we are going on 5 mins here..oh and I am on dsl.Ok, that took a little longer than I'd like but at least I am in now.edit: got in, tried to zone to antonica 8 mins of zoning and the game shut down.Ok, final comment: this is not the option for dsl for sure. zone in times are too much.

tylermadeit

10-23-2009, 11:58 PM

The Launcher UI design is a farcry from that dated web 2.0 look of the "station launcher"./tip-of-the-hat

QuaiCon

10-24-2009, 05:47 AM

looks like it will work nice for new playersfrom installing launcher to getting into game with a new char in darklight woods was just a matter of minutes.but zoning to the bigger overland zones takes forever, zoning from darklight woods to commonlands took nearly 10 minutes. then i tested ship from cl to kp and the zone time was so long that the ship allready left kp again and i fell through the world. kp to timorous deep zone was fast again.The long zoning times to the big overland zones would not be that much a problem if people get warned about them before, also like mentioned allready you should calculate and display the size of the total download needed instead letting the countdown run down often with small amounts. Maybe it would even be possible to pop up a confirm box on zoning that tells you how much you would have to download to enter the zone.Maybe you could add a download manager to ui where the player could select to downlaod the next zone while he is still busy in one zone (so when a palyer gets close to outleveling teh zone he could allready start download for next zone in the background to lower teh wait times).On zoning to bigger zones the dragon seemed to disapear during the fetching assets part when the bar was not even at 50% and it took forever to finish without any info whats happening..Also the problem with falling through world on ship when zoning is too slow should get fixed somehow.But for the purpose of getting new players into the game without long download times, it works rather good especially as long as they stay in the starter zone. For a high level player that usually runs around in multiple zones, i would not recommend using it instead of doing a full reinstall, especially groups won't be happy if one of them is downloading for 10 minutes when they enter a new zone.

Ryptide

10-24-2009, 02:31 PM

Had to do a fresh install of Windows XP so I thought I would give this a try. All local drivers updated, all Windows Updates completed, Flash, Java.. etc.System:Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6400 @ 2.13GHz2.5GB ram (recognized)Windows XP ProWD Raptor 70GB SATAEVGA GeForce 7950GT 256mb x 2 in SLIDSL connection - Netspeed.net shows my speed from San Diego at 610kb/sFrom download of the Streaming Launcher, install and loading to new character in Gfay took 2 hours and 26 minutes. I was not running any custom UI or mods.On a side note, I decided to delete everything from the Streaming Launcher and try installing via all the expansion discs and then finish the updates with the Station Launcher. After installing the 5 expansions I have via disc, Station Launcher is telling me I still have 9.06GB of downloads to update. With an average connection speed of around 80kb/s to through the Station Launcher, I'm looking at an extremely long time to finish the updates.Is there an option to order a disc(s) with all the downloads or at least a majority of them? Even if the discs only covered 75% of the updates this could save a huge amount of time.

Cryptolic89

10-24-2009, 10:54 PM

System SpecsWindows XPATI Radeon HD 4850AMD CPU Triple Core 2.8 GHz maybe higher I think it totals 7.2 GHzCable Connection 1mb sec downloadWell I downloaded this streaming client and i must say this is by far an awesome piece of program. I have downloaded what I needed to play in roughly 6 minutes. I am now getting ingame to see the on the fly feature of downloading. In making my character everything was loaded unbelievably quick. Absolutely no problems I'm actually enjoying this feature so far. I can't choose a froglok for some reason a little disheartening I loved that race......I read a little more and see that it is a server locked race. I'm also finding out that I can only play on test servers, I hope that I'm not playing for nothing I guess....well I guess this is beta. I have spent about 30 minuts in-game and I have had absolutely no lag/glitching. I am overall pleased with this I would like to see it act on an actual non test server though. Keep it up I like this addition

Pervis

10-26-2009, 12:20 AM

<cite>Arombolosh@Runnyeye wrote:</cite><blockquote>looks like it will work nice for new players</blockquote>I think it will work well for existing players, as well.This opens up a lot of possibilities, especially in house items. While I don't know if any of it will happen, there are two distinct possibilities this could have.The first is graphic assets from expansions that are created and in game now, but are not avalible as house items. One of the stated reasons to not make everything avalible as a house item is because it would add to the base download of the game, the trial in particular. It would mean each player that wanted to try this game out would have a longer download before they could get it.The second thing I can see this being good for is customized furnature; particularly character portraits.In both cases, it would mean that instead of these items being required downloads in order to log in to the game, they would simply be fetched whenever you zoned in to a house with the items.While its possible that neither of them would happen, I'd be VERY supprised if the first didn't. The second is a bit more complicated though, so may not happen.

DanKinney

10-26-2009, 11:06 PM

We have just updated the Launcher client for the EQII Streaming Client with the following items:<ul><li>You can run the Launcher in other languages<ul><li>Some strings are still missing (coming soon)</li><li>The game client is still English only</li></ul></li><li>There is now a history menu on the login field</li><li>Links that are opened from the Launcher will use the default browser (instead of IE)</li><li>The space bar will toggle the "Remember Me" button</li><li>The countdown value will not display if you have > 99 days of time remaining</li><li>You may login again after you launch the game client (it was auto-closing before)</li></ul>If there are any issues, please let us know.-dan

Xalmat

10-26-2009, 11:26 PM

So here's a question.Suppose I wanted to convert the regular client into the streaming client but I didn't want to re-download the game.Could I copy my PAKS subfolder from the regular client to the streaming client?If I wanted to do a hard backup of the streaming client, I'd be backing up the Assets folder right?

DanKinney

10-27-2009, 12:29 AM

Xalmat...I'll let Rothgar respond to that...it is more of a game thing.-dan

22224446

10-27-2009, 04:47 AM

<cite>DanKinney wrote:</cite><blockquote>Xalmat...I'll let Rothgar respond to that...it is more of a game thing.-dan</blockquote>i think xalmat knows, which files he needs to cc for a backup. the launcher relevant parts are1, uses the streaming launcher the same paths to deploy the downloaded files as the normal launcher?2, does the streaming launcher run a quick check on start, which files exist on the hard drive already, and which are not available, and needed to download?all those questions are based on the files of the game itself are the same for both launchers.

Smirkey_of_Nektulos

10-27-2009, 12:55 PM

Well, I made sure to use IE and update Flash. I then clicked on the link in the OP to download the new installer.I don't have a Test account, so I tried to click on the link to create one, but every time I do it says that station.sony.com is down for maintenance. Yet, when I go to the site normally it seems to work fine.When is it going to be possible to check this out again? The server maintenance has been done for two hours now.Or, is something not working right on my end?

Xalmat

10-27-2009, 01:07 PM

Test uses the same station login info as your regular account.

Bkschrad

10-27-2009, 03:00 PM

I've tried to log in twice since Dan Kinney posted his update, but it seems that the login servers are down? I tried last night around midnight pacific and just now. Same message both times. Has anyone else had this happen?The exact message is:Could not connect to a login server. The servers may be busy; please try again in a few minutes.It also only tried one login server, but that may be just how many test has...Edit: added message from login server

Virrago

10-27-2009, 03:16 PM

<cite>Bkschrad wrote:</cite><blockquote>I've tried to log in twice since Dan Kinney posted his update, but it seems that the login servers are down? I tried last night around midnight pacific and just now. Same message both times. Has anyone else had this happen?The exact message is:Could not connect to a login server. The servers may be busy; please try again in a few minutes.</blockquote>The login servers were down for maintenance.Try again in a few minutes <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

Rothgar

10-27-2009, 03:29 PM

<cite>Xalmat wrote:</cite><blockquote>So here's a question.Suppose I wanted to convert the regular client into the streaming client but I didn't want to re-download the game.Could I copy my PAKS subfolder from the regular client to the streaming client?If I wanted to do a hard backup of the streaming client, I'd be backing up the Assets folder right?</blockquote>We don't keep version information in the PAK files since the patcher is responsible for updating them. So if a resource exists in a PAK, the game will try to use it, even if its out of date, and this could cause problems.So if you have PAKS, you'll need to run the patcher to keep them updated unfortunately.Perhaps in the future we can look at a way to only update the PAK's that you've already downloaded.

Xalmat

10-27-2009, 03:29 PM

Trying to load the Streaming Client, I hit play on the launcher. The launcher closes, and...Nothing.Open Task Manager and Everquest2.exe is taking up about 13 megabytes of ram, and just sits there. The client doesn't actually seem to load at all.

Bkschrad

10-27-2009, 03:45 PM

<cite>Xalmat wrote:</cite><blockquote>Trying to load the Streaming Client, I hit play on the launcher. The launcher closes, and...Nothing.Open Task Manager and Everquest2.exe is taking up about 13 megabytes of ram, and just sits there. The client doesn't actually seem to load at all.</blockquote>I've actually had that happen. The game usually comes up, but it can take a little while.

Xalmat

10-27-2009, 03:46 PM

<cite>Bkschrad wrote:</cite><blockquote>I've actually had that happen. The game usually comes up, but it can take a little while.</blockquote>How long is a while? I'm sitting on 30+ minutes.

tkia

10-27-2009, 03:51 PM

<cite>Xalmat wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Bkschrad wrote:</cite><blockquote>I've actually had that happen. The game usually comes up, but it can take a little while.</blockquote>How long is a while? I'm sitting on 30+ minutes.</blockquote>People apparently can't login to test server at all currently. As this client only talks to test could this be the real problem?

Xalmat

10-27-2009, 03:54 PM

Possibly. But I was having problems last night when the Test server was up.

Karrane1

10-27-2009, 03:54 PM

I have been trying to log into the Test server for 3 hrs now. All I get at char screen is LOCKED server. Could be why your clients arent working.

Bkschrad

10-27-2009, 04:03 PM

Toughone

10-27-2009, 04:33 PM

Having the same prob as Sess, hit the button and nothing comes up after.

DanKinney

10-27-2009, 05:47 PM

Try it now. I believe that I had a misconfiguration within the Launcher.-dan

ximo

10-27-2009, 05:53 PM

This is a welcome addition to the game, I'll certainly get my friends to try and give EQ2 another shot when this comes out.I do have one suggestion though, as it seems people will be spending longer than usual at the zoning screens is it possible to update them?I've never really been a fan of the concept art screens (some of which I'm not able to see where they ended up in game), instead you could be showing off screenshots of different continents/zones, I dunno, with snippets of lore underneath etc. Just a thought.

Smirkey_of_Nektulos

10-27-2009, 07:31 PM

Alrighty then! I finally got this thing to work after realizing that my main account has never been /testcopy-ed over. I went the lazy route and set up a new trial account once the Station site finally let me in to do so.For some strange reason, the new patcher wants to put the EQ2 files in a hidden folder on my machine (something like UserNameAppDataLowInstalled Games... etc. etc.), which made it very difficult for me to successfully install the Profit UI and EQ2Map. I finally got that done as well, then said "heck with it" and copied all the files back into the Sony folder where my original copy of the game is. Now there's just an EverQuest 2 and an EverQuest 2 (Streaming) in one handy place.I started up the new launcher after logging in to my new test account and created a toon. The first time I went into the game, it took almost 7 minutes for me to pop up in Kelethin with the game in its standard crappy low resolution. The little dinosaur went from a run to a crawl and then disappeared entirely. I adjusted all the settings so that it was back up to my monitor's native 1900x1200, turned the settings up to High Quality with the GPU shadows going and loaded in my UI settings from Profit, and then logged out and tried again.The second time around was an absolute dream come true! The game was up and going in well under a minute. Even better was that my RAM usage (out of 4GB in Windows 7 64-bit) dropped from the usual 2.9 - 3.1 GB I use with the normal client, all the way down to about 2.2 GB with the new one! My FPS in Kelethin stayed in the 30s pretty much the whole time I explored the zone. I tried running to Loping Plains to test zoning only to find out that you can't go there with a trial account, but I suspect that it would work great.I'll /testcopy over some toons from my main account and play with this some more, but I LOVE what I'm seeing so far!My system specs:2009 24" aluminum iMac running Windows 7 Pro 64-bit in Boot Camp4GB ramNVidia GeForce GT 130 running native 1900x1200 resolution1 TB hard drive with 700 GB used for Windows 7 and 300 GB for Leopard

DanKinney

10-28-2009, 12:12 AM

When you install the new client, you can specify where you want to put the client...you could change the directory. The default installation path is a place we can be guaranteed to have permissions to write. With Vista (and now Windows 7), we have to be able to support new User Account Control (UAC) requirements.-dan

uchulayi

10-28-2009, 10:02 AM

Thought I would try streaming eq2 on my useless pc at work - I cannot actually play on it due to the terrible specs (probably just as well as I would never do any work <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" />) but I wanted to see just how quick the initial streaming process was So 2 mins to download patcher 5 mins to character creation screen 3 mins to create character 20 mins to enter Outpost of the Overlord with new toon Bearing in mind the horrible spec of this computer (“x86 Family 15 Model 4 Stepping 10 GenuineIntel ~2990MHZ” processor (!); 504MB of RAM (!!), integrated graphics chip (Intel 82945G Express Chipset Family) (?), broadband connection, I was impressed that I could actually be at the outpost of the overlord in 30 mins .. even if I couldn’t actually do anything once there <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" /> Although I think I would always have the game proper installed on my home pc, I think streaming has great potential for when you are away from home with a laptop or you’re staying at someone else’s house and they don’t have the game installed or perhaps want to pop in to an internet café for an hour or so. Will definitely be trying this on my new laptop .. when it arrives ..

Smirkey_of_Nektulos

10-28-2009, 11:07 AM

So, now that another weekly update cycle has come and gone with no word of this being implemented, is there any idea yet on an ETA for this thing?Mind you, I know it has to work and work properly before it's put on Live and I would rather wait than see a rushed effort put out with remaining bugs... but after trying it out yesterday I'm completely gaga about using it all the time.Can someone throw us a bone, maybe? <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" />

Toughone

10-28-2009, 02:21 PM

Im still crashing, i load it to the first screen now and then it crashes and doesnt load anything after that, using windows xp.

tkia

10-28-2009, 03:01 PM

I updated to the new client last night and saw a bit of Xalmat's issue I think. The first time I hit play the interface went away and nothing seemed to happen. Checked processes and everquest2.exe was running with a constant amount of memory of about 16MB but this wasn't listing as a running application in task manager. I killed that, which took a few attempts and tried again. Second time it went in but slowly.Today I tried it again. Hit play and it appears to just vanish. The exe was again using 16MB of memory and not listing as a running app but I did notice that it was clocking 1 or 2% of CPU time so I waited. Eventually the game did load but it took several minutes during which time there was no obvious indicator to the user that anything was happening.Long experience in support tells me that when the average user clicks something and nothing appears to happen they usually just click again ... and again ... and again ... <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" /> With the sort of delay I was seeing they could easily have a good half dozen copies of the binary loaded into the process list by the time the first one starts to show it's still doing stuff. Ideally, could you look at optimizing whatever is being done at that point so it doesn't take so long? Failing that it really needs a visual indicator to let the user know something is happening in order to avoid the click fest.Given the above I opted to exit and try it again to time exactly how long that pause took and hit a different problem. When trying to open the client it told me it couldn't connect. This was at the precise time that the live servers came down for the hotfix this morning. Test server was up and the test login server was up as I loaded my normal test install through station launcher with no issues. As the client is currently setup to talk only to the test server region I'm surprised that anything happening in the live environment is blocking it. If it persists in being reliant on some central function that goes down with the live servers it could be quite a problem when it goes into general use. I think it's fairly common for people to jump over to test or some other region if they want to play at the point where their normal region's servers are down, so the client needs to be able to function in the selected region regardless of what is going on in others.Edit: Okay, just tried this for the third time since updating the client and this time it loaded normally with only a few seconds delay between hitting play and getting the initial game window. I presume this is the way it should be working so what's going on when it doesn't?

Psyvampiress

10-28-2009, 04:30 PM

I have tried this and I absolutely love it! I downloaded and was playing within 5-10 min! Only thing that annoyed me was when entering a new zone for toon, it would take a long time to do the fetches. But I assume this is because its streaming. I know it only does it once when you go through a new zone. I can't wait until they get this on the real servers. Because I am bad and use gotomypc and play eq2 at work, and the streaming one works a lot better then the normal one <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" /> heh

Xalmat

10-29-2009, 05:09 PM

I'm still getting the "redownload the same 400KB of data" issue whenever I run the streaming client. :/I'm more convinced at this point that the actual download process is stopping altogether.

tkia

11-03-2009, 01:43 PM

<cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Caldreya@Najena wrote:</cite><blockquote>Awesome so far - 1 hitch.I was going to moors for the first time from SS, i got on the airship, and zoned, enter 20 min download. No big deal, I finish the download, and I'm on the airship, leaving Moors. When I reach the "zoneline" I an ported about 100 feet above firmroot. I moved & fell & died.It would be nice if the game detected you were streaming & zoned you onto the dock instead of keeping you on the boat.</blockquote>It should be doing this already. When we added the boats, the plan was for you to be ported to the docks in BB if you "missed the boat". <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /> Sounds like there's a bug so we'll look into it.</blockquote>I did a double check on all the boat zones after reading this. The problem is that they all drop you in at location 0,0,0 after you lose contact with the boat on a long zone load. If you could make them use a spot on the dock, or even the zone safe point I think it would be fine.When I checked Kylong Plains and Moors I'm fairly sure all the geometry was intact. I survived Moors as I was wearing a featherfall cloak on the toon that tested it so she just floated nicely down. Kylong drops you inside one of the hills, so it's a fall through the world as soon as you move situation but panning around I don't think there was any missing geometry.I was going to re-test Butcherblock for missing geometry but that gave me another problem. I went to delete the butcherblock asset files to force a new zone download and found that everything brought down so far still seems to be sitting inside the asset1.vdb file. Is there any point at which the assets in here will be split back out into the pak folders etc.? If not, how are we going to troubleshoot suspected corrupt zone files in the future? Standard practice on this for the last 10 years has been to delete suspect files and force the patcher to download new copies, but we can't do that if they're sitting inside the asset1.vdb?Also, the long pause between hitting play and getting the initial game window seems consistent on the first launcher load in a session. I've seen it take anything up to 3 minutes at this stage but if you exit character select and re-open the launcher immediately, or if you relaunch straight after a crash it only takes the normal 4 or 5 seconds to perform the same step.

Bkschrad

11-03-2009, 03:56 PM

From what I can see of it, Butcherblock doesn't seem to be missing anything geometry-wise, but it is hard to tell because position 0,0,0 puts you underneath everything. I agree with tkia, it would be handy if the drop point after losing to boat was actually a specific area rather than the 0,0,0 that we seem to get dropped to now.

Aule

11-03-2009, 06:40 PM

Download launcher program, a matter of seconds Username/password to Play, 1 min 5 seconds Play to char creation, 1 min 53 seconds Enter World to Outpost of Overlord 10 min 15 seconds Hitting the Fan Faire 2009 guide to teleport to Fens of Nathsar only took 49 seconds (pre-loading?) Gating to Scale Yard in Freeport, 2m 03 seconds Not bad I suppose.

Siskiyou

11-03-2009, 11:10 PM

I couple questions. Now that been running for a bit everything is going much better than before. Is this because I've downloaded enough content finally that it doesn't have to downlaod as much, or because the streaming is getting more efficient? I hazard a guess what will happen live as far as the buffering/streaming.Why does Moosh transport you to Lava outside of the WoE door and then you stand there? Can't get in, elevator is always up, either walk home or call?Why does those faire guys transport a lowby to the heart of the Bone Yard in Fens. Sure can't do much there when even looking out the door means suicide. This is from Queens Island - no Moosh that I could find there - and so I hail the Burynai guy and end up in the cave that is the entrance to Karns.. now what?

tkia

11-04-2009, 01:43 PM

Since late yesterday the launcher seems to have developed a new problem. A couple of times yesterday when I tried to launch it the client hung at the 'checking' stage and listed as 'not responding' in task manager. Killing the process and re-launching fixed it at that point. This morning when I tried to launch it first ran an update and since that point has continually hung at the 'checking' stage. Killing the process now has no effect on behaviour on the next launch. When the launcher process executes it runs up about 100MB of RAM use by the connection process and then drops back to about 96MB when it moves to 'checking', from this point the RAM use sits constant and there is no sign of any CPU use at all. I have tried leaving it for a time in case it's just doing something very slowly but have yet to see any progress beyond this point. I did try re-installing this morning but running the install from a fresh download hangs up at exactly the same point. I can't find any trace of crash or log files to give any clues as to the problem. When it started this yesterday there had been no changes done on my system since before I first installed this for testing. I did update the graphics drivers before trying this morning.

Kaiyota

11-04-2009, 04:09 PM

Today i signed into it and for some reason it took me to normal server instead of test server and i cant get it on test server is it suppose to do that ? please reply <img src="/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> thnx

Rothgar

11-04-2009, 04:17 PM

<cite>Kaiyota@Everfrost wrote:</cite><blockquote>Today i signed into it and for some reason it took me to normal server instead of test server and i cant get it on test server is it suppose to do that ? please reply <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" /> thnx</blockquote>There was an issue with the latest patcher build that caused it to point to live servers. We should have a fix for it later today.

Kaiyota

11-04-2009, 04:23 PM

thank you ! <img src="/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

Landiin

11-04-2009, 09:24 PM

Mine is hanging at checking also.. Evey time I try it just stops working at checking..

Trellium

11-04-2009, 10:34 PM

<cite>tkia wrote:</cite><blockquote>Since late yesterday the launcher seems to have developed a new problem. A couple of times yesterday when I tried to launch it the client hung at the 'checking' stage and listed as 'not responding' in task manager. Killing the process and re-launching fixed it at that point. This morning when I tried to launch it first ran an update and since that point has continually hung at the 'checking' stage. Killing the process now has no effect on behaviour on the next launch. When the launcher process executes it runs up about 100MB of RAM use by the connection process and then drops back to about 96MB when it moves to 'checking', from this point the RAM use sits constant and there is no sign of any CPU use at all. I have tried leaving it for a time in case it's just doing something very slowly but have yet to see any progress beyond this point. I did try re-installing this morning but running the install from a fresh download hangs up at exactly the same point. I can't find any trace of crash or log files to give any clues as to the problem. When it started this yesterday there had been no changes done on my system since before I first installed this for testing. I did update the graphics drivers before trying this morning.</blockquote>This is exactly what happens to me as well. I started via the Station Launcher, it checked its patches and quickly went to start the game. Then I got the walking dragon and a fairly long patch, then the dragon went away and the system simply no longer responded. I opened Task Manager, it showed the game using 250MB and not responding, CPU usage was at 0%. Killed the process and restarted without Launchpad, and everything was fine after that.I did not change my graphics drivers at all though. Running Win7.EDIT: Also just had it happen while updating an XP system. EQ2 showed as not responding after getting the patch via the walking dragon, size was 218MB, CPU usage was 0.

Vonotar

11-05-2009, 01:43 AM

<cite>Toran@Oasis wrote:</cite><blockquote>Mine is hanging at checking also.. Evey time I try it just stops working at checking..</blockquote>Installed for the first time today and also hanging at checking/fetch news.Do we need to wait for a new version in the OP?

Kaiyota

11-05-2009, 06:58 PM

Mine still goes to live server and for some reason i was way laggier then normal >< when wil it be fixxed?

Rothgar

11-05-2009, 07:24 PM

Please try again. The new patcher should allow you to switch between live and test servers.

Xalmat

11-05-2009, 07:34 PM

Today's streaming client update seems to allow me to load it again. Gonna give it a run on Live servers and see how it goes.

Kaiyota

11-05-2009, 07:44 PM

do i have to redownload it cuz i dont see how i can choose all it goes to is live server it hasnt updated either if it was suppose to

Everpink

11-05-2009, 08:10 PM

No errors but dose not work for me on Vista. The task manager show it running in the background

jjlo69

11-05-2009, 08:52 PM

only error i saw once was when i tried to load ing ot antonica on live when i resttarted there was no problems other then slow first time loading of zonesUncle

Kaiyota

11-05-2009, 10:13 PM

okay i think i found out how to get on test but the screen goes black and it wont go anywhere i waited for 10 mins and it didnt go nowhere <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

Kaiyota

11-05-2009, 11:20 PM

now it keeps saying its not working and i have to exit it when i try to get on test >< lol

DanKinney

11-05-2009, 11:41 PM

<cite>Everpink wrote:</cite><blockquote>No errors but dose not work for me on Vista. The task manager show it running in the background</blockquote>Could you provide more detail on this? We'd really like to make it work for you.-dan

DanKinney

11-05-2009, 11:42 PM

<cite>Kaiyota@Everfrost wrote:</cite><blockquote>now it keeps saying its not working and i have to exit it when i try to get on test >< lol</blockquote>Is the error coming after you launch the game or within the Launcher?-dan

tkia

11-06-2009, 12:36 AM

I re-downloaded after Rothgar posted and mine is still hanging at the 'checking' stage.

Xdatinelia

11-06-2009, 12:44 AM

Mine, even after a fresh install, does nothing but sit there with an appcrash in windows vista. I have even tried run as admin & I get nowhere after entering username/pass.

Vonotar

11-06-2009, 01:20 AM

<cite>tkia wrote:</cite><blockquote>I re-downloaded after Rothgar posted and mine is still hanging at the 'checking' stage.</blockquote>dittoWindows 7 with UAC disabled, game installed to a separate HD from Windows/Program Files

Kaiyota

11-06-2009, 02:14 AM

<cite>DanKinney wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Kaiyota@Everfrost wrote:</cite><blockquote>now it keeps saying its not working and i have to exit it when i try to get on test >< lol</blockquote>Is the error coming after you launch the game or within the Launcher?-dan</blockquote>its after i launch it it goes black like its goin in full screen then after a few seconds a thing comes up saying its not working and then i have to press close the program but before that it went black and wouldnt go nowhere with in the middle the mouse goes normal instead of game ver so i downloaded it then the error thing happens no matter how many times i redownload it <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> i can get on live server but not test for some reason

DanKinney

11-06-2009, 02:15 AM

We are investigating.-dan

Xalmat

11-06-2009, 03:13 AM

Still getting the "redownloading the same 400k bytes of data" issue that's preventing me from zoning.

Chikkin

11-06-2009, 03:00 PM

I thought I'd give it a try today, downloaded patcher from original post by Rothgarinstalled, or so I thinkmade shortcut for this black S Launcher on desktopran as administratornew looking window pops up, I entered my exsisting station name and passwordthe whole thing seems to lock up on loading newswhen I click on that window I get Window's error that Launcher is not responding, in problem details it shows this:Description:A problem caused this program to stop interacting with Windows.Problem signature:Problem Event Name: AppHangB1Application Name: Launcher.exeApplication Version: 3.0.0.121Application Timestamp: 4ade14adHang Signature: acdaHang Type: 0OS Version: 6.0.6002.2.2.0.768.3Locale ID: 1033Additional Hang Signature 1: 9de06bdf2d39a4e93bb864e8f24b7e2eAdditional Hang Signature 2: 0a81Additional Hang Signature 3: 02c04ecee1538e4dfdd1a235f408827dAdditional Hang Signature 4: acdaAdditional Hang Signature 5: 9de06bdf2d39a4e93bb864e8f24b7e2eAdditional Hang Signature 6: 0a81Additional Hang Signature 7: 02c04ecee1538e4dfdd1a235f408827dRead our privacy statement:<a rel="nofollow" href="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=50163&clcid=0x0409" target="_blank">http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?lin...mp;clcid=0x0409</a>

Xdatinelia

11-06-2009, 03:54 PM

I'm with Ennia there same error & everything, I've tried it with UAC off, UAC on, and it makes no difference, run as admin, run with out that, it makes no difference, I can't get past loading news. I've trieid everything I can think of & it doesn't help.Here's my error.Description:A problem caused this program to stop interacting with Windows.Problem signature:Problem Event Name: AppHangB1Application Name: Launcher.exeApplication Version: 3.0.0.121Application Timestamp: 4ade14adHang Signature: ce0dHang Type: 0OS Version: 6.0.6002.2.2.0.768.3Locale ID: 1033Additional Hang Signature 1: 3058ccd6649b29c70bc6db0fc0e96fffAdditional Hang Signature 2: 73daAdditional Hang Signature 3: c6513d545ae227aba82ed3fd06028847Additional Hang Signature 4: ce0dAdditional Hang Signature 5: 3058ccd6649b29c70bc6db0fc0e96fffAdditional Hang Signature 6: 73daAdditional Hang Signature 7: c6513d545ae227aba82ed3fd06028847I did notice my husband got a liuttle bit futher on his machine before it freezes, he can see he has 5 days left to subscribe.Edit: I turned off all startup programs via msconfig & got past the freeze, it is freezing on the end user liscense popup. I hope ya'll can track down for me what is blocking it, I can turn it off if needed, I just wouldn't know where to begin on tracking it down lol.Edit 2:it works until I start IE then it freaks out even with all startup programs off.

Psyvampiress

11-06-2009, 06:08 PM

Just letting you know, mine works great for live and test servers. It goes into both very smoothly. And I am using Xp.

Psyvampiress

11-06-2009, 06:16 PM

is there no hate meter? in streaming? I can't see it under game features?

Xdatinelia

11-06-2009, 07:15 PM

Yeah, alright I tried this 4 ways to Sunday. I never got it to work except that one time I turned off all autostart stuff, even then after it ran I didn't get it to work again. I've even tried uninstalling ALL launcher/launchpad/streaming stuff from my machine and it just does not want to wortk here. Any suggestions are welcome, I've made sure everything is up to date, I've tried it with popup blocker off & on, also windows firewall off & on., so I am at a loss as to what is messed up. I do know it worked before, I just didn't use it past the first time I logged all the way in. Thanks

Kaiyota

11-06-2009, 08:11 PM

now mines stuck at checking >< lol

Kaiyota

11-06-2009, 08:35 PM

now its not but its doin wat it did b4

Everpink

11-06-2009, 08:42 PM

My EverQuest2.exe is crashing nowFaulting application EverQuest2.exe, version 1.0.0.1, time stamp 0x4ae61c40, faulting module unknown, version 0.0.0.0, time stamp 0x00000000, exception code 0xc0000005, fault offset 0x00000000, process id 0x1038, application start time 0x01ca5f397ff12faa.

Xdatinelia

11-06-2009, 08:43 PM

Mine is updateing now, the only thing I can think that fixed it, unless ya'll did something on your end was install free realms.The patcher part won't work unless free realms is running in the background, The game crashes upon clicking play with this errorProblem Event Name: APPCRASHApplication Name: EverQuest2.exeApplication Version: 1.0.0.1Application Timestamp: 4ae61c40Fault Module Name: StackHash_e52fFault Module Version: 0.0.0.0Fault Module Timestamp: 00000000Exception Code: c0000005Exception Offset: 00000000OS Version: 6.0.6002.2.2.0.768.3Locale ID: 1033Additional Information 1: e52fAdditional Information 2: e98dfca8bcf81bc1740adb135579ad53Additional Information 3: 860fAdditional Information 4: 6eabdd9e0dc94904be3b39a1c0583635

Dreyco

11-07-2009, 03:00 AM

Played around with it on Live today. It is indeed extremely smooth once you're in the zone. However, on my cable connection, it still takes a very, very long time to "Fetch Assets".I don't think that this would be a problem for someone if they understood what "Fetching Assets" was. I would honestly change it to something like "Downloading Zone Files. This will only need to be done once." Or something like that, so it explains in full text just what is going on. That way they know, "Okay, i'm downloading the zone... I can walk away briefly."

Dreyco

11-07-2009, 03:08 AM

I have a question...I started zoning into Nektulos Forest on the streaming client, and got the "Fetching Assets" thingy as always, which is to be expected <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />But during the zone, I was able to get up, walk away from the keyboard, go to the restroom, get a water bottle, pop some popcorn... then come back, and find the thing at 20%, with 80% left to go.Curious, I went to pull up my regular EQII Directory and found that the combined .pak files for Nektulos Forest range somewhere between 33-40 megabytes. Other miscelanious .pak files would total perhaps another 50 megs more, that's if they were to download all of them. A total of 100 megs, being generous.My cable connection can download 100 megabytes in minutes...Why is this process taking so long?

QuaiCon

11-07-2009, 04:15 AM

<cite>Dreyco wrote:</cite><blockquote>I have a question...I started zoning into Nektulos Forest on the streaming client, and got the "Fetching Assets" thingy as always, which is to be expected <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" />But during the zone, I was able to get up, walk away from the keyboard, go to the restroom, get a water bottle, pop some popcorn... then come back, and find the thing at 20%, with 80% left to go.Curious, I went to pull up my regular EQII Directory and found that the combined .pak files for Nektulos Forest range somewhere between 33-40 megabytes. Other miscelanious .pak files would total perhaps another 50 megs more, that's if they were to download all of them. A total of 100 megs, being generous.My cable connection can download 100 megabytes in minutes...Why is this process taking so long?</blockquote>if you look in the pak folder then there is not only zone pak files but also char pak files, texture pak files, sound and voicover paks and some paks that have names that are unclear. to display the zone some of this data is needed too, if you want to see how much data exactly is needed to zone there you best check how much the assetcache file grows the first few times you zone to a new zone (after a few zoneing processes you will probably need less of these additional data to load and the zone pak files will be the only ones needing download.)I know that moving from darklight wood to timorous deep increased the assetcache from less than 500mb to more than a gb for me. Zoning to Td was fast but zoning to CL and then to KP took over 10 minutes each. which means you are probably downloading about 200-300mb the first times you zone.

Daysy

11-07-2009, 04:47 AM

Personally, if I'm trying a new game, I don't care how long the initial download is because I can do that while I'm sleeping. If I started playing and the thing kept stopping to download bits and pieces I'd probably get impatient with it, conclude that the distributors lied about the system requirements, and forget about playing the game.However, I understand that some people would rather have things downloading while they're playing so this development is a good thing, provided that we still always have the option to download everything before doing anything.

regalus

11-08-2009, 11:42 AM

From what ive sen so far looks good, any info on when we'll be able to connect to the euro server's with this as that were all my main toons are on ?

Pyra Shineflame

11-08-2009, 01:44 PM

I decided to give this a try yesterday and ran into a hang up. It downloaded fine but on the launcher start up it stuck on "Loading News" and in the Task Manager was listed as Not Responding. No matter what I do, fresh re install, computer restart, it refuses to go beyond that.

QuaiCon

11-08-2009, 03:35 PM

sometime in the last days it stopped working for me. now the launcher just hangs on checking.i uninstalled and tried a new install, but that does not change anything, besides that i didn't get any desktop links and uninstall entiries anymore so maybe somthing is bugged with uninstall/reinstall too. seems also that uninstall did not remove the stored account settings since i get logged in again right after new install.where is that data stored btw? i thought maybe something is wrong with stored settings and removing them would help, but i could not find it. (and i cannot logout or change any settings in launcher cause it allready hangs before these buttons are active).

Psyvampiress

11-08-2009, 05:59 PM

Ok it works fine on my xp machine, so I decided to try it on my laptop, which has vista, and hung at 99% updating, so I closed it and reopened it, it updated fast, and the play button showed up, so I clicked it to go into the test server, but it went to the black screen for a min and a error message popped up. I was curious cause my friend has vista and hers keeps messing up too. And just a note, I did run it as admin too, and without also.

Vonotar

11-09-2009, 12:51 PM

<cite>Daysy wrote:</cite><blockquote>Personally, if I'm trying a new game, I don't care how long the initial download is because I can do that while I'm sleeping. If I started playing and the thing kept stopping to download bits and pieces I'd probably get impatient with it, conclude that the distributors lied about the system requirements, and forget about playing the game.However, I understand that some people would rather have things downloading while they're playing so this development is a good thing, provided that we still always have the option to download everything before doing anything.</blockquote> I agree that a complete download is better for the end game performance. However for somebody who wants to try EQ2 on a whim, having to completely download the game isn't going to be very encouraging for them. I believe one of the next stages that will be improved is the ability of the streaming client to pre-fetch zones adjoining those you are currently using. So for example, in theory a new player who decides to roll a qeynosian would be streamed the Queen's Colony before being allowed to enter the game, they would then be streamed the 'racial suburb' appropriate to their race while playing Queen's Colony. When they decide to zone to that suburb they would be streamed the adjoining zones while they talk to their racial trainer and investigate housing etc. So while it's not that helpful to the established player, it should be a boon to new players trying the game out before buying. Or at least it will be, when they fix the 'checking' issue...

Alienor

11-09-2009, 03:48 PM

Does not work. I can log on to the launchpad, then I see "checking" and then the application is not responding anymore. No idea if it even downloads something. This happens on a fresh win7 install.

Eveningsong

11-09-2009, 04:27 PM

I tried the streaming client when it originally was released, and it worked just fine after I downloaded the latest Flash stuff, but I tried it again this weekend and it is now freezing up on the "checking" stage same as others are reporting. I uninstalled and reinstalled, but I ended up having to use the regular Test launcher. This was on Windows XP.

Vonotar

11-10-2009, 05:14 AM

After fiddling around with the config file I found that the following change actually makes the news work and starts the download of the initial 50Mb...Launcher.ini - add text in yellow below:webapp=http://launcher.station.sony.com/app/StationLauncher.htmlOK, so the interface looks a little strange... but now it's working!<img src="http://magnamundian.info/images/eq2.jpg" />

Vonotar

11-10-2009, 05:27 AM

OK, looks like you have to make this change every time you run the launcher as it 'patches itself'.Basically you guys need to look at the two files and work out what is wrong with the launcher.html version.

Alienor

11-10-2009, 06:20 AM

When checking <a rel="nofollow" href="http://launcher.station.sony.com/app/StationLauncher.html" target="_blank">http://launcher.station.sony.com/ap...onLauncher.html</a> here from the PC behind an http proxy I get "Not playable on this PC". The reason should be more clear, *why* this is the case (despite it tells the truth). The Game news should be tested for non-US ascii characters and apostroph to prevent text like this: "Das Handelsunternehmen “Weite See” freut sich, euch zu einem Reisefest einladen zu können." Note the &-HTML syntax.

Alienor

11-10-2009, 06:24 AM

Additionally, where is the login data stored? Why do I get German game news when choosing English (US) at the login? (Hint: There is a reason I choose English <img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />)

Vonotar

11-10-2009, 09:13 AM

Incidentally, having got this working, I can now confirm that in trials this is better than I expected in terms of speed for fetching assets as and when they are needed.However I agree with others that displaying the download size while having no indication of how many more files are needed afterwards isn't helpful (this is on the dragon icon).Perhaps it would be more useful to display the average download SPEED which should be fairly constant (until they start downloading other non-eq2 stuff at the same time). The other advantage of this is allowing people to judge whether their streaming speed is sufficient to hang around and wait to play or so low that they might as well use the full download option and come back tomorrow.

Transen

11-10-2009, 11:30 AM

Did a quick run through test last night starting almost from scratch (I kept my custom music folder) using the new patcher and found it ran very smoothly for the first 6 zones that I loaded for the first time. Am on a 10Mb connection if that matters.Basic System Spec:<ul><li>OS: Windows XP: MCE</li><li>CPU: Intel Dual-Core 6300 at 1.86Ghz per core</li><li>Memory: 2GB</li><li>GFX: Radion X1300 Pro</li><li>Sound: SB X-Fi</li></ul>My exact path was:West Freeport > North Freeport > East Freeport > North Freeport > East Freeport > Sinking Sands > Qeynos Harbor > South Qeynos > North Qeynos > Willowood > Antonica > Lavastorm.Crashed to desktop when zoning to Lavastorm from Antonica with this error:<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v258/Transen/Image1.png" width="441" height="155" /><ul><li>0050974e While all the following below are not exactly the same error code, what's underlined there is the prevelant part of the error code for all instances of my crashes where the only difference is what follows after it. </li></ul>I don't have a drive E on my computer. Just "C"(harddrive) and "D"(dvd-rom).The previous zone I was in (Antonica) never did play it's music (no custom alternative) at all and the game never did use any of the music from the custom folder. The reason I found it didn't use the custom music is because the patcher actually made it's own test folder and put what it downloaded in there. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a "music" folder in the folder where it patched everything to.Second Attempt:Zoned into Lavastorm successfully from Character Select Screen. Zoned to Nektulos Forrest with no problems. Ran into same crash error zoning into Thundering Steppes.Third Attempt:Crashed due to same error when attempting to zone into Thundering Steppes from Character Select screen.Fourth Attempt:Zoned into Thundering Steppes from Character Select screen successfully. Zoned to Antonica (with music this time). Zoned into South Qeynos. Crashed when zoning into North Qeynos from same error as the rest.

kiyokobabygirl

11-10-2009, 04:00 PM

After reading through all the posts here, and having NO luck myself getting this to run I decided to try what one person mentioned, running Free Realms in the background while I run the launcher.I have windows 7, and vista, neither would run the streaming launcher - however.If I run Free Realms in the background, it works just fine and downloads with no issues at all.

QuaiCon

11-10-2009, 07:01 PM

tried editing the url in the ini file and it did not work. but it all looks even more like some bug with the config after an uncomplete install or unistall since eq2 streaming shows up twice in taht list and one of tehse is not working.<img src="http://img442.imageshack.us/img442/8945/screenshotxt.png" />so really would need the info where the config is stored to clear that, and see if that fixes the problem.

Alienor

11-11-2009, 01:54 PM

After editing the URL it works now for me, so far from start till char select 25mins on DSL line. Choosing one of my toons in KJ took another 30mins. Feedback: * It might be helpful to inform the user in before that a big download is going to happen. * When zoning to KJ the dragon thing displays everything between 300k and 10k when fetching assets. Just show the total amount (as before when starting the basic game till char select), as in 50MB downloading. The information given here is useless as you do not know how much 300k assets are being downloaded.* The Launcher has no Close button* The game when fetching assets has no close button* When trying to zone I get kicked to char select with the usual "you have a char in the world message". Does not happen everytime is most probably your old well known bug/whatever. Might irritate new players though* It seems not to work if you have any other browser (FF) than Internet Explorer as standard, the launcher window just stays blank -> not good.

Psyvampiress

11-12-2009, 06:44 AM

<cite>Transen wrote:</cite><blockquote>Did a quick run through test last night starting almost from scratch (I kept my custom music folder) using the new patcher and found it ran very smoothly for the first 6 zones that I loaded for the first time. Am on a 10Mb connection if that matters.Basic System Spec:<ul><li>OS: Windows XP: MCE</li><li>CPU: Intel Dual-Core 6300 at 1.86Ghz per core</li><li>Memory: 2GB</li><li>GFX: Radion X1300 Pro</li><li>Sound: SB X-Fi</li></ul>My exact path was:West Freeport > North Freeport > East Freeport > North Freeport > East Freeport > Sinking Sands > Qeynos Harbor > South Qeynos > North Qeynos > Willowood > Antonica > Lavastorm.Crashed to desktop when zoning to Lavastorm from Antonica with this error:<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v258/Transen/Image1.png" width="441" height="155" /><ul><li>0050974e While all the following below are not exactly the same error code, what's underlined there is the prevelant part of the error code for all instances of my crashes where the only difference is what follows after it. </li></ul>I don't have a drive E on my computer. Just "C"(harddrive) and "D"(dvd-rom).The previous zone I was in (Antonica) never did play it's music (no custom alternative) at all and the game never did use any of the music from the custom folder. The reason I found it didn't use the custom music is because the patcher actually made it's own test folder and put what it downloaded in there. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a "music" folder in the folder where it patched everything to.Second Attempt:Zoned into Lavastorm successfully from Character Select Screen. Zoned to Nektulos Forrest with no problems. Ran into same crash error zoning into Thundering Steppes.Third Attempt:Crashed due to same error when attempting to zone into Thundering Steppes from Character Select screen.Fourth Attempt:Zoned into Thundering Steppes from Character Select screen successfully. Zoned to Antonica (with music this time). Zoned into South Qeynos. Crashed when zoning into North Qeynos from same error as the rest.</blockquote>I am getting the same error when I go through a zone I haven't went through yet. Use to be fine first time I used it, but latley within the last few days, its been doing this.

Micheal

11-12-2009, 12:50 PM

will there need to be a test of the streaming client in the live environment? i currently have 'only' test installed on my computer, and i'd be game to do that when you figure it's up to that point <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />thanks

Xdatinelia

11-12-2009, 03:31 PM

As of today, Thursday 11/12 it still hangs on Loading News, the news just isn't working, It will still work if I load free realms first, but then I can't get beyond loading the game before I get a hard freeze.

Volimor

11-12-2009, 04:19 PM

Tested it out for awhile several fetal errors. Loading is slower... Zoning seems to crash if you haven't been in that zone on the Streaming client.So far not impressed get the bugs out and I'll look again.

Smirkey_of_Nektulos

11-13-2009, 06:12 AM

<cite>Xdatinelia wrote:</cite><blockquote>As of today, Thursday 11/12 it still hangs on Loading News, the news just isn't working, It will still work if I load free realms first, but then I can't get beyond loading the game before I get a hard freeze.</blockquote>Good to know it's not just me.I have this new client set up on both my wife's computer and my own. It was working seamlessly on both systems for over a week and then suddenly today:On my computer, it gave me an error first time I launched it, but then the second time it let me into the game without any issues. I've been playing all day with no problems, switching characters numerous times and going into several zones.On my wife's computer (we both have 24" iMacs; hers is a late 2008 model and mine's 2009, and both run Windows 7 64-bit Pro in Boot Camp), I ran the launcher and it hung on loading the news. I tried exiting and relaunching, no go. I tried rebooting and still no go. I even tried reinstalling and repaing the launcher, no go. One time out of about a dozen I got just a bit further and then had a hard freeze like the person above whom I'm quoting. I eventually had to just reinstall the old launcher and go back to the original client (which is a shame since her computer only has 3GB of ram -- need to buy another 2GB stick to get it up to 4GB so the decreased memory usage of the streaming client was a huge draw).I hope this is just due to some update and will be fixed soon, and isn't due to corrupt files or hardware problems on my wife's system! The fact that both computers were problematic out of nowhere suggests to me that it's something to do with the streaming client at this point.

Kalthare

11-13-2009, 07:07 AM

For me the launcher hangs sometimes, but usually it doesn't. I don't think I did anything differently.I've found that the G15 Keyboard support doesn't work in the streaming client. Is that a known issue?

Siskiyou

11-13-2009, 03:00 PM

I changed that "station launch" line in the lauch.ini and got this:An error occured communicating with the system.Error: 1015 id: IDS_DIGESTLOADFAILED param: Network error during NPAPI download: (0 of 0 bytes, 0 seconds)Error Code: 1015Almost looks like somethings transcient on the server end?Runs fine starting it from EverQuest2.exeBut of course, that's not the idea.If I go to the URL that is just launcher by itself I get a black screen that says it is a flash app, stationlaucher gives a helpful little message system (after telling me that it is an internal app) as someone else posted screenies of.I am running Windows Vista 64 bit Home Premium with 6 gb RAM. When I first installed it worked fine, then it didn't work. I deleted everything and tried to reinstall and got the same hang error. I copied the directory from the computer that was running it fine and at least I could play using Everquest2.exe.My other box is Windows Vista Ulimate 64 bit with 4 gb RAM. The launcher.ini is unmodifiedI tried running launcher.exe in compatability mode to Windows XP (does that EVER work for anything?) but no go.I made the following change to the ini file and this time got the message that the laucher was being updated but still no joy.webapp=http://launcher.station.sony.com/app/StationLauncher.htmldigestURL=http://soecontent.station.sony.com/patch/sl/main/StationLauncher.soeThe un-adulterated install on the Ultimate machine did the same update - and still runs fine.After the update on the Premium machine I removed the word Station from the ini - still no joy.There is apparently something different between Premium and Ultimate - perhaps to do with the permissions or how it requests files from the net?(( ed. I keep adding stuff as I experiment rather than make new posts ))