Is there a way to know my avatar's total skills without logging in

Hello, everyone

The question is in the title.

If anyone's curious as to why I'm asking this here's why:

Sadly I still cannot log into Entropia after over a year, and I have made an ultimatum to support, who have been acting extremely unprofessionally despite me treating them well and giving them the info they need, that I will sell my account if they don't fix my problem. I know it sounds childish, but before you judge: they had made the solution (which I've been asking them for ever since this whole issue started) available, namely a mirror to download Entropia files from without having to use the client loader which for some reason doesn't work for me although all other sorts of downloads work just fine, but unfortunately because I wasn't able to see their support case update within a few days, they took that mirror down, and never put it up again, despite me asking them to. Also worth mentioning they rudely and abruptly closed that support case for no reason.

After that support case, I opened another one, which, granted, wasn't the most polite support case, but I didn't verbally abuse them or anything, I was simply extremely shocked and a little upset by their attitude with my previous support case. They proceeded to completely ignore all the information I gave them on the previous two support cases I made (which I even referred to them by case ID and politely asked them to read to get up to par to the situation, because I wasn't about to rewrite EVERYTHING) in this one. I answered their question and again urged them to read the previous support cases to which they offered me once again a stupid suggestion for a solution which didn't work previously when I tried it and clearly wouldn't make a difference this time around. I answered them I had already tried that and it didn't work. After that I never got a reply from them in that case (that's 14 days now).

So today I decided I'll just sell my Login and Password to Entropia if they don't fix it in a timely manner or start acting like a bunch of morons again (not with that wording obviously). Which comes to my problem: if I'm selling my account, I can get my item listings just fine, but sadly I cannot see my skills anywhere on the website, that I know of. Is there any way of knowing my avatar's skills without logging into the game?


P.S.: If it does come to me selling my account I'll make sure to make those support cases public, including the names (which are probably just aliases, but still) of all the support employees involved and their unbelievable incompetence at doing very simple things and processing the information they asked for themselves.

P.P.S.: Before this discussion derails into it: yes, it is allowed to transfer/sell your login and password to somebody else, as long as you let Mindark know of the transfer beforehand.

No way which I know of, unless you have scanned them recently and then you could guesstimate what they currently are.

Do you have a close friend in the game that could perhaps log in for you and scan your skills?

Or PM Kim from MA or Calypso and see if he can help, seeing they are trying to retain players it would be to his advantage to get it sorted out for you.

goodluck

Go to a netcafe, install, find out.
Or find someone close (geographically) who would allow you to login on their PC?
Either of those, I could do personally if I was in your situation.

my question is... what exactly is the obstacle you encounter when trying to login?...

assuming you have no way to possibly login... your forum account is from 2005?...
if you haven't logged in since then, I think all your stuff is turned to ped, or your account is just gone for good?! (maybe even including such ped)...

you need some serious help!

Good Luck!

If the problem is just downloading the files it can be worked out with no need of support.

If you tried and can't access your account from somebody else computer when the other person can then you need to be calm and try to be polite to support.


What you can't is say that you will sell your account.

honestly i think you'd have a better time asking the community to debug your problems so that you can just log in.

So what have you tried so far?

What OS you using? what antivirus and or firewall things do you have installed?

I would check your firewall settings even delete them and for entropia and let it come back up.

is doing a fresh install of your OS even possible?

Tycoon said:

my question is... what exactly is the obstacle you encounter when trying to login?...

assuming you have no way to possibly login... your forum account is from 2005?...
if you haven't logged in since then, I think all your stuff is turned to ped, or your account is just gone for good?! (maybe even including such ped)...

you need some serious help!

Good Luck!

Click to expand...

My account hasn't been purged as I have been logging into the website to prevent that from happening. All my items are still intact.

-Archangel- said:

If the problem is just downloading the files it can be worked out with no need of support.

If you tried and can't access your account from somebody else computer when the other person can then you need to be calm and try to be polite to support.


What you can't is say that you will sell your account.

Click to expand...

I have tried the nice and polite way for over a year, then they suddenly start dicking me around for no reason. My patience only goes for so long.

RexDameon said:

honestly i think you'd have a better time asking the community to debug your problems so that you can just log in.

So what have you tried so far?

What OS you using? what antivirus and or firewall things do you have installed?

I would check your firewall settings even delete them and for entropia and let it come back up.

is doing a fresh install of your OS even possible?

Click to expand...

Ok, here's what's going on and what I've already tried:

The problem: CL simply gets stuck trying to download random files from EU, after a little while of downloading things just fine. The progress bar will go haywire going randomly backwards and forwards when observed, despite there being no progress at all on the download. Download speed is displayed at horrendously high speeds, like 5 GB/s, but again no real progress is being made. It used to run absolutely fine, on the same computer it started having this issue, with the same ISP, router and network/hardware configurationI had been using for a long time running EU already. One day a new update came and the whole trouble began, just like that.

Also worth mentioning that I get no troubles of this or any other kind downloading anything else at all from anywhere.

What I've tried:
- Updating Internet Explorer
- Downloading the game from another computer in the same network
- Reformatting my computer and trying to download EU right after reinstalling audio and video drivers
- Buying new computer
- Upgrading OS from Win XP x86 to Win 7 Ultimate x64 (reformatting HD)
- Running CL as administrator on new OS
- Disabling security measures from my wireless router
- Tampering with EU files, forcing the Repair tool to activate (can't activate it otherwise during download, it stays greyed out)
- Having somebody else download troublesome files themselves, then upload it somewhere else for me to download (this WORKS, but to be sure I need to download EVERYTHING, because even if I download the faulty file this way, the download still gets stuck at random later on on some other file.)

The solution: A separate mirror site/FTP to download the game files without having to go through the Client Loader. In the past EU did have such a mirror but it has been taken down coincidentally about the same time this issue started happening to me. A torrent for the game would also work just fine. Sadly I can't find anybody willing to do this for me in the community, and asking support ended up as I described on the first post.

Huskie said:

The solution: A separate mirror site/FTP to download the game files without having to go through the Client Loader. In the past EU did have such a mirror but it has been taken down coincidentally about the same time this issue started happening to me. A torrent for the game would also work just fine. Sadly I can't find anybody willing to do this for me in the community, and asking support ended up as I described on the first post.

Click to expand...

One word : Frightening. But, if experience is anything to go by, you are doing the right thing by appealing to the forum folks, good luck.
Boo.

have you tried removing the router completely from the equation, temporarily hook up your PC direct to the net?

I would help you but to be honest setting up a torrent everytime they release a patch would be a pain in the ass, maybe if you have a friend that plays near you (say...in your same country?) you can use Opera Unite to share the installation folder, tell him to keep the computer online for a few hours and download everything (that with every new VU...)

I could do that, but:

1.- I'm probably too far away from you, so download speeds would suck
2.- I'm not really sure if any of my personal data is stored or cached in the installation folder.
3.- Can't keep my computer online 24/7.

If you are really in a hurry for whatever reason and need to login I could do something, but really this is Support's job not mine.

Things you can try:
- Set your router as DMZ
- Enable/Disable QoS
- Run as admin? (if you didn't try yet)
- Jump twice, say "blobloblobi" backwards, blame MA and shake your fist in anger, jump twice again and pray.

Angel O2 Mercer said:

I would help you but to be honest setting up a torrent everytime they release a patch would be a pain in the ass, maybe if you have a friend that plays near you (say...in your same country?) you can use Opera Unite to share the installation folder, tell him to keep the computer online for a few hours and download everything (that with every new VU...)

I could do that, but:

1.- I'm probably too far away from you, so download speeds would suck
2.- I'm not really sure if any of my personal data is stored or cached in the installation folder.
3.- Can't keep my computer online 24/7.

If you are really in a hurry for whatever reason and need to login I could do something, but really this is Support's job not mine.

Things you can try:
- Set your router as DMZ
- Enable/Disable QoS
- Run as admin? (if you didn't try yet)
- Jump twice, say "blobloblobi" backwards, blame MA and shake your fist in anger, jump twice again and pray.

Click to expand...

I'm not in much of a hurry to log in, no, but the ultimatum I gave support was more based on the outrageous way they've been handling my cases combined with the fact that I can't realistically expect somebody from the community to let me download the entire game from them. Also doing it at a friend's house is impractical for the sole reason that broadband here in Brazil is not nearly as advanced as in the US or Europe, meaning our speed down here sucks, and downloading EU takes over a day (even more if loading more planets), which also compounds the problem of having somebody from the community willing to provide it for me.

What's worse, is that there's no guarantee that even if I somehow download the game files from somebody, the client loader won't just get stuck again as soon as there's a new update out (which has happened before). So my only hope is pretty much that MA themselves provide an alternate download source. I find it absolutely shocking that they already don't.

On a side-note, if you do wish to help, perhaps let's do some sort of petition to mindark to provide alternate download methods than the client loader. Maybe if we can get enough people to support the idea we can get the attention from the Mindark people that, from what I've heard, actually DO read forums, nowadays.

As for the suggestions: yes, I've already tried all that jazz... I've even asked a second line tech support (not EU's) friend of mine about this issue and he was also mind boggled. He's easily the most tech savvy person I've ever met, and he was just as stumped as I am on how to fix this.


Edit: Sent a message to Kim, asking him for help and pointing him to his topic, I hope he doesn't ignore it.

The problem you describe sounds exactly like the problem I run into with every new VU. All I do is set it to download and LEAVE it alone. I go away/sleep/do something else and when I come back in 2-3 days my download is done and I can log into Entropia. It also helps to download just the planet that you want. To do this click on the tools button and then one of the other tabs I think it was content or dynamic or something. There you will see a bunch of check boxes. Only tick the ones that you want i.e. Calypso, Astroid and CP. I experience this "never ending" downloading bar that you describe and it goes up and down and seems like it never moves. The solution, like I said before, was just to go away and LEAVE my computer alone. I really do hope this helps you as this is how I've solved this exact same problem..

~Danimal

If when you plug straight , a fresh computeur to your internet ( no router , firewall , antivir...) the download dont work , there is problem between your ISP and MA...

try bring your computeur to a friend and test download and play EU there...

If it keep creating problem evrewhere you go, there problem is MA side....

I had also once a very similar problem.
Despite running some memory test it was in the end a faulty memory module.
So if you have more than one module in your PC try to take out one and then try to download. If it still fails try to remove the other module.

PS I did not notice this fault in other programs EU was the only Software to stumble over this memory fault.


PPS Yes it failed on download and reinstallation of EU.

Huskie said:

...

Click to expand...

Since the problem is in the ISP routing can you give us the output of a trace route?

Start > type "cmd"
Once in the console type "tracert entropiauniverse.com" > press Enter

Wait for it to complete, it should show you the 'internet dance' when connecting to EU. Don't know if they share the game servers for their website, if anyone here know one of the servers IP...I don't.

Let's try to help this guy, cmon

Raffaele Meiers said:

I had also once a very similar problem.
Despite running some memory test it was in the end a faulty memory module.
So if you have more than one module in your PC try to take out one and then try to download. If it still fails try to remove the other module.

PS I did not notice this fault in other programs EU was the only Software to stumble over this memory fault.


PPS Yes it failed on download and reinstallation of EU.

Click to expand...

I had a problem with a previous PC that was driving me mad, and to cut a long story short it was also a faulty memory module.

You can install and run Prime 95 stress test and if it fails in first 10mins or so, then its likely that is the problem. No amount of reinstalling Windows etc will fix it.

Huskie said:

What I've tried:
- Updating Internet Explorer
- Downloading the game from another computer in the same network
- Reformatting my computer and trying to download EU right after reinstalling audio and video drivers
- Buying new computer
- Upgrading OS from Win XP x86 to Win 7 Ultimate x64 (reformatting HD)
- Running CL as administrator on new OS
- Disabling security measures from my wireless router
- Tampering with EU files, forcing the Repair tool to activate (can't activate it otherwise during download, it stays greyed out)
- Having somebody else download troublesome files themselves, then upload it somewhere else for me to download (this WORKS, but to be sure I need to download EVERYTHING, because even if I download the faulty file this way, the download still gets stuck at random later on on some other file.)

Click to expand...

Try this!...

Etopia said:

If when you plug straight , a fresh computeur to your internet ( no router , firewall , antivir...) the download dont work , there is problem between your ISP and MA...

try bring your computeur to a friend and test download and play EU there...

If it keep creating problem evrewhere you go, there problem is MA side....

Click to expand...

I've left the Client Loader trying to download overnight, as per danimal's suggestion, and got the following error message this morning when checking back in:



Not sure if this clarifies anything for those of you familiar around networking problems, but there it is.

Angel O2 Mercer said:

Since the problem is in the ISP routing can you give us the output of a trace route?

Start > type "cmd"
Once in the console type "tracert entropiauniverse.com" > press Enter

Wait for it to complete, it should show you the 'internet dance' when connecting to EU. Don't know if they share the game servers for their website, if anyone here know one of the servers IP...I don't.

Let's try to help this guy, cmon

Click to expand...

I ran the trace route, and after it connects to some place called atom86-ic-148184-adm-b5.c.telia.net it times out afterwards. When looked up on google, that address shows this:



So if it starts timing out after connecting to another ISP in Germany, I really doubt it is my ISP's fault, and the problem is on their side, not mine.

Huskie said:

I've left the Client Loader trying to download overnight, as per danimal's suggestion, and got the following error message this morning when checking back in:

Not sure if this clarifies anything for those of you familiar around networking problems, but there it is.

Click to expand...

I can't see the image...
(Server not found)

upload to the gallery on these forums!

Huskie said:

I've left the Client Loader trying to download overnight, as per danimal's suggestion, and got the following error message this morning when checking back in:

Click to expand...

The images won't show because the host is filtered by the forum word filter... don't ask me why, but this domain is on the blacklist for ages...


Ok, now to your problem.

"Can't resolve...' is usually a problem of your internet provider, but, i am quite sure this error message is bullshit:

Your CL starts downloading and suddenly it can't find the host anymore?? That's more than strange...


My advice:
Leave your computer updating, and check whether the game files are indeed updated - if an error occurs, just restart it, and check whether it stops again at the same file.
(the download folder is something like "c:\users\public\entropia universe" by default)



Then, try to ping download.entropiauniverse.com - and tell us what IP it resolves to, there might be an easy workaround: There were already similar problems like this years ago when i made the big update problems thread on EP. (basically, download.entropiauniverse.com is mapped to a downloading provider, but to different servers, depending on where you live - some of their servers were already broken over 2 years ago)


Pinging it from here results in massive packet loss (IP: 217.78.36.97), but i never had any trouble updating...
If your IP for this server is different i might be able to tell you how to fix it.

Mine resolves to IP: 217.78.36.99 with zero packet loss and ~75ms average response time.

wizzszz said:

The images won't show because the host is filtered by the forum word filter... don't ask me why, but this domain is on the blacklist for ages...


Ok, now to your problem.

"Can't resolve...' is usually a problem of your internet provider, but, i am quite sure this error message is bullshit:

Your CL starts downloading and suddenly it can't find the host anymore?? That's more than strange...


My advice:
Leave your computer updating, and check whether the game files are indeed updated - if an error occurs, just restart it, and check whether it stops again at the same file.
(the download folder is something like "c:\users\public\entropia universe" by default)



Then, try to ping download.entropiauniverse.com - and tell us what IP it resolves to, there might be an easy workaround: There were already similar problems like this years ago when i made the big update problems thread on EP. (basically, download.entropiauniverse.com is mapped to a downloading provider, but to different servers, depending on where you live - some of their servers were already broken over 2 years ago)


Pinging it from here results in massive packet loss (IP: 217.78.36.97), but i never had any trouble updating...
If your IP for this server is different i might be able to tell you how to fix it.

Click to expand...

Yeah I updated the previous post with properly embedded images now.

I pinged that address and here's what I got:
Server IP: 217.78.36.101
0% packet loss
Average 484ms latency


On a side-note: I tampered with EU's files a bit, again, the repair tool activated and got stuck on the same file. Then I closed client loader, re-opened it and apparently it got unstuck somehow while I wasn't looking, because now it seems to be finished downloading dynamic content stuff and is downloading calypso's 6 GB files (apparently) fine. Not sure how that happened, but I'm glad it did. Here's to hoping it doesn't get stuck again.

(Huskie, your PM in-box is full)

I would assume download/login from another ISP would work... doesn't help you play from home though!

the whole thing sucks man, wish ya best of luck! Hope you can get it worked out and get back in game rather than having to resort to selling your account!

Ok, no feedback from you yet, but still:

It seems there is a problem with your DNS (name server), apparently you Time to live (TTL) is very short, so the download provider (external provider, not MA!) can balance the load on their different download servers.




Workaround:

1. Stop the client loader
2. Open the windows notepad (important: right-click and "Run as admin"!)
3. Open the following folder: %WINDIR%\System32\drivers\etc
4. Open the "hosts" file from above folder (by dragging it to the open notepad window)
5. Add the following line the bottom of the file:
   Code:

   217.78.36.97      download.entropiauniverse.com

6. Make sure you hit enter (newline) after that, so the cursor is in the line below what you added
7. Save the file
8. Start the client loader again.

Leave the updater running, no matter what the progress bar says!
If you get error messages again, please post them here!


/Edit:
The workaround forces windows to use a different server than the one that's default for your region.
(usually windows handles the "name -> IP resolving", no matter which application you're using)



/Edit2:
Just seen you've replied while i was posting this.
I hope it works now, however, if download gets stuck again, try the workaround

Blind shot here, but did you try any of the third party DNS servers? I am currently using the Google ones, and they're 10-20% faster than the ones provided by my ISP.

Give them a try if you keep having problems: http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/

wizzszz said:

Ok, no feedback from you yet, but still:

It seems there is a problem with your DNS (name server), apparently you Time to live (TTL) is very short, so the download provider (external provider, not MA!) can balance the load on their different download servers.




Workaround:

1. Stop the client loader
2. Open the windows notepad (important: right-click and "Run as admin"!)
3. Open the following folder: %WINDIR%\System32\drivers\etc
4. Open the "hosts" file from above folder (by dragging it to the open notepad window)
5. Add the following line the bottom of the file:
   Code:

   217.78.36.97      download.entropiauniverse.com

6. Make sure you hit enter (newline) after that, so the cursor is in the line below what you added
7. Save the file
8. Start the client loader again.

Leave the updater running, no matter what the progress bar says!
If you get error messages again, please post them here!


/Edit:
The workaround forces windows to use a different server than the one that's default for your region.

/Edit2:

Just seen you've replied while i was posting this.
I hope it works now, however, if download gets stuck again, try the workaround

Click to expand...

Yeah I'll try this when it gets stuck again (somehow I doubt I'm suddenly free of this problem just like that).

Huskie said:

Yeah I'll try this when it gets stuck again (somehow I doubt I'm suddenly free of this problem just like that).

Click to expand...

It looks like you have exactly the problem with the broken download server we had years ago (shortly after cryengine update) - only some people experienced it though, because there are many mirrors, and, depending on where you live in (and partially on the ISP you use), it choses the one closest to you - if that's the bugged one, you're screwed, but the workaround will fix this.


I'm quite confident it will work, especially as you already had a dns related error message.


/Edit:
It is, btw, no ugly "hack" - the hosts file is there for exactly that purpose:
To speed up/override the normal dns resolving mechanism.

I'm using this i.e. to create test domains for my local dev box - one might use it to kill adsense.google.com and get rid of ads the easy way... but hey, i didn't tell you this!

Ok, the CL got stuck again, as I expected, so I tried your fix and it is still stuck, unfortunately.

I'll have to leave it running overnight again to figure out what's the troublesome file this time around. Seems to always be one of the subfiles from the "shared_platform.pak" files.

I think this deserves a double post (been 18 hours anyway since the last):

By some miracle my game actually finished loading overnight when I left it going stuck to try and see what the next error message would be, so I can actually log in for now.

But again, I'm not holding my breath on it downloading smoothly from now on...