Cannot play the Game - "Connecting"

Hello! I'm experiencing a extremely irritating problem at the moment, whereby I simply cannot play the game. I've had GW for quite a while without ever having this issue, so I seriously dunno what's going on.

Basically, whenever I either try to Log In to my Account, or in to one of my Characters, the "Connecting ..." message comes up, and either it sticks on that for 10+ mins (no exaggeration) before letting me past, or it sticks on it indefinitely.

I've opened TCP Ports 6112 & 80 on my Router, and have created a new Exception for GW.exe within my Firewalls (I also tried disabling them completely, to no avail). I even uninstalled the game completely, and did a fresh installation to a different directory (creating an Exception in the Firewalls to the new GW.exe too, btw). But nothing is working.

It's seriously starting to irk me, as no matter what I do I can't seem to fix it! The really wierd part is that sometimes, I get don't get this problem at all! At first I was thinking maybe my ISP was throttling it thinking it was P2P at Peek Times, but sometimes I can play perfectly regardless of it being Peek. So, so confused

If anyone has any ideas, I would greatly appreciate it!

Thanks,
Asphyr.

I'm experiencing the same thing, but never went further then waiting and restarting the game few times. Sometimes it works, other times it doesnt so I just wait and try later on, and it's been fine then.

Try to traceroute the server (can find the ip in the top left corner in your game) and see where the bottleneck is. For me, oddly enough, the Test my computer option seems to work perfectly fine every time while traceroute does not and stalls somewhere outside my ISP.

Answer to (y)our question, I don't know the reason or if it'll ever get better. Good luck and be sure to update if you find anything.

How to Fix:
Do a system restore to yesterday.

That's it, but i guarantees a fix and will never come again (er, I only had it 2 times for 4 years of playing)

One thing that's very common is a game in full screen and hidden behind it a message from your firewall asking for permission to connect.

Before defenestrating your computer check its not that, although you seem savvy enough to have covered that already.

Thanks for the replies, Zodiac and gremlin - Checked both suggestions, still go the issue :<

Also, I feel your pain chaoo - Although, atleast it's not just me experiencing this! Hopefully someone else will have had the problem and found a fix for it :-)

Asphyri.

what AV program are you using?

Unfortunately, these sorts of problems are often caused by router (computer) problems between you (and your ISP) and the GW servers (as Chaoo found out by doing a trace). If you've done every thing you can at your end, there isn't really a "fix" for that other than waiting for the problem router to be fixed/replaced.

I don't fancy replacing my router just for GW, when WAR, FFXI & WoW are all playing perfectly :-/

AVG.

Out of curiosity, do you have Gaming mode enabled?

Lol- doofus - not your router. There are many "routers" between you and GW. Read this - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Router

I had problems like this, including huge lagg when i was with Virgin.

May i ask, who is your ISP?

i have had these problems too and run through a whole loads of different solutions with the gw support team, none of which worked, and as its not just me having these troubles i think there mayge a server problem somewhere or something like that.

Asphyri, what router are you using and where abouts in the world are you out of curiosity, im in wales and using a huwai 520 router

Hmm - I've looked everywhere, but my AVG doesn't seem to have that option. I'm using AVG Free though so maybe it's a full-version only feature.

I'm with AOL at the moment.

I'm connecting from North-West England with AOL, using a Thomson SpeedTouch Router (dunno the exact model, sorry).

Thanks everyone for your replies so far :-) Appreciate it!
Asphyr.

might be U gw.dat file turns bad...and now U pull out U usb stick gw backup.

I Haven't used AVG in quite awhile, not sure what differences are in pay/free. If gaming mode isn't an option, one less thing to work out. ;-D

maybe disable resident shield? just poking and hoping here. I remember nod32 used to cause the same issues with GW. was thinking this is the same dilemma.

avg avast windows firewall and zonealarm firewall dont interfere at all with guildwar, i have 2 computers and a laptop all setup differently and gw either seems to run at the minute or not lol.

i really dont think it is a computer issue as i know sometimes i have a 007 error which is when my usb dongle drops out but the not being able to connect to gw when everything else will run fine makes me doubt gw not any of my own setups