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Login Server Down for Emergency Maintenance
I knew I should have just gone AFK when I went to get something to eat. Because, sure enough, as soon as I come back & try to log on, I get the good ol' "unable to connect" message.There is a message from Blizzard on the login screen that states 'We will be performing emergency maintenance on our login server this evening which may result in an inability to log in to the game', along with a bunch of other stuff that doesn't make me feel any better. Apparently, the maintenance is extended until 11PM PST. And there's not a darn thing on TV....*UPDATE* The message has been changed to read 1:00 PDT, as of a few minutes ago. Totally weak...*UPDATE* Make that 4:00 PDT. Yippee...
One way to fix a Mac that won't login
So the other night, while covering Sundance Film Festival for Blogging Sundance and Cinematical, we had a problem with Jason Calacanis's Powerbook G4. It would boot and run through the loading Mac OS X screen very quickly, but at the point where it was supposed to load the login screen, we were greeted by the default blue OS X background and the mouse pointer arrow and nothing else. And it just stayed there.We tried rebooting, we tried zapping the PRAM, and we both booted into single user mode and booted the computer in target disk mode, attached to my laptop, and performed a disk check on the computer. No problems with the disk. The machine just wasn't booting.After throwing up my hands and proclaiming there to be some odd hardware failure, it suddenly hit me: maybe the login window preferences were borked. We booted into single user mode again (reboot and hold down the command s button). I ran all the commands that you have to run in order to write to the disk (/sbin/fsck -y followed by /sbin/mount -wu /). Then I ran:cd Librarycd Preferencesmv com.apple.loginwindow.plist BACKUPcomappleloginwindowplistThis makes a backup copy of the preference file associated with the login window and erases the original file in the process. After I was done, I typed reboot at the prompt and hit the return key. OS X rebooted and was forced to create a new preference file for the login window, thus fixing the problem. Huzzah!
Login Problems
I really like this game. I like it enough that I actually schedule time into my busy days, nights and weekends to play. And until about two weeks ago, this system worked for me. When I actually had an hour or two to play, I'd be able to log into the server of my choice and play for my scheduled time. However, the combination of a huge influx of new X-mas gift-receiving players and the 1.9 patch has rendered my scheduled playing time unusable. The simple fact is that it's been taking 20-30 minutes just to log into a server, and then if I'm lucky, I won't be booted out shortly thereafter because I made the egregious mistake of trying to enter the commons area in Ironforge.I'm a reasonable guy. I know Blizzard is aware of the problems. I know they continue to open up new servers to help reduce the demand on existing servers. But I also know that I'm not alone in my login frustrations. The message boards are rife with people complaining about not being able to log in in a reasonable amount of time, if at all. Sometimes you get stuck at the receiving character list screen, sometimes at the end of the loading screen, and sometimes it doesn't load at all and just disconnects you from the server.I'd call technical support except that it wouldn't help. It's not my system or my internet connection, which hasn't changed one iota in months. The problem is on Blizzard's end, and they need to fix it. Period. I'm not yet on the verge of quitting the game and closing my account (as some have done), but it's becoming extremely annoying. I'm paying good money to play and should be able to play when I want to, not only when there are open slots on the server. It's not my fault that the servers are full. I'd consider transferring my main characters, but then it'd fracture the social aspect of the game, the part of the game I like the most.
