SE is against the U.S.Military

[Siros]

1st of all,im in the Army and im stationed on Kadena airbase,Okinawa Japan.This issue is not only me but every player on Kadena airbase to include Air force,Marine,and Navy personnel aswel.

We are armed forces personnel,thats all thats here so i feel extremely offended by SE for this one.

There has got ta be a way ta fix this,im losing my mind.... Can a GM plz read an respond ta this thread?,i would hate ta stay up past 2am so i can call Playonline when they open just ta be told that its on my end an theres nothing they can do....

This is not on my end,SE is filtering Mediatti Broadband Communications so now everyone on Okinawa stuck under Mediatti cant play FFXI...

We cant switch ta another isp because Mediatti is the only isp on base an they wont allow other isp's ta provide service on base so they monopolize the market,hence forth we are stuck not able ta play FFXI.

SE please remove the filter!!! How much clearer do i need ta make the issue ta you? and if you wont remove the filter atleast explain why you are filtering us in the 1st place.This is rediculous.....

[RAIST]

it may in fact me Mediatti causing your problem. They have been hammered for years for poor quality of service. They also do that traffic shaping crap to combat P2P sharing (torrents and such). FFXI relies heavily on UDP traffic--lots of small packets streaming full time. It is possible that Mediatti's anti-piracy crap is blocking FFXI traffic.


Try pinging or tracert one of the servers to see if you get through. This is one that is registered in DNS:

ffxi00.pol.com

***I would rather have sent this info to you via PM, but we don't have the option. Please, people don't start spamming this IP for testing.****

If you get a response from it, then I doubt SE is blocking your IP.

[Siros]

This is in regards ta the FFXI-3113 Protocol Timeout error....

[Siros]

it may in fact me Mediatti causing your problem. They have been hammered for years for poor quality of service. They also do that traffic shaping crap to combat P2P sharing (torrents and such). FFXI relies heavily on UDP traffic--lots of small packets streaming full time. It is possible that Mediatti's anti-piracy crap is blocking FFXI traffic.


Try pinging or tracert one of the servers to see if you get through. This is one that is registered in DNS:

ffxi00.pol.com

***I would rather have sent this info to you via PM, but we don't have the option. Please, people don't start spamming this IP for testing.****

If you get a response from it, then I doubt SE is blocking your IP.

I'm not sure on that,but i have spoke with Mediatti an they say its SE filtering them.As for ffxi00.pol.com i'm lost,im not that tech savy,how do i use that? If its a web address it doesn't work for me......

[RAIST]

open a DOS command prompt. I forget exactly where it is in Vista/Win7--but there is a link to it in the programs menu. In XP, you just go to start/run and type cmd <enter>. the cmd command might work in Vista/Win7 in the little search box too, I guess.

Youll get a little black sort of terminal window where you can type commnads to run programs. You just type the command and hit the enter key. Those are two zeros after the ffxi btw, sometimes it's hard to tell the difference with some fonts.

ping ffxi00.pol.com

Should look something like this:


Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>ping ffxi00.pol.com

Pinging ffxi00.pol.com [124.150.154.122] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 124.150.154.122: bytes=32 time=202ms TTL=42
Reply from 124.150.154.122: bytes=32 time=194ms TTL=42
Reply from 124.150.154.122: bytes=32 time=192ms TTL=42
Reply from 124.150.154.122: bytes=32 time=193ms TTL=42

Ping statistics for 124.150.154.122:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 192ms, Maximum = 202ms, Average = 195ms

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>

If it is showing something like a timeout error, then something is blocking the traffic. You might be able to track down some info to forward to your ISP to help them trouble shoot by running this command:

tracert ffxi00.pol.com

and get something like this:


C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>tracert ffxi00.pol.com

Tracing route to ffxi00.pol.com [124.150.154.122]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 2 ms <1 ms <1 ms 10.10.100.1
2 10 ms 8 ms 7 ms cpe-098-025-064-001.sc.res.rr.com [98.25.64.1]
3 14 ms 15 ms 17 ms cpe-024-031-201-109.sc.res.rr.com [24.31.201.109
]
4 17 ms 17 ms 17 ms 24.93.64.70
5 23 ms 22 ms 22 ms ae-3-0.cr0.atl20.tbone.rr.com [66.109.6.82]
6 36 ms 56 ms 35 ms ae-3-0.cr0.hou30.tbone.rr.com [66.109.6.36]
7 43 ms 41 ms 42 ms ae-0-0.cr0.dfw10.tbone.rr.com [66.109.6.39]
8 76 ms 75 ms 78 ms ae-3-0.cr0.lax30.tbone.rr.com [66.109.6.0]
9 81 ms 102 ms 78 ms ae-1-0.pr0.lax00.tbone.rr.com [66.109.6.129]
10 79 ms 79 ms 79 ms pacnet.com.any2ix.coresite.com [206.223.143.138]

11 183 ms 182 ms 182 ms gi6-0-0.cr1.nrt1.asianetcom.net [202.147.61.166]

12 183 ms 182 ms 183 ms gi1-0-0.gw1.nrt5.asianetcom.net [202.147.0.178]

13 251 ms 206 ms 183 ms squareco.asianetcom.net [203.192.149.210]
14 184 ms 182 ms 182 ms 61.195.56.121
15 212 ms 184 ms 183 ms 219.117.144.21
16 185 ms 182 ms 182 ms 219.117.144.2
17 182 ms 182 ms 182 ms 219.117.144.14
18 183 ms 186 ms 182 ms 219.117.146.149
19 193 ms 195 ms 193 ms 219.117.146.129
20 190 ms 190 ms 192 ms 219.117.146.182
21 194 ms 192 ms 194 ms 124.150.154.122

Trace complete.

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>

If it is a routing issue, you will see the laste point that it passed through. That is the point of failure that the ISP will need to look into.

You can copy/past all of this into an email to forward to your ISP so they can try to find just where the routing error is happening and take action if it is on their end. In the upper left corner of the window there will be a little icon the looks like C:\ on a black button. Click that for drop down menu and seleck Edit/select all, then click it again and select Edit/Copy. Then you can open an email, word, notepad, whatever and hit <Control> and V keys to paste it all.

[RAIST]

This is in regards ta the FFXI-3113 Protocol Timeout error....

That is a screwy error...and very misleading. At one time, it was actually an internal error with SE or their local ISP. Lots of people were simply unable to login, regardless of which ISP they were on. People would get into POL, launch the game, and get to loading character selection screen and then timeout.

It could be that something is being blocked from you to SE, SE to you, or across one of SE's 3 subnets used to run the game. For some people it was a DNS routing issue.

That is another thing you could try. It's a lot to try to detail out here, and would be a lot easier if I could copy paste some screen shots. You may want to get a friend familiar with setting up IP settings in Windows to tinker with it. Basically, you want to try changing some of your DNS options--toggling NetBIOS settings, name registration, etc. to see if it resolves it. You could even go so far as setting a different DNS server to use (many cable ISP's will have it set to Automatic, but you can manually set IP's to use and point them to an OpenDNS server on this list: http://www.dnsserverlist.org ) to see if it alters your pathing to bypass a stalling route.

[Siros]

Dude,your awesome,Ty^^ I figured out what it was for after a few seconds an did a ping -n 50 an let it go,the time is jumping between 42ms an 56ms.Idk if that makes a difference.Anyways thanx for the help Raist,i appreciate it greatly.

Did a trace aslo,this is what i got:

C:\Users\Siros>tracert ffxi00.pol.com

Tracing route to ffxi00.pol.com [124.150.154.122]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 1 ms <1 ms <1 ms SIROS44 [192.168.1.1]
2 9 ms 9 ms 10 ms 10.104.128.1
3 12 ms 11 ms 9 ms sr1.spearpt.com [180.131.208.2]
4 10 ms 10 ms 11 ms 211.120.234.41
5 11 ms 10 ms 13 ms 211.120.224.49
6 205 ms 46 ms 43 ms tkgw-mlx-2-tko.ii-okinawa.ad.jp [211.120.225.74]

7 44 ms 43 ms 44 ms tkwrt2x-dix.sakura.ad.jp [61.211.233.1]
8 44 ms 41 ms 50 ms tkwrt1s-wrt2x.bb.sakura.ad.jp [59.106.249.197]
9 44 ms 43 ms 44 ms tkort3-wrt1s.bb.sakura.ad.jp [59.106.251.137]
10 43 ms 44 ms 46 ms AS17685.ix.jpix.ad.jp [210.171.224.200]
11 47 ms 46 ms 46 ms 61.195.56.121
12 45 ms 82 ms 44 ms 219.117.144.21
13 46 ms 45 ms 54 ms 219.117.144.2
14 46 ms 50 ms 44 ms 219.117.144.14
15 47 ms 49 ms 45 ms 219.117.146.149
16 44 ms 43 ms 47 ms 219.117.146.129
17 44 ms 42 ms 43 ms 219.117.146.182
18 44 ms 42 ms 44 ms 124.150.154.122

Trace complete.


I have no idea what exactly ta look for or how ta tell which one is the problem source if there is one...

[RAIST]

I'm not sure on that,but i have spoke with Mediatti an they say its SE filtering them.As for ffxi00.pol.com i'm lost,im not that tech savy,how do i use that? If its a web address it doesn't work for me......

lol... this happens all the time... ISP points at SE, SE points at the ISP. More often than not, it is actually a routing problem out in the cloud of hardware bbetween you and the server. the trick is finding just who is at fault.

I got caught in that loop once. I did the pinging/tracert testing and found the stall. Reversed the lookup on the last IP and found out it was in Nova Scotia--I'm in South Carolina. Called ISP, got to their Tier3 support in Atlanta and gave them the last IP before the stalled connection. About 30 minutes later, it was resolved and I didn't have to change anything on my end.

I know it's a lot to take in, but if you have someone that tinkers with this stuff as a hobby (or their job), might want to pull them in and help you out when you contact the ISP. This may be Mediatti's snafu, or it could be the ISP SE is using. The trick is getting some useful information to point someone in the right direction so SOMETHING gets done.

[RAIST]

Dude,your awesome,Ty^^ I figured out what it was for after a few seconds an did a ping -n 50 an let it go,the time is jumping between 42ms an 56ms.Idk if that makes a difference.Anyways thanx for the help Raist,i appreciate it greatly.

Did a trace aslo,this is what i got:

C:\Users\Siros>tracert ffxi00.pol.com

Tracing route to ffxi00.pol.com [124.150.154.122]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 1 ms <1 ms <1 ms SIROS44 [192.168.1.1]
2 9 ms 9 ms 10 ms 10.104.128.1
3 12 ms 11 ms 9 ms sr1.spearpt.com [180.131.208.2]
4 10 ms 10 ms 11 ms 211.120.234.41
5 11 ms 10 ms 13 ms 211.120.224.49
6 205 ms 46 ms 43 ms tkgw-mlx-2-tko.ii-okinawa.ad.jp [211.120.225.74]

7 44 ms 43 ms 44 ms tkwrt2x-dix.sakura.ad.jp [61.211.233.1]
8 44 ms 41 ms 50 ms tkwrt1s-wrt2x.bb.sakura.ad.jp [59.106.249.197]
9 44 ms 43 ms 44 ms tkort3-wrt1s.bb.sakura.ad.jp [59.106.251.137]
10 43 ms 44 ms 46 ms AS17685.ix.jpix.ad.jp [210.171.224.200]
11 47 ms 46 ms 46 ms 61.195.56.121
12 45 ms 82 ms 44 ms 219.117.144.21
13 46 ms 45 ms 54 ms 219.117.144.2
14 46 ms 50 ms 44 ms 219.117.144.14
15 47 ms 49 ms 45 ms 219.117.146.149
16 44 ms 43 ms 47 ms 219.117.146.129
17 44 ms 42 ms 43 ms 219.117.146.182
18 44 ms 42 ms 44 ms 124.150.154.122

Trace complete.


I have no idea what exactly ta look for or how ta tell which one is the problem source if there is one...

Cool, that means your generic traffic is passing to that server. So it doesn't look like your IP is geting blocked by SE to that subnet. Gonna give you two more to try, eadch one hits different sections of their networks. If these pass OK, then it's not likely someone blocking you guys deliberately--but possibly filtered traffic. THAT would be most likely on Mediatti, or someone else in the loop that is trying to crack down on BitTorrent users. Or it could be the internal problem again that SE had once before. Here are the server names:

pt008.pol.com
ci000.pol.com

Again , those are two letters, then 3 numbers in the first part of those addresses. If you don't get a good ping test --ie if one drops out or has a big jump in response time--then it might be an IP to trace for problems enroute. Just to simplify things on your end, I would maybe forward that to Mediatti for them to check the situaion out. Just tell them, "ey.. this is one of the servers that my connection is freaking out on when I try to play the game, the connection keeps dropping" Once they have that specific endpoint they should be able to try some diagnostics on thier end.

heck..it might even be worth it to just forward all three of those names to them and say these are the networks the game is trying to reach and can't--you guys figure it out. That is what you pay them $75 USD a month for anyway... lol

Edit: Oh, forgot to tell you earlier. to exit those command boxes, just type the word exit and press enter to shut them down. :)

[Siros]

Good point,i think i will have ta inform them since the $75-80 a month is going ta waste on my end if i cant play.Those other 2 passed ok aslo so now i have no clue but ill let Mediatti know of them an hope maybe something will get done.I still blame SE in a way too though for letting this happen,lol.

[RAIST]

yeah...in your correspondence, also let them know that the game streams UDP traffic constantly. This is something that often triggers the packet shaping traps. Basically what you will be hinting at is they need to let the traffic flow freely to/from those network segments because it ISN'T BitTorrent traffic. SE owns at least 3 segments--3 blocks of 256 IP addresses (they can figure the subnet details our from those addresses)--so it throws out a LOT of UDP packets, which is what I suspect may be the problem as Mediatti has a history of clamping down on streaming traffic in the past.

I feel your frustration. My brother was in the desert last year and I was trying to work with him remotely from here--remote desktop all the way to Afghanistan trying to fix laptops that were freaking out like this, only to find it was something off-base causing issues. It wasn't much fun. It's one thing to not have access to a game for stress relief, but when you are trying to keep a video stream going so troops can get in touch with loved ones at home and it keeps going down because someone thinks it's porn traffic--that's a crock.

Best of luck over there, and keep up the good work.

[Siros]

Will do,thanx again^^

[Rdelavega]

So next time they block your ISP just launch a missile at them.

[Alhanelem]

SE is not "against the US Military." You're not being singled out, though your requests for help would be more effective by behaving in a civil manner becoming of an Armed Forces member.

It seems your issue has been resolved, but in the future you might want to try a different tone for your post.

[Karbuncle]

SE is not "against the US Military." You're not being singled out, though your requests for help would be more effective by behaving in a civil manner becoming of an Armed Forces member.

It seems your issue has been resolved, but in the future you might want to try a different tone for your post.

^This!

Civility can go a long way~

[Siros]

SE is not "against the US Military." You're not being singled out, though your requests for help would be more effective by behaving in a civil manner becoming of an Armed Forces member.

It seems your issue has been resolved, but in the future you might want to try a different tone for your post.

The issue isnt resolved i still cant get past the accept or decline screen.It hangs at 65% at setting up connection then after 2 mins tells me Error code:FFXI-3113 Protocol Timeout error.I still cant play.

[RAIST]

This error has a long and nasty history--a lot of times it was due to routing issues either locally, or in between SE and the client. Everytime it rears it's ugly head, it is always a bugger--have to exhaust all efforts on fixes locally first, then move towards SE by checking with the local IT Admin's and then your ISP.

SE sends out pings and such from some servers that are not initiated by the client (so some firewalls will block it, as it was not communication started locally), those could be getting blocked and tripping the error. They may be blocking DNS pings or something to guard against DOS attacks, so there may not be a way around it if you are having to go through base security protocol.

looking at the tracert--is that a local router that you can make changes too? If so, could test putting the system with FFXI in the DMZ, or at least making sure port forwarding is set up to point to that system--TCP/UDP traffic for these ports:
25,80,110,443,50000-65535

Another thing some people did in the past in their home setups was clone the MAC address of the system on to the router--old post on a forum with a short how-to on doing it:
http://killingifrit.com/forums/topic/149276-fix-that-worked-for-me-routers-only-3/

But I doubt that is a solution in this one particular case.

Ultimately, someone is going to need to check traffic logs to see if inbound traffic (from SE) is getting blocked by firewalls and such, then whitelist that traffic to the routers of the players. This will be a pain in the butt to do probably, especially if you are having to go through the ISP. I'm going to list the IP info I am aware of from SE, based on what I have detected in my firewall over the years--it isn't all, but is a starting point that I used to find certain subnets. It may be easier for the non-tech saavy people to just forward the rest of this post to the IT people (local dept. or ISP) to research the problem:

**SE's own support will advise to forward these ports to the system: TCP/UDP 25,80,110,443,50000-65535 **

**The following IP's have been detected as in use by the game, both through netstat and by catching them as being blocked by a firewall. They may use both TCP and UDP protocols, and some may just show up as generic DNS/Ping traffic as well. I have done reverse lookups, tracerts, and pulled up info through WHOIS to diagnose connectivity issues and verify who is leasing the IP's--only two IP's did not show a DNS entry, but they ARE in the subnet leased to SE**

dns1.square-enix.com through dns4.square-enix.com, in order:
202.67.53.31, 202.67.53.95, 202.67.53.32, 202.67.53.96

pt008.pol.com: 202.67.62.103 and also 202.67.62.70

wh000.pol.com: 202.67.54.55
ci000.pol.com: 202.67.54.52

ffxi00.pol.com: 124.150.154.122

Pings blocked by my firewall when having issues connecting to zones, did not resolve DNS names, but ARE in a subnet leased to SE. White-listing these IP's resolved my connectivity issues IMMEDIATELY without contacting anyone:

124.150.152.96
124.150.152.99

At the very least, they could try to enable/allow traffic from these sites to your router/system to see if it gets things moving forward. These are the specific IP's working for me though in the US--might need other IP's within the same subnets. SE leases the entire /24 subnet (xxx.xxx.xxx.1 - 255) around these IP addresses, so they could also try to enable and allow:

202.67.53.0 /24 (202.67.53.1 to 202.67.53.255)
202.67.54.0 /24 (202.67.54.1 to 202.67.54.255)
202.67.62.0 /24 (202.67.62.1 to 202.67.62.255)
124.150.152.0 /24 (124.150.152.0 to 124.150.152.255)

[Siros]

Raist you are always helpful buddy,thank you^^ i have had my isp company come by an check this out for themselves and they figured out its not my router,but yet it is something between them and SE.But i will give them this info so maybe it will help them figure it out.Thank you again.




P.S. Yes i did go off the deep end with this post title,but i was extremely frustrated so hope people understand.Yea i should have though before naming it...

[Siros]

Hey Raist,
these are the last tracert's ive done.I figure the Astrix's mean there a problem...


C:\Users\Siros>tracert wh000.pol.com

Tracing route to wh000.pol.com [202.67.54.55]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 2 ms <1 ms <1 ms SIROS44 [192.168.1.1]
2 14 ms 18 ms 11 ms 10.104.128.1
3 * 20 ms 12 ms sr1.spearpt.com [180.131.208.2]
4 * 18 ms 19 ms 211.120.234.41
5 13 ms 15 ms 13 ms 211.120.224.49
6 44 ms 47 ms 44 ms tkgw-mlx-2-tko.ii-okinawa.ad.jp [211.120.225.74]

7 49 ms 49 ms 48 ms tkwrt2x-dix.sakura.ad.jp [61.211.233.1]
8 * 46 ms 45 ms tkwrt1s-wrt2x.bb.sakura.ad.jp [59.106.249.197]
9 50 ms 50 ms 49 ms tkcrt2-wrt1s.bb.sakura.ad.jp [59.106.251.141]
10 76 ms 55 ms * 210.173.176.26
11 56 ms 52 ms 56 ms 219.117.144.2
12 * 49 ms 45 ms 219.117.146.149
13 52 ms 51 ms 55 ms 219.117.146.129
14 45 ms 52 ms 54 ms 219.117.147.38
15 51 ms 63 ms 75 ms 202.67.54.11
16 52 ms 54 ms 56 ms 202.67.54.55

Trace complete.

C:\Users\Siros>tracert ci000.pol.com

Tracing route to ci000.pol.com [202.67.54.52]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 2 ms <1 ms <1 ms SIROS44 [192.168.1.1]
2 12 ms 9 ms 13 ms 10.104.128.1
3 13 ms 12 ms * sr1.spearpt.com [180.131.208.2]
4 13 ms 16 ms 17 ms 211.120.234.41
5 * 21 ms 18 ms 211.120.224.49
6 44 ms 43 ms 45 ms tkgw-mlx-2-tko.ii-okinawa.ad.jp [211.120.225.74]

7 43 ms 52 ms 43 ms tkwrt2x-dix.sakura.ad.jp [61.211.233.1]
8 46 ms 47 ms 46 ms tkwrt2b-wrt2x.bb.sakura.ad.jp [59.106.249.201]
9 48 ms 43 ms 52 ms tkcrt2-wrt2b.bb.sakura.ad.jp [59.106.251.61]
10 47 ms 46 ms 48 ms 210.173.176.26
11 59 ms 62 ms 55 ms 219.117.144.2
12 63 ms 46 ms 49 ms 219.117.146.149
13 45 ms 49 ms 49 ms 219.117.146.129
14 47 ms 48 ms 46 ms 219.117.147.38
15 49 ms 49 ms 46 ms 202.67.54.11
16 46 ms 52 ms 49 ms 202.67.54.52

Trace complete.

C:\Users\Siros>tracert ffxi00.pol.com

Tracing route to ffxi00.pol.com [124.150.154.122]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms 3 ms <1 ms SIROS44 [192.168.1.1]
2 10 ms 9 ms 12 ms 10.104.128.1
3 13 ms 18 ms 14 ms sr1.spearpt.com [180.131.208.2]
4 14 ms 14 ms 15 ms 211.120.234.41
5 17 ms 20 ms 15 ms 211.120.224.49
6 46 ms 55 ms 49 ms tkgw-mlx-2-tko.ii-okinawa.ad.jp [211.120.225.74]

7 44 ms 44 ms 49 ms tkwrt2x-dix.sakura.ad.jp [61.211.233.1]
8 50 ms 42 ms 47 ms tkwrt1s-wrt2x.bb.sakura.ad.jp [59.106.249.197]
9 46 ms 48 ms 50 ms tkcrt2-wrt1s.bb.sakura.ad.jp [59.106.251.141]
10 47 ms 45 ms 42 ms 210.173.176.26
11 49 ms 44 ms * 219.117.144.2
12 46 ms * 47 ms 219.117.146.149
13 53 ms 54 ms 60 ms 219.117.146.129
14 45 ms 49 ms 52 ms 219.117.146.182
15 45 ms 45 ms 54 ms 124.150.154.122

Trace complete.

C:\Users\Siros>tracert ffxi00.pol.com

Tracing route to ffxi00.pol.com [124.150.154.122]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms 1 ms <1 ms SIROS44 [192.168.1.1]
2 17 ms 12 ms 12 ms 10.104.128.1
3 18 ms 16 ms 17 ms sr1.spearpt.com [180.131.208.2]
4 14 ms 12 ms 21 ms 211.120.234.41
5 14 ms 15 ms 16 ms 211.120.224.49
6 295 ms * 49 ms tkgw-mlx-2-tko.ii-okinawa.ad.jp [211.120.225.74]

7 51 ms 46 ms 44 ms tkwrt2x-dix.sakura.ad.jp [61.211.233.1]
8 46 ms 45 ms * tkwrt1s-wrt2x.bb.sakura.ad.jp [59.106.249.197]
9 49 ms 51 ms 50 ms tkcrt2-wrt1s.bb.sakura.ad.jp [59.106.251.141]
10 47 ms 52 ms 48 ms 210.173.176.26
11 56 ms 58 ms 57 ms 219.117.144.2
12 * 57 ms 45 ms 219.117.146.149
13 49 ms * 51 ms 219.117.146.129
14 63 ms 60 ms 59 ms 219.117.146.182
15 46 ms 44 ms 44 ms 124.150.154.122

Trace complete.


Any ideas?,I think i figured out whitelisting but i have a friend here who thinks they might know how to do that.But this loox bad with astrix's in it,an i havent whitelisted anything yet.

[Glamdring]

What they meant about the decorum was that the military wasn't the problem, it's that ISP or SE themselves, the military is not a factor in the equation.

[bungiefan]

It's not just US Military, it's anyone who moves from one region to another that they are against with their billing policies. Anyone who has to travel internationally for work or school is potentially in trouble. You cannot change the region of your account, and you cannot get account support from a support center foreign to your account. If you get a Japanese copy there, because it's common, you can't have American support help you, and if you don't speak business Japanese well enough, the Japanese support center won't talk to you. Non-Japanese VISA and MasterCards also won't clear billing on a Japanese account. Non-American banks rarely issue 3D Secured cards, so you can't pay the fee if you end up out of country dealing with a local bank.

[Siros]

It's not just US Military, it's anyone who moves from one region to another that they are against with their billing policies. Anyone who has to travel internationally for work or school is potentially in trouble. You cannot change the region of your account, and you cannot get account support from a support center foreign to your account. If you get a Japanese copy there, because it's common, you can't have American support help you, and if you don't speak business Japanese well enough, the Japanese support center won't talk to you. Non-Japanese VISA and MasterCards also won't clear billing on a Japanese account. Non-American banks rarely issue 3D Secured cards, so you can't pay the fee if you end up out of country dealing with a local bank.

Nah,i was angry an frustrated when i posted this.I have been in Okinawa for 3 years with no probs,i moved afew times overseas and had no probs.Turns out it was an outside issue that my isp resolved finally.Though i would figure it to be harder if ur here on a work visa vs being military.

[Nashreen]

OP, your message wasn't very clear to me, as to why SE is responsible for your American ISP problems, but since you live in Okinawa (lucky you) why don't you simply subscribe to a Japanese ISP? That would solve your problem and you'd probably have a much better traffic and service. You could get WiMax for instance, it works on Okinawa-hontou and you can play FFXI with it.


It's not just US Military, it's anyone who moves from one region to another that they are against with their billing policies. Anyone who has to travel internationally for work or school is potentially in trouble. You cannot change the region of your account, and you cannot get account support from a support center foreign to your account. If you get a Japanese copy there, because it's common, you can't have American support help you, and if you don't speak business Japanese well enough, the Japanese support center won't talk to you. Non-Japanese VISA and MasterCards also won't clear billing on a Japanese account. Non-American banks rarely issue 3D Secured cards, so you can't pay the fee if you end up out of country dealing with a local bank.
It would be best if all companies had multi-language support... but then again, if you're buying a Japanese copy of a Japanese game in Japan, why would the company be offering support in English? It's not like English is a major language in Japan; if anything, they'd have Chinese and Korean before English.

I don't know where it was said banks outside the US don't have 3D Secured cards, but that's incorrect.

I agree it's unfair to block non-Japanese cards... if anything, you could always try the other payments options.

[bungiefan]

3D cards are uncommon outside the US. I am using WebMoney, but I have to import it at additional cost, since you can't buy it from the WebMoney site without a Japanese address and credit card. There's the currency conversion, plus a profit margin of 10% or so for the shop selling me the card code via email The other option was to lose my account completely.

My issue is that living in the US now, I can't talk to US customer support because they can't view or modify my billing information, and the Japanese support center is international long distance with a time difference. They also used to speak English before NA release. The support centers should be able to talk to each other or at least access accounts from anywhere. If you move, you can't convert the account. You can't even punch in your current correct address.