Issues Logging into Chaos/Light

[ACE135]

There seems to be something else going on besides the DDoS attacks. Otherwise I can't explain why some of my characters can log in (even several times in a row) completely fine while other characters getting permanently the 90002 error in the loading screen.

[Kathryn]

I cannot log into my main and I didnt have an alt so today I started one, everything seems to be fine server wise there's an issue recognizing alot of old characters, my husband is also having this issue.

[Microlife]

Given that it only affect some character and not others, it's definitely 100% unrelated to DDoS, and I hope that SE sees it that way too and won't start looking into this only after the DDoS stops.

I disagree, this could still be related to DDoS. You say it's definitely 100% unrelated, but to know that you'd have to know the detailed infrastructure of the platform. I suspect only infra engineers at Square Enix would know this.

To give just one example of how it could be related to DDoS, consider that the DDoS caused Square to remove a number of servers from the system because they'd been compromised and it was affecting the rest of that datacenter's performance. Imagine if one of those servers was running an instance of a dungeon or other duty. It's now been taken offline, but your character was in that duty when it got taken offline.

(For clarity, when I say servers it could be compute, or virtual machines or whatever they may have. Under each of those IP addresses listed at https://is.xivup.com/adv they will have multiple components running the game.)

You can't log back in because the server is offline. You won't get insta-kicked from the duty when it ends because it doesn't end, because the server is offline. You can't world travel because it needs to know where you're coming from, but it can't find your character's location to get that detail (error 10105).

The solution would be to fix the server and bring it back online, or for square to force log out of the characters from some administration console.

But if this is only affecting a relatively small percentage of players on only one data center and the DDoS attack is still ongoing across the whole game, then their priority is going to be keeping the system stable and combatting the DDoS attacks. They might make a decision to not bring back broken infrastructure or fix player issues until they have the situation under control.

Plus add the maintenance this morning to that as well and any issues they might still be fixing as a result.

Saying that - I hope they will resolve this soon. My partner hasn't been able to log in since last night and he got DC-ed while in Heaven-on-High. Tried changing IP addresses, DNS, antivirus/firewall, different PC, on PS5, different internet provider. No luck

[Microlife]

Also we were on Floor 81 of Heaven on High and we both got DC-ed last night. SUPER NOT HAPPY!! But I guess should have known better than to do deep dungeons while we knew there were server issues

[Osheth]

I wonder why we don't get any official info about this 90002 error on Chaos EU Data Center? So many hours we cant play and Square Enix doesn't communicate anything.

[Theox]

This is pretty crazy, I've had issues dc'ing since yesterday and now I come back from work to not being able to log in at all? And we of course dont get any news regarding that specific issue as if it's not happening? And we OF COURSE not getting any sort of compensation in added game time over this? Baffling.

[Rehayem]

Meoni posted a video where he contacted SE support and this is their response

[Larirawiel]

Here is the video:
https://youtu.be/Wp-30D9jEHg?t=309


Cheers

[Kathryn]

Meoni posted a video where he contacted SE support and this is their response

Im glad to hear this, As my character and my husbands is legacy and I wouldnt be happy to lose that.

[Rueby]

Snip

Thank you so much for taking time to elaborate with your thoughts and explaining things. I think many of us associate DDoS with just direct things like high ping or disconnects rather than something character specific.

Someone in the Technical Support thread mentioned this which is also interesting.

It seems it's the way login to the servers is handled. I got this after looking at the res mon in windows it is by no means an explanation, merely an educated guess. I have a very short route to the servers (tracert shows 4 hops, 3 of them are my network, around 20-23ms of latency).

I tested with 4 different characters, on the same server. Each world on the DC has multiple IPs and ports to handle connections, this much is logical, for load balancing and whatnot.

Observations so far :

-My characters seem to always connect to the same IP and port (characters are attributed an IP/port combo that changes at set intervals? or doesn't change at all?)

-Char 1, 2, 3 and 4 had different destination IPs and port from each other.

-Char 1, 2 and 3 could connect without issues consistently, but not Char 4.

- I went looking at IPs and ports out of curiosity. for Char 1, 2 and 3, the IP and corresponding port were open.

- for Char 4 port was closed / dropping connection.

It seems it's like a lingering effect of the big DDoS attack or a localized assault on the servers? or maybe network equipment in failsafe/mitigation mode in response to the DDoS/traffic.
Since I think that kind of info is public (with server status website etc) for Chaos - Ragnarok it seems that at least port 55027 for the IP 80.239.145.117 is at fault for not letting people log in, it's the one I could find with my limited testing, there may be more of them. if people could crosscheck that info, it would be a start as to where to look (open task manager, open ressource monitor, under network, pin the ff14 executable and the tabs below will only populate with the related ip/port informations). It could explain why world travel doesn't always solve the issue but DC travel does.