Retreiving Chacter List from Server timeout

I played litterally last night, turned off my computer, woke up this morning and now I can log in on the log in screen, then selet my server, and then it says the connection to the server is timingout and I cant get past that screen...I even reinstalled the game just now and same message.

---System information gathered by CoH Helper version 0.2.0.2---

DxDiag gathered at 6ŒŽ 26, 2012 02:08 (-07:00)
Operating System: Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard 64-bit (6.1, Build 7601) Service Pack 1 (7601.win7sp1_gdr.120503-2030)
System Manufacturer: To Be Filled By O.E.M.
System Model: To Be Filled By O.E.M.
BIOS: Default System BIOS
Central Processor: AMD Phenom(tm) 9600 Quad-Core Processor (4 CPUs), ~2.5GHz
Memory: 4096MB
.Net Memory Report: 2742MB out of 4087MB available
Page File: 2618MB (1467MB currently in use)
C Drive: (AMD 2+0 Stripe/RAID0 SCSI Disk Device) 466132MB out of 610248MB (76%) free
D Drive: (AMD 2+0 Stripe/RAID0 SCSI Disk Device) 300484MB out of 474926MB (63%) free
E Drive: (WDC WD5000AADS-00S9B SCSI Disk Device) 417084MB out of 476939MB (87%) free
H Drive: (WD My Book 1110 USB Device) 444317MB out of 953192MB (46%) free
K Drive: (ELBY CLONEDRIVE SCSI CdRom Device) zero-size drive
G Drive: (HL-DT-ST BDDVDRW CH10LS20 SCSI CdRom Device) zero-size drive
F Drive: (ASUS CD-S480/A5 ATA Device) zero-size drive
Windows directory location: C:\Windows
DirectX: DirectX 11
DirectX Diag version: 6.01.7601.17514 (64-bit version)

Display Notes: No problems found.
Sound Notes: No problems found.
Input Notes: No problems found.

Monitor:
Monitor's Max Resolution: (blank)
Video Device Name: AMD Radeon HD 6700 Series
Manufacturer / Chip: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. / ATI display adapter (0x68BF)
Video Memory: 2802 MB
Driver Version: 8.961.0.0
Driver Date: 2012/04/05 19:20:04
Driver Language: English

Sound Device Description: Speakers (ASUS Xonar DX Audio Device)
Driver File: cmudaxp.sys
Driver Version: 5.12.0001.0008
Driver Date: 2011/12/20 4:59:12


WMI Information
Motherboard Manufacturer: ASRock
Motherboard Model: (empty)
Motherboard Product: A780GMH/128M
Motherboard Version:
BIOS Manufacturer: American Megatrends Inc.
BIOS Name: Default System BIOS
BIOS Version: 052510 - 20100525
BIOS Release: 20100525000000.000000+000


Registry Information for Current User
Resolution: 1592x832
3D Resolution: 1592x832 (Not using renderscale)
Full Screen: No
Maximized: No
Screen Position: 0, 0
Refresh Rate: 60Hz
Vertical Sync Enabled: Yes


Physics Quality: Very High
Maximum Particles: 50000
Max Particle Fill? 10.000
Physics Card Enabled: No


Anti-aliasing: 8x
Anisotropic Filtering: 16x
Texture LOD Bias: Smooth
Water Effects: Ultra quality
Bloom: 1.000 (turned on)
Depth of Field Enabled: Yes
Desaturation Effects (Sepia) Enabled: Yes
Shader Detail: High


World Texture Level: Very High
Character Texture Level: Very High
World Detail Level (Vis_Scale): 2.000
Entity Detail Level: 2.000
Shadows Enabled: No
Shadow Mode: Unknown (4)
Shadow Map Shader: High quality
Environmental Reflections: Ultra quality
Advanced Occlusion Settings: Yes
Ambient Occlusion: High quality
Occlusion Strength: Strong
Blur: Trilateral
Ambient Resolution: Quality


Gamma Correction: 1.000
Geometry Buffers (VBOs) Enabled: Yes
Suppression of FX When Camera Close Enabled: Yes
Close Suppression Range: 3.000
Show Advertisements: Yes

Audio Mode: Compatiblity
3D Audio: No
FX Sound Volume: 0.014
Music Sound Volume: 0.000

Show Advanced Graphics Options: Yes
Overall Graphics Quality: 1.000
Reverse Mouse Buttons: No
Save Login Username: Yes
Transfer Rate: Unknown bytes/second
Current Game Version: ?
Installation Directory: D:\Program Files (x86)\NCSoft\City of Heroes

Mod files in the Data directory
No modifications found

I am having terrible luck with this game for no reason ;_;

Any chance your pc will grant you access into the game through safe mode?
Your settings look quite high at the moment. This might be taxing your system even on the login screens. It can be quite demanding to render/run even while not yet in the game completely.

Make sure you can get to other websites on the internet to be sure its not your connection. Second, check server status to make sure the server you're trying to connect to is up and running or not full. As of right now they are down, http://na.cityofheroes.com/en/news/s...ver_status.php , probably installing a patch of some sort (to fix the 4hr and 8hr 50% xp power I'm sure).

And your settings are fine. Based on the memory, OS, video card, and processor you should have no problems running the game even at the highest settings.

From the time you're posting, it looks like you were trying to sign in during the middle of the weekly upgrade/maintenance cycle.

If you sign in now, you'll get a patch and then be able to log in.

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

You may have a corrupted playerslot.txt file if you have the Remember Username box checked.

Inside the game directory is a directory named the same as your login username (yes, case matters here as PlayerName is not the same as playername when it is something to do with this folder). Inside that folder is a file called playerslot.txt

Rename the file to something like oldplayerslot.txt

Try to log in to Virtue and see if that resolves the issue. The characters will be in the order they were created, so if you had moved them around to a different order you would need to do so again so that the playerslot.txt file will be recreated with the right character order.

"This folder is empty".

http://i.imgur.com/rw9YW.jpg

Do you have the Remember Account Name box on the Login screen checked?

If not, this is a moot point since I don't think it will create the playerslot.txt file if that is unchecked.

If you do, since the game appears to be installed in the default folder (ugh!), it is likely that the file is in either the User folder in AppData or some other folder.

I can't give you the exact path on that since I never install games to the default directory structure.

You can likely find it by searching the computer for playerslot.txt but you may have to set your folder options to show hidden files and folders.

Ok, I figured out the issue. My internet. Which is weird. I connected to a VPN in Tokyo, and now I can get on Virtue server just fine. But how could it by my internet if I can connect to all other servers just fine and my computer is set up as a DMZ host in my router? This game man, this game.

It could be one of the nodes between you and the server itself is sick.
Granted, you SHOULD have issues to ALL the servers then. But you never know what a funky node is going to do to mangle your packets.
VPN'ing around it works around the issue but doesn't fix it.

Can we get a pathping from you without the VPN? And one with the VPN (so long as it isn't pushing through sensitive networks)?

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

An ipconfig /flushdns from an elevated Command Prompt might be worth a try.

As you're not VIP I can't message you on the boards.
Posting it openly on the boards is just asking for some retard to attempt a DOS attack on it.
You can shoot me an e-mail at hyperstrike@cox-supergroups.com.
Then just e-mail me back the traceroute.

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

E-mailed you, I will check my inbox in the morning. Thanks for all the help everyone who posted. This is actually a stranger problem than it turned out to be :3

Here's some pathpings, I do not have another computer that will run City of Heroes to test it within my network. Sorry about the Japanese...

NO VPN

I had something strange happen to me that might be related. I can log in every character I have except Phantom Quark on Freedom. I can select Freedom, and once there I can select most of my characters. But when I click on Phantom Quark, before it even displays her the game client crashes. It could be that the top character that you have on Virtue is broken in the same way Phantom Quark is. Also, I've tried logging in Phantom Quark on 3 different computers, and they all fail the exact same way.

Here's something you can try. First you need to have the game make a playerslot file. Turn on the checkbox to remember your account name, log in and go to some server other than virtue, and move some of your characters to different slots. Then exit from the game. Look for the playerslot file and open it with Wordpad or another text editor. Edit an entry to move your top virtue character to be in another slot. For example, if your top Virtue character is ZZZ, edit one of the entries in the file as follows:

"<your acct name>" "Virtue" "ZZZ" "2"

Then restart your game client and select Virtue. If you get in and see a different character on top, then I may actually know what I'm talking about. And if the game crashes when you click on the character who used to be on top, then I guess I really do know what I'm talking about. And we have the exact same problem. Personally I think there's something broken about my character, like a costume that has somehow become invalid and breaks the game when it tries to load. I've asked customer support to generic my costumes, but haven't heard back yet. But it could be anything.

Aha! Never mind doing what I said above. I just did it myself. I moved Phantom Quark to the top slot in Freedom. Now when I select Freedom, I get the text about "Retrieving character list" and then the game crashes. I don't see any character list at all. So I do know what I'm talking about, and we both have the same problem.

Also, I play in windowed mode. When my game crashes I get a window asking me to type in what I was doing. If you're playing in full screen mode I don't think you'll see that window, so it will look like you're hung. Try alt-tabbing to see if you get the error window.

So if you want to play with other characters on virtue, you can do what I said above. Move your first character in Virtue to a different slot and then you should be able to see your Virtue characters. But your game will crash when you select the character that used to be on top.

If you know anything unique about your top character, or more importantly have their costume saved, you might mention it here. And email me the costume if you have it to airionis@yahoo.com. I'll see if I can reproduce the costume and crash, because that's my top guess as to the problem.

If you have a character that you can SPECIFICALLY show is crashing the game, your best bet is to contact support and have them look at the character.

At worst, they would have to null out the costume.

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

From what it sounds like, you may have corruption in the costume file of that first character.

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

TopDoc's fix worked! I just changed one character to 2 and switched the 2 slot to 0. Dont know what character is broke, probably one I don't play. I only play 3 characters and they all work fine now.

Glad things are working for you. Unfortunately my character was still broken last night. Can you identify which of your characters is broken? Once the list comes up just click on each of them till your client hangs. I want to know the name so I can add it to my customer support ticket, so the GMs or devs can see if there is anything in common between the two.

Hmm, I'm sorry but I clicked on all my characters and they work fine. I only changed the second one to the first one in the characterlist.txt. Also I deleted a character in the third slot to transfer over Jen Thorn from Freedom server, but again I was able to delete the character and it did not hang when I clicked on him. The only character in their original spot now is Virbo-OLEDsan.