FIX (For some of you..)"An unknown error has occurred" A problem for many college students..

Xilian

All college students that are experiencing this same issue and is reading this please leave a comment so we can get some attention to this major problem.

The issue: I keep receiving the message "An unknown error has occurred" after logging in and then it just sends us to a loading screen that takes anywhere from 5-30 minutes and then gives you the error message once that time is up.

THE FIX: After hours of research on the topic I have come to the conclusion that it has something to do with a few network ports not being open and being blocked by a firewall. After talking to a representative of Zos I understand that you have to contact your University's IT help line and they can open those ports for you that will give you access to the Zenimax servers. While talking to the Zos Rep he said you will need to open up the ports: 24100 through 24500 as well as 24131 through 24507 for both TCP and UDP. You don't have to be very knowledgeable about this to explain it to someone who works in the IT department, if you tell them that you need some ports to be opened and then give them the codes above and for both TCP and UDP they will know what you're talking about. However if you are experiencing this problem and you aren't on a college campus you will have to do this by yourself manually, in which case just google/youtube some things and learn that way.

So now for the problem that this creates for people like me: So while trying to get help from my IT department I had to talk to them, talk to another guy who transferred me to another guy and so on.. after getting to my head IT specialist for housing he said he had to talk to a guy above him and he would get back with me with an email... well its been 8 hours and past work ours so I don't foresee there being much help from them opening up these ports.. So what now Zos? Am I just going to be screwed for the few more months of college I have or is there anyway you could help me on your end?

maciubab14_ESO

My girlfriend has this same issue. I'm a commuter and she's not -- so, she uses college housing and their internet. She was over here on the weekend and now that she's there she can't play. This needs to be fixed or somehow solved.

Xilian

Just show her this post. It should help her out! ...Hopefully

Supernode

I have opened those ports on my router, but I'm still getting this error message. Windows Firewall is turned off too (as is AVG).

billyu5

Same problem with me I assume. ( I was able to get on one or twice on the universities connect but now nothing.) Thing is I can't afford off college living and I have 2 more years here so it pretty much means i'm screwed. I don't see why this is even a issue I play other games fine. Makes no sense why this game alone is plagued by these issues. College I figure would probably question why I would ask for the ports open and pretty much say no. A fix needs to be from Zenimax's side not college and university's they're potentially messing with a good amount of subs I figure. Since I got on around twice it's definitely possible but requires countless amounts of relogs.

Sakiri

Colleges typically close certain ports to cut out online gaming, torrenting and some types of streaming.

That's why you're having issues on college campus with this.

AzureButterfly

I've been working with our tech department and we've made a kit to let ESO through. It worked in beta but now the unknown errors have made a return and we have no idea WTF is causing it.

Kujako

After playing error free for two days, I am now getting this issue. However, I suspect it has more to do with instances getting overloaded now that the three day early access people are piling in then firewall rules. If you are correct however, that is unacceptable and not easily resolved unless one is to map an internal IP address to an external one. Something home networks frankly can't do easily if they have many computers and a single internet connection.

Ah well, till they resolve this the game is unplayable.

Bjorg

I'm also living on a college campus and can't play because of this error. The character creation and tutorial work just fine, but once I try to load anything else I get stuck on a loading screen and then an unknown error. I managed to load Glenumbra once, but I couldn't interact with anything and was kicked out after about 5 minutes.
I was able to play in beta just fine (got some loading errors, just as anyone I know playing it) and other games have not given me problems.
I find it very unlikely that the IT department is willing to open up ports for me, but I will try.

Kujako

One thing I've noticed is that this issue is most prevalent in specific quests where there are many other people pursuing the same task.

Kujako

I really chafe about games saying they need firewall ports opened to work. If the network code is well written, it shouldn't be a requirement. It's like the cable company saying I need to remove my back doors lock to watch HBO.

wunahokalugi

Kujako wrote: »

I really chafe about games saying they need firewall ports opened to work. If the network code is well written, it shouldn't be a requirement. It's like the cable company saying I need to remove my back doors lock to watch HBO.

If my cable company starts talking about my back door, I hang up.

I'm guessing that despite port forwarding on my router, my ISP doesn't give me a non-rfc1918 IP address. We're all NAT'd behind the ISP's firewall.

None of this has been a problem for the various other games I've played. I can call my ISP and open? (need specifics on expected source/destination)

Source - my computer?
Destination - internet address?
Ports/Service - 24100-24500 and 24131-24507 TCP/UDP

Or is the traffic expected to be open inbound? (ick)

SenselessChip

Look at the text in the top left of the screen...

billyu5

Still not working for me. They got back to me and told me it was because servers were down but I was trying to get on literally all day and today and still nothing. Unacceptable if they don't do something about this since every other mmo I've played works fine on dorm connection.

Cannyone

This sounds suspicious to me. I opened those ports on my home router and it didn't make any difference. So I suspect this is nothing but more misinformation.

Dominoid

I had the same issue after installing a new add-on. I removed the add-on folder completely and the game started fine.

Sakiri

Kujako wrote: »

I really chafe about games saying they need firewall ports opened to work. If the network code is well written, it shouldn't be a requirement. It's like the cable company saying I need to remove my back doors lock to watch HBO.

Certain functionality of networks require certain ports to be open. BitTorrent, for example. The well known TCP port for BitTorrent traffic is 6881-6889 (and 6969 for the tracker port).

This will explain some of what ports are used for what.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_TCP_and_UDP_port_numbers

Basically, if your network admin does not want you doing something specific on the network, they block those ports to prevent it from happening.

You can typically forward the traffic to different ports(which is what makes BitTorrent hard to block) if you have access to do so, but school networks typically don't let you use port forwarding for a lot of things.

Schools have a tendency to block torrent ports and it messes with online games because their patchers tend to use BitTorrent technology to ease the load on their servers by filesharing patch data. They also have been known to block certain streaming ports to keep bandwidth usage down. They can effectively shut down online gaming, and often will.

If you can't get them to open the ports, your only other option is get yourself off campus housing or another internet connection. I had a kid in one of my raid guilds in EQ2 get a friggin dialup connection because it was better than not connecting at all.

billyu5

Hopefully they change this then. I've played Guild Wars 2 and WoW on campus connection and downloaded both with no problem and little to no lag.

Sakiri

Yeah I can't tell you if both ESO and WoW or GW2 use the same exact ports or not because I've never had an issue to cause me to check.

billyu5

Perhaps even it's a combination of both the ports and the lag but I would have thought the lag would have stabilized by now. For me though this whole thing is leaving a sour taste and makes me not want to play at all. . If they know these ports are blocked they shouldn't use them to begin with.

Sakiri

billyu5 wrote: »

Perhaps even it's a combination of both the ports and the lag but I would have thought the lag would have stabilized by now. For me though this whole thing is leaving a sour taste and makes me not want to play at all. Them not fixing this is basically a giant middle finger to college students. If they know these ports are blocked they shouldn't use them to begin with.

Then the admins would just block the new ports.

Typically they're blocked to prevent some type of traffic they don't want on the network. State university here specifically told a friend of mine that they have the battle.net ports blocked *because* of WoW and Diablo.

Can't convince them to unblock them when that's the reason.

Kwoolley91

So if we are having these issues and our IT department wont help us out, do you think ZOS will give us refunds?

Kujako

eq2imora_ESO wrote: »

Certain functionality of networks require certain ports to be open. BitTorrent, for example. The well known TCP port for BitTorrent traffic is 6881-6889 (and 6969 for the tracker port).

You are confusing actively blocking ports (which can be done to prevent bittorrent from working) and being required to open ports, which is only a requirement if the service is losing the requester identifier somewhere along the line.

By default, everything should be blocked from the world to the internal network. The firewall is intended to be smart enough to allow through packets that are sent in response to a request originating from the trusted network.

In my case, I run a Netscreen 25 firewall (which is massively overkill for a home network). I have never had to open any ports for any game, torrent or other service to work. It is simply a bad practice as it is poking holes (small ones admittedly) in the security the firewall provides.

The crazy part is that they are not asking for port forwarding, which is again indicative that they are simply stripping out part of the identifier from the return packets under some conditions. So the firewall still knows which internal IP address requested the data, but the "key" so to speak is missing.

(trying to avoid tech speak terminology)

Just blue skying here, but I suspect the problem is caused when a users session gets handed off to another server (due to too many players in an area) so that the pack response hits the users firewall from a different source address then the firewall was expecting. So the user sends data to server (a) and gets a response from server (b) and doesn't know what to do with it because it doesn't match what was expected.

billyu5

So could they even fix it from their side? Colleges aren't gonna make exceptions for me I assume.

Kujako

billyu5 wrote: »

So could they even fix it from their side? Colleges aren't gonna make exceptions for me I assume.

Hard to say, no one has tried a server system like this that I am aware of... frankly the situation is even worse for home users then colleges. Many if not most ISPs give users a locked down router/firewall that they can't make changes to. Again this is not about unblocking ports, but about opening them through the firewall.

billyu5

Well then it sounds like it's up to Zenimax to fix this? Will definitely not be continuing my sub if this isn't tackled by the time he free months time is over. Not gonna pay for a game I can only access on weekends I go home. I'd advise everyone in the same situation to do the same.

Kujako

billyu5 wrote: »

Well then it sounds like it's up to Zenimax to fix this? Will definitely not be continuing my sub if this isn't tackled by the time he free months time is over. Not gonna pay for a game I can only access on weekends I go home. I'd advise everyone in the same situation to do the same.

I do not expect users to accept "open some ports in your firewall" as a fix. If the game is unplayable, people will not subscribe. So yea, if they want to game to make it to the two month mark they had best fix this as it sounds like a fair number of people are effected.

billyu5

Agreed. Hopefully they'll consider this since they're probably messing with a good amount of subs. For the mean time just have to keep trying to bring this to their attention.

Kwoolley91

billyu5 wrote: »

Well then it sounds like it's up to Zenimax to fix this? Will definitely not be continuing my sub if this isn't tackled by the time he free months time is over. Not gonna pay for a game I can only access on weekends I go home. I'd advise everyone in the same situation to do the same.

Even so, I am not willing to just say oh well, I wont subscribe. I mean I did pay $80 for the game that I most likely cannot get back.

Dominoid

Although I'm sure ZOS would prefer for this to be fixed, it's not their fault or problem really. If your school network won't allow the ports it's of your school. I know most schools in the area around here don't allow ports for known high bandwidth games, Netflix etc.

Kujako

Anyone know if they have a list of server ip addresses handy? I'd feel better about opening ports if I could specify a source ip group.