Problems with Authentication and Loading Screens

Secret World Legends Support
1

I really hope someone here can help me out. I’ve tried everything I can think of and nothing has worked so far. I’m running Windows 10 Professional Edition on an HP laptop. Processor is an Intel Core i5-4200M. 2TB hard drive. 16 GB RAM. I usually play Secret World Legends via a WiFi connection and T-Mobile cellular internet, but the problem happens while tethered via USB to my phone as well as when connected to another source of WiFi. I run the Steam version of the game.

In the background, I usually have Fraps, Discord, and Chrome running.

What’s been happening are four possibly related things:

  • Before it even logs in, I get a message that it can’t reach the server and I need to check my firewall.
  • Authentication with character server fails. If I’m just logging in, I can’t log in and have to completely restart the client, sometimes several times, in order to log in. Error message is “Failed to authenticate with character server”.
  • While returning to the character menu from having been logged in, the client pauses on authenticating and then crashes to desktop with no warning.
  • Very often, the client gets stuck in a loading screen. Nothing happens and I end up having to completely shut SWL and Steam down and reboot both.

At first I thought it was graphics related, since my laptop sometimes struggles with Secret World Legends. I tried booting in Dx9 instead of Dx11 but the same thing happened. I tried turning off Fraps, because I heard it could cause some games to become unstable, but that did not help. I then tried turning off all unnecessary programs, including Discord and Chrome, but that did not help either. I then turned off Windows Defender’s firewall completely. That did not help. I uninstalled Norton Antivirus, since a new Windows Update had broken it, and that did not help either. I pushed the repair button on the Secret World Legends downloader. That didn’t help. I then made doubly certain both Steam and Secret World Legends were booting in Admin mode. That did not help. As a last ditch effort, I uninstalled the most recent Windows update, that installed on my computer the same day as the patch. That didn’t help.

I’m out of ideas to try and I still can’t get in and stay in. I’d appreciate any help or ideas.

EDIT: As of my last loading screen freeze, I can no longer log into Secret World Legends. It will not authenticate when I hit log in from the main page. It says I need to check my firewall. My firewall is still turned off.

2

All of your symptoms are indicative of a bad connection. Have you tried using a traceroute tool to check?

You can use one of the game’s servers as the target, e.g. gs020-nj4.thesecretworld.com.

3

Looks like my connection is fine this morning. I have a lot of zeros in the Loss % column. It is a valid concern, though. My cellphone internet is touchy sometimes and the other WiFi I was using kicked me off three times this morning. Going to see if redownloading the game from scratch and rebooting the cellphone might have solved my problem.

4

Aeryl is correct that this is usually the result of connectivity issues. Please submit an email at funcom.com/help with Tech selected in the ticket class and we will be able to troubleshoot with you further. Thanks for your patience.

5

Hey, thanks for replying! I think redownloading the game from scratch fixed it. Not the solution I wanted, because that was a lot of data on my cellphone, but I’ve been able to play without issues since then.

Thank you!

6

Just wanted to update in case anyone else has similar issues: I had the same issues again. First time was in Dallas, TX. This last time was in the Milwaukee, WI area. I think I’ve tracked the problem down to the automatic DNS that my laptop was using. Switching to Google DNS seems to have solved the problem. I’m kicking myself that I didn’t think of it sooner.

7

For anyone reading this, the best DNS server you could use would be 1.1.1.1 with 1.0.0.1 as an alternate. Faster than any other public DNS and more privacy than Big Brother Google.

Just check this out.

Also this for more info.