Cannot connect to mud, what could be wrong?

[Livae]

It hangs for me as well sometimes. Almost like it's bottle-necking . there's a possible server lag?
I also get the Duplicate warning when logging or attempting to for the first time.

[Omlin]

I've notified Flash to see if it's a firewall ban, or something else, for both Omlin and Carlia. I have no idea how long it will take him to see that mail or respond, but things have been set in motion.

Thanks, that is good news!
I'll be checking from time to time (still cannot connect though).

I have a question in the meanwhile:
Could such a drastic measure as permanent ban be explained in the rules somewhere or when you enter the game?
I read the rules and I'm confident there was nothing about reconnects.

This raises a question btw, how many new players gets banned like that, unknowingly, and leave the game forever?...
I know many people in such situation would not take the bother of registering on the forum. It really looks like a game is not accessible and that's it. There's no message that it is a ban. Person would likely try to connect for couple of days and then will just go to some other game, thinking WoTMUD is not working.

Also the ban could be temporary, with increasing ban time, like 10 minutes first time, then 30, then 2 hours, etc. I understand this requires some changes in the code of course, but permanent ban seems to me completely unnecessary and even harmful for the game itself (imo).

Many modern MUD clients have reconnect feature turned on by default. I can picture this situation can be quite common: completely valid player enters the game, then at some point he for example creates triggers for logging in, and makes a mistake in those, and then he tries them and gets banned forever...

Holy impatience Omlin.

I'm not impatient, it's just that I see a straightforward official explanation of a problem from immortals and it says nothing can be done. I might think it is not right, but I will not bother good people who work on a good game, and do it completely for free.

But thank you again for the answer and I'm hopeful it gets resolved for me after all.

[Elysia]

Let's just wait and see if it actually is a firewall ban first.

For example, yesterday I wanted to test some mobol and it simply wouldn't let me connect a second character for hours on end. I actually waited to attend Leria's shawling on Ely in case that particular mobol bugged out (again), then disconnected and hoped I could reconnect. It worked fine, so it wasn't the firewall ban, yet... it didn't let me connect that 2nd character at all.

[Vivienne]

I have a question in the meanwhile:
Could such a drastic measure as permanent ban be explained in the rules somewhere or when you enter the game?
I read the rules and I'm confident there was nothing about reconnects.

When you try to reconnect too quickly and/or in multiple times like spamming, you get a message on your screen that screams "WARNING WARNING WARNING" and explains what will happen if you continue. That's been in place since this was implemented, and even I've had it happen to me, especially when trying to log on multiple test characters.

[Omlin]

(sorry submitted twice, see the post below)

[Omlin]

Hi Vivienne,

As I mentioned already I haven't received the warning you describe.

My attempts of reconnecting were because of some in-game problem. Very likely the warning was not coming out for same reasons.

The symptoms were as that of an infinite loop in DGScript (I heard your script engine is called MOBOL but it is very likely it's based on dgscript and behaves similarly): I'm doing something in the game, and all of the sudden output stops coming from the mud. Connection would not break, but sending commands doesn't yield any reaction. It just hangs. I reconnect, connection successful, but there's no text coming out from the game. No prompt, no nothing.

I don't have any idea about mobol syntax, but in classic DGscript such infinite loop could look like this:

Code: Select all

eval x 10
while %x%>0
  ** do something, forget to decrement x
done

If you have a local server to test, you can run such a script on your server and see if it behaves exactly as I describe and that warning will not show up.

The log:

The Twisting Dark Road
Twisting onward, the blackened road leads south and west through desolate
terrain. A deserted field of stone lies off the road to the north, and a series
of hills begin their ascent to the east. The ever-present scent of decay hangs
heavy in the dry air.
[ obvious exits: N E S W ]

o HP:Healthy MV:Fresh Exits:NESW>who
Players
-------
Tempest the Veteran Havoc [Ko'bal]
Omlin the Bearish Trolloc
Murmur the Boarheaded Trolloc (Linkless) (Idle)
Myrdan the Pugnacious Destroyer [Ahf'frait]
Ickis the Putrid Larva [Dha'vol]
Roxie Mustard [Dha'vol]
Mephistopheles the Ramshorned Trolloc
Jakd the Wolfish Trolloc
Lilith Berzerker, Ancient Fury [Ghar'ghael]
Asharek the Master Havoc
~ Lady Elysia is afk [Watchers]

11 players displayed.

o HP:Healthy MV:Fresh Exits:NESW>nar anybody needs a partner to exp a bit?


<--- here I'm hitting enter to try to get any response from the game



cc wm
-:- game.wotmud.org connection closed.
######## Mon Jan 18 00:04:04 2016:: game.wotmud.org connection closed.
-:- Connecting to game.wotmud.org:2224...
-:- Connected to game.wotmud.org:2224. <---- connected! but no output is coming
######## Mon Jan 18 00:04:04 2016:: Connected to game.wotmud.org:2224.
cc wm <--- so I try again
-:- game.wotmud.org connection closed.
######## Mon Jan 18 00:04:10 2016:: game.wotmud.org connection closed.
-:- Connecting to game.wotmud.org:2224...
-:- Connected to game.wotmud.org:2224.
######## Mon Jan 18 00:04:13 2016:: Connected to game.wotmud.org:2224.
/dc
-:- game.wotmud.org connection closed.
######## Mon Jan 18 00:04:19 2016:: game.wotmud.org connection closed.
cc wm
-:- Connecting to game.wotmud.org:2224...
-:- Connected to game.wotmud.org:2224.
######## Mon Jan 18 00:04:52 2016:: Connected to game.wotmud.org:2224.




cc wm
-:- game.wotmud.org connection closed.
######## Mon Jan 18 00:04:58 2016:: game.wotmud.org connection closed.
-:- Connecting to game.wotmud.org:2224...
-:- Connected to game.wotmud.org:2224.
######## Mon Jan 18 00:05:07 2016:: Connected to game.wotmud.org:2224.
cc wm
-:- game.wotmud.org connection closed.
######## Mon Jan 18 00:18:06 2016:: game.wotmud.org connection closed.
-:- Connecting to game.wotmud.org:2224...
-:- Connected to game.wotmud.org:2224.
######## Mon Jan 18 00:18:06 2016:: Connected to game.wotmud.org:2224.
cc wm
-:- game.wotmud.org connection closed.
######## Mon Jan 18 00:18:10 2016:: game.wotmud.org connection closed.
-:- Connecting to game.wotmud.org:2224...
cc wm
-:- game.wotmud.org connection closed.
######## Mon Jan 18 00:18:11 2016:: game.wotmud.org connection closed.
-:- Connecting to game.wotmud.org:2224...
-:- Connected to game.wotmud.org:2224.
######## Mon Jan 18 00:18:20 2016:: Connected to game.wotmud.org:2224.
cc wm
-:- game.wotmud.org connection closed.
######## Mon Jan 18 00:29:12 2016:: game.wotmud.org connection closed.
-:- Connecting to game.wotmud.org:2224...
-:- game.wotmud.org connection closed.
######## Mon Jan 18 00:29:33 2016:: game.wotmud.org connection closed.
<--- here I closed the client

You can check by the server logs that this information is correct. I haven't modified anything in this log. Time zone is EET (Eastern European Time). The IP address should be same as my current IP on this forum.

Also I think this warning doesn't help in the scenario I described. The player would not have any possibility to understand the warning before he gets banned. Autoconnect->send login+password->password incorrect, disconnect -> autoconnect again. 10 times in 5 seconds, not even a chance to understand what's going on. Then he/she finally closes the client and tries to fix the login triggers, but it's too late.

I understand that WoTMUD experienced DDoS attack at some point and this is probably where this grows from. However, ban with increasing duration would have been no less effective I think.

Please understand me correctly: I'm not demanding anything or pressing anybody to do anything. It's not even about me getting out of the ban: I like the game but I have plenty other things to do. Just my feeling is this measure could be quite harmful for the game. So my intention is to inform immortals of the problem. It's up to the staff to decide if anything should be done or if they should even consider it an issue.

[Carlia]

I fixed my issue by switching to a new modem.

[Vivienne]

Thank you, but what you are describing has nothing to do with MOBOL or anything we do in the game.

[Omlin]

It was just a guess. Though as CircleMUD core is built, this is usually a very good guess. Sorry then.

[Elysia]

Flash has responded and he has found nothing related to a firewall ban relating to either Carlia or Omlin's IP addresses.

He thinks maybe there are multiple windows opening and trying to connect to the game at the same time. So the window you see can't connect because a window you're not seeing is in the login sequence. In particular Omlin's logs show him connecting to the game, not loggin on, and then idling out. The fact that some part of his connection is getting that far suggests that this may be the case.