I know this has been a known issue for a bit, and I know you guys are working hard, you always do. I'm just sad, I really love playing on P1999 and it makes me emosad when I can't connect. Someone in IRC helped me run Wireshark to trace the stream, and in the stream text it was showing partial server names amongst tech-speak. I'm going to try either a new modem or new ISP in the meantime, don't have many other options. I literally disabled everything I possibly could with my client side internet service, not all at once, but nothing made any difference.

Also I'm pretty sure this happened to me two years ago when I was trying to play eqemu with the same ISP, I remember because I only played with my friend at his house, then stopped playing becuase he moved, but I may be mistaken. Either way this bottom of the bucket DSL isn't cutting it.

This must be fixable on the LS side, as I'm not aware of this being an issue with the live login server.

I'm fairly certain it's user end crap, it has to do something with NAT transfer or something, everything's a bit hazy right now, I want to try a newer router first and go from there.

Edit: Otherwise I'm just going to pay for my own internet line into this house, it'd be like 40$ extra a month, but I wont have to deal with people stealing my bandiwthe.

I have the empty server select list problem in a huge way. Many days I've logged in 20 times in a row before getting it to work. Tonight, after getting hung and logging in again, it won't work after about 50 logins. Some people say it's an issue with a router blocking ports, but like another poster I've run wireshark and I do see packets reaching this computer on port 5998, containing what looks like a server list ("[A.0.8.0] SirensBane Classic EQBOTS.EN.US.........24.59.40.131..." etc. for many servers). Is there a definition of what these packets should contain? Ideally both directions since the client continues sending packets in the middle of this interaction, and I'm curious whether they mean anything more than "continue". One other curious thing - in the middle of the packets with the list the server does send one short (62 byte) packet with no readable strings in it.

Pfyon is correct. The server select structure sent to the client is off a bit (thats why you see random mass populations on servers and such or truncated server names). There is a fix but unfortunately the main Eqemu LS uses an older build and different code -- it isn't an easy hotfix problem.

I see that Pfyon's post is nearly three years old. Nothing has changed since then?

Also - if there is only 1 server I'm actually going to use, is there a way I can avoid having to use the server select screen and avoid the issue?

only if the server in question has an alternate login server running and your characters are tied to the account there.