Warcraft 3 battle.net problems
#1
Alright so here is the situation. I have a friend who is learning warcraft 3 with her husband for a class (its a class on the study of learning or some such like that so they were allowed to pick their own thing to learn). They wanted to learn and play with me on battle.net so they went to the trouble of buying an extra cd and mailing it to me. So we all have a legal cd and cd key. We can all log on to battle.net just fine. The problems start first on game creation. If I make the game they can join just fine. If they make the game then each of them can join it, but I can't for some reason. Thats not that big a deal since I can make the games and they can join. So we do that and play for about 5 minutes (estimate off the top of my head) and then one of them gets dropped from the game every time. The last time, after the first one got dropped, the second one got dropped as well not long after.

So some basic information. I'm on a windows 2000 machine connected to a dsl line. My computer is set as the DMZ computer. (I know I shouldn't do that, but it simplifies solving problems sometimes cause I don't have to worry about the router blocking things) They are both on Mac OS X machines (not sure what version of OS X, but probably one of the newer ones). They are also only on a modem which they are sharing between their two comps.

When we first tried to play with each other on battle.net we expected there to be lag because when we play starcraft there is (though there are no other problems). Warcraft 3 actually hasn't had any noticable lag for the initial 5 minutes or so that we play. Then it just all of a sudden drops one of them.

So the only ideas I can come up with is that its something with them both being on the same connection or that they have a port blocked somewhere.

I figure it could be because they are both on the same connection, because maybe battle.net is seeing two connections to the server coming from one line and so thinking there is a hack or something running. This wasn't a problem with starcraft though so it would have to be a change with warcraft 3 specifically.

The port blocked thing is mostly because of the join game problems. The fact that I can't join their games, but they can join mine. That seems to say that their computers can communicate with mine, but that my computer can't communicate with theirs. I'm not entirely sure why this would make them drop from a game after its been going for a little bit though. Maybe battle.net checks a certain port during the game and since it can't talk to them on that one it drops one of them? I don't know, its rather confusing.

They said that they are going to try contacting tech support about it because we should be able to play together since we all have legal copies of the game. I'm a bit skeptical about how much help they will get though so I'm asking here hoping somebody has some clue as to what is going on.
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#2
You have to go through a few gyrations to get War3 to be hostable by a machine behind a firewall (most routers have a firewall on them). Blizzard actually has some good information on the web pages about some of this. The general War3 support page is here:

http://www.blizzard.com/support/?id=mwr000p options 46, 47, 48, and 49 are probably of particular interest in this case.

The Networking help section here: http://www.blizzard.com/support/?id=msi0423p, specifically http://www.blizzard.com/support/?id=msi0445p about what ports to open and set to forward. War3 allows you to set a defined port per client and then you can set port forwarding for that port to the specfic client to allow either of them to host behind the router (http://www.blizzard.com/support/?id=awr0655p).

Hope that helps.

As another FYI, if you host a custom game, just like in SC, Battle.net is out of the equation. The game creator hosts the game, and everyone else does a direct connect to the host. Packets aren't going to B.net anymore. All your computers can communicate with each other because you can start the game and the data flow is going both ways.

I seem to recall seeing the 5 minute drop thing elsewhere though, I'll try to poke around about it.
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It's all just zeroes and ones and duct tape in the end.
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#3
I did actually have the direct connection thing in the back of my head. Thats kind of why things don't make too much since with the dropping and firewall correlation. Since they can join my games and we can start them then the firewalled bit shouldn't really matter. Its just the only excuse I can come up with for why they would drop. It has occured to me though that it would be better for them to host the games if we can get it so I can join their games. Since they are sharing a modem connection then it would probably be better. Cause if I host then they both have to send information out to me over the modem. If one of them hosts then I have to send info to the host over their modem, but the other person is sending the info over their lan. Course thats assuming that all info has to go through the hosting computer which I'm slightly unsure of. That doesn't really matter though, its the dropping part that I really need to get fixed cause that is what is preventing us from being able to play. Thanks for the help. : )
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#4
Have you tried any "alternative" servers? There are other forms of MP than B.Net... I wonder if that might help your situation any.
Roland *The Gunslinger*
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#5
Well I'm not sure how to do any alternative server things. Originally we just wanted to do direct tcp/ip games. All that warcraft seems to support is lan and battle.net though. If there are other ways then I would be glad to hear about them. I'm in missouri and they are in colorado (both in the united states just to be clear) so the lan option isn't an option unless there is a way to force a lan to recognize an outside ip as part of it.
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#6
I was under the impression that custom game worked on a P2P system, rather than a central, Blizz-controlled server. (of course, I am assuming that our questioner is using custom game, rather than creating an arranged team). If it is a P2P system, then Blizz is simply working as a 'joining' system. It tells everyone where to look and lets them get on with it. Using another MP service would do no good.
What makes me think that it's P2P? Basically because I have to direct ports to my PC through my firewall if I want to host custom games, whereas I don't if I just want to join them. Surely, if it were centrally hosted, there would be no difference.

Anyway, there it is, sorry it's not much help in actually solving the problem

-Bob
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#7
Yes that is pretty much what gnollguy said and I agree with it since it is how it was in starcraft so see no reason it should be changed now. So basically I shouldn't be saying that battle.net is dropping them as much as warcraft 3 is dropping one of them since battle.net is out of the picture once the game is started.

So we know that custom games are just direct communications for the people involved. This means that the me not being able to join their games thing is probably because they have a port blocked. Also since they can join their own games it means that its not a block on their computers, but on what they go through to get to the outside world. So either their router or their provider.

This still leaves us with the dropping issue. I'm going to look into getting them to fix the blocked ports problem and then with any luck that will just magically solve the dropping problem. I have no clue why it would though. : )
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