Cannot 'Play Online' at DQZone.com at all from in-game?
- First try 'Reset to Defaults' on the Options menu. It is possible that some configuration option is corrupt (especially if you participated in an earlier Beta release) and this is preventing you from going online.
- Right-click and Save The DreamQuest Download Tester to your Desktop and then run it. When it starts up, click the "Get File!" button. If you get a message that says the download was successful, you are done. However, if you get a failure message, you should e-mail us with all the information from the program. Make sure to copy the text from both the 'Debug' and the 'File' boxes and paste it into the email. This will help us debug any problems you are having with downloading files from our server.
- Make sure that you can ping www.dqzone.com successfully. You can do this by opening up a command prompt (Open the start menu, select "Run...", type in "Command" and click ok. A black box should open up.) At this prompt type in "ping www.dqzone.com" (without the quotes) and press return. If the output says something like "Request timed out" or "Could not find host" then you should contact your Internet service provider and tell them about the problem and they can help diagnose the DNS or routing problem preventing you from accessing our site.
Problems hosting or joining with a firewall or router?
For most routers and firewalls, you should not have to configure anything to join other player's games, but you may need to make some configuration adjustments if you want to host games and have your firewall set to block incoming players from connecting to you. Below we list some common firewall software and our tips for configuring them to play at DQZone.com.
Configuring hardware firewalls and routers
Our game should allow you to both host and join games with most NAT-based hardware firewalls and routers without any specific settings. Some very draconian SPI (stateful packet inspection) firewalls may not allow hosting without using our NAT proxy relay. If our normal NAT negotiation doesnt work, the game should automatically detect this and have you host via our NAT proxy relay. This will make your games a little slower, but should work with even the most strigent firewalls. Advanced users that want to maximize their gaming speed can configure their router/firewall to map ports.
Configuring Windows XP Firewall
We have tested our game with various settings of Windows XP firewall and you should not have to configure anything to get it to work properly!
Configuring Norton Personal Firewall
When you connect to our internet lobby for the first time, a "Program control" dialog box will come up. Make sure to select "Always allow connections from this program on all ports" from the dropdown list to ensure that people dont run into issues when trying to connect to your hosted game. If you have already selected something else, you can change this under the "Programs" tab in the Personal Firewall settings. For best results, the firewall level should be set to Medium (which is the default and recommended value).
Configuring Zone Alarm
ZoneAlarm's default security setting is "High" which can cause problems for players trying to connect to you if you are hosting with our games. We recommend this be changed to "Medium" if you want to be able to host games and have player be able to connect to you. You must also agree to allow the program to run as a server when the ZoneAlarm dialog box pops up during hosting.
IMPORTANT: If you are using Zone Alarm Security Suits or IM Blocker, please note that the default configuration *will* block responses preventing you from logging into our site and/or getting a 'timeout error' when trying to log in. Our game uses IRC for game chat as well as lobby messaging and if you block it, the game will not be able to log you on. Disabling Zone Alarm will NOT disable IM Blocker, so from the Zone Alarm Configuration screen you need to click on the IM Security tab at left and then the 'Settings' tab on the top-right and click the 'Advanced' button. From there uncheck the 'Block IRC' checkbox and click Apply. Please note that disabling IM Security or Zone Alarm will STILL block IRC unless you uncheck this box.
For further questions, or to share your successes (or failures) using other firewalls with our site, please e-mail us.