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Bitdefender 2014 + Mechwarrior Online = Login Problems


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#1 Teknomancer

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Posted 20 May 2014 - 10:07 PM

For all players running BitDefender 2014, just a heads up on some workarounds if you are experiencing login failures after a game patch.

Background: Since upgrading to BitDefender 2014, I have had login failures after almost every game patch. After a lot of trial and error, hair-pulling, and back-and-forth with support (we exhausted the usual solutions, such as the repair tool and Internet defaults), I've found a workaround that usually gets me back into the game.

Symptom: After typing the login and password, it spins the Connecting circle for a long while, and eventually fails with a message to the effect that "the servers are down for maintenance." It used to just say "unknown error" earlier this year, but has been consistent lately with the "servers are down" message, even though the launcher gives the servers a green light.

The problem: MechWarrior Online has to do some device discovery when you login, no doubt grabbing the ports it needs, logging a hardware identifier, etc. Whatever MechWarrior is doing, BitDefender does not like it! It doesn't get blocked as a hostile port scan, but it does get blocked.

The workarounds: You have options to get this game going with BitDefender Internet Security 2014. One of these should work. When I first had this problem, the autopilot workaround was all I needed to get back into the game. Though for the last couple months now, I need the autopilot and stealth workarounds both.

Turn the autopilot on with the switch on the top-right corner of the main BitDefender window. Autopilot suppresses extra dialogs, and MW:O will not login unless this is on. This should have nothing to do with actual communication behaviour, but for this game it does. Be aware that opening BitDefender, and even just bringing it to the foreground, will usually shut off the autopilot. Over and over again, every time it gets focus. So you may have to keep turning the damn thing on if you switch between apps.

Turn the stealth mode off in the firewall adapters settings. Stealth mode has three settings, off, on, and remote. Remote is likely your default, which hides your computer from the outside world but lets your LAN devices (printers, AppleTV's, etc.) connect. When turned on fully, your computer is hidden from outside scans you didn't ask for. This is a valuable security feature that you normally want at least set to remote, but MechWarrior does not like it at all during the login process, even though you started the process.

Turn the firewall off, as a last resort. I absolutely do not recommend this, but it may be necessary if the two workarounds above don't get you in. When the BitDefender firewall is off, MechWarrior will login.

Restore your settings: Once you successfully login, you can put your BitDefender settings back to what you had before, and MechWarrior will login just fine the next time. Once they learn to work together, you're good to go [until they forget to play nice - see below]. Except the autopilot, which must remain on to play if you had it off before.

Repeat every patch: After a new patch, MechWarrior Online and BitDefender will forget how to work together, and the login problem will happen all over again. Either MW:O is forgetting your computer (the way it forgets weapon groups?), or BitDefender treats the patched app as a new process to block. So, you likely will have to repeat your workaround to get back in. Then it will remember you again for your logins... until the next patch. Repeat.

Note: This may only apply to Windows 8 and 8.1. Technical support tells me they have not fully tested the game for Windows 8-series. The problem could be a combination of Win8 and BD; I upgraded both the OS and BitDefender at the same time, and had no issues at all under Windows 7 and BitDefender 2011. If you have BitDefender 2014 running on Windows 7, please let the community know in this thread if these workarounds are required.

May 20 (2014) Patch Note: The preferred workarounds failed on the 05/20 patch. This could be something that gets fixed in the next few days on the server end, as has occasionally happened. Feedback on this patch is showing continued connection issues and long game queues that you know they will be working to resolve. The last resort, shutting off the firewall completely, will let me login, but I refuse to be online with no firewall. Normally I could login and then restore the firewall with the game running, but not this time. Restoring the firewall immediately kicks me out of the game with a "connection lost" message. If you know how to get the game running with BitDefender 2014 and today's patch, please post to this thread!

#2 Teknomancer

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Posted 27 May 2014 - 09:39 PM

Update: The patch to the 05/20 patch has restored login ability. I did follow the workaround out of habit, and won't know if the overall problem has gone away until another major update.

#3 Teknomancer

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Posted 16 July 2014 - 09:41 PM

Another update, for Patch 1.3.306: The workaround has changed to get this running...

It used to require a workaround only once per patch, and during the login process after you hit Play in the Launcher. After 1.3.306, the Launcher won't even fire up, it throws up a small grey "connection problem" box, and never connects. So here's the workaround if you see that:

Shutdown the BitDefender Firewall.
Run the Launcher.
When the Play or Patch button appears and it's all done loading, you can restore your BitDefender firewall.

The game will then play just fine, through login, etc. However, unlike before when you only had to do this once per patch, now you have to do this every time you play.

PGI, what the heck keeps changing in your connection code? Your technical support has been helpful, although there is a tendency now to just pass the buck and say "shut down BitDefender to play." Never be online without security these days, that's just a general rule, so it would be nice to put the BitDefender issue to rest. No other software, game or otherwise, has these issues on my machine, just MW:O.

But at least there's still a workaround! :)

#4 Teknomancer

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Posted 31 October 2014 - 05:17 PM

Breakthrough, discovered on patch 1.3.345!

Over the last while several patches, even the workaround has been failing repeatedly. But thanks to a fresh look from technical support, there is a breakthrough! It appears as if MechWarrior Online is using IPv6 to identify your machine - if you deny TCP and UDP traffic on IPv6 for the MW:O executables in BitDefender 2014, then you will probably have problems playing MW:O through the BitDefender Firewall. Enable IPv6 traffic and see if your connections improve.

Which means this is not necessarily a BitDefender issue. Anyone having issues getting the game to play, should check their security and network setup (firewall, router, OS, etc.). If you disable IPv6, or if your particular network is limited to IPv4, then you may have problems with MW:O at this time. Although not having this problem before upgrading to BitDefender 2014 suggests it could still be how BitDefender handles traffic. Will continue to investigate...

#5 Teknomancer

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Posted 03 July 2015 - 03:07 PM

A last thought on the IP issue... The game and launcher/patcher will work on IPv4 or IPv6. The trick I've discovered is that with Bitdefender 2014, you just need to toggle the IP setting between v4 and v6. That works every time now, and it doesn't seem to matter whether you go from v4 to v6 or the other way, it's the toggling that suddenly lets the MechWarrior executables function properly.

So it's a Bitdefender weird issue. MechWarrior has done wonders to fix connectivity issues over the past year, and in fact doesn't always trigger the Bitdefender conflict these days. Most patches and play session run just fine without touching Bitdefender. But every now and then it fails, and the fix is to simply toggle the IP version in Bitdefender's application settings. Note that so far, you have to do this with all of the MechWarrior executables. Once that is done, everything works fine.

A big thank you to the tech support team for bearing with me and helping to figure this out!





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