I hate to be hanging around here again, but I have been having "Unable to connect" issues for a while now.

I have seemingly done everything possible:

- I have done multiple reinstalls of the game
- I have moved the WTF, Cache, Addon folders
- I have done everything to ensure that my firewall is not blocking incoming or outgoing connections
- I have contacted my campus IT department, and they insist that the ports are not blocked. I know for a fact that the ports are not blocked because my friend on the same connection can go on the game just fine. They have even done an individual port check just for me. They even temporarily unblocked all ports for me to check the problem out.
- I have tried to ping and traceroute. I cannot ping or get a traceroute at all to us.logon.worldofwarcraft.com or west.battle.net
- However, I can run a traceroute to the IP address of my server, Terokkar, just fine.
- I have even gone as far as to contact Apple to make sure nothing was wrong with my computer or firewall. It is fine.

i was able to connect fine until last Monday. I should also throw in that sometimes my game DOES work, but I would say that 95% of the time it does not work.

Another important point I should make is that I am not connected to a router or cable modem, so the Powercycling tips will not help me.

My friend on the same network (he uses Windows) can get on just fine without issues... why can't I?

Any help would be great, I don't want to have to unsubscribe to the game because of this.

EDIT: I should also add that the "Unable to connect" message is instant. The game does not bother trying to even connect to the server. I can even answer totally false account information and still, nothing.

[ Post edited by Eulogy ]

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Finger deep within the borderline
Show me that you love me and that we belong together
Relax, turn around and take my hand.

Eulogy,

Great job on the amount of troubleshooting so far. Considering that you can trace route to a numeric IP address, but not an IP address with only letters, your DNS cache may be corrupted.

To do this go into the Terminal (Go > Utilities > Terminal) and type in the following:

For Leopard (10.5):
dscacheutil -flushcache

For Tiger (10.4) and Panther (10.3):
lookupd -flushcache

Try the game after performing this command.

Eulogy,

To preface this post, I want to let you know that I'm pretty confident the issue lies with the school network. I've never seen a software firewall prevent access most of the time. They either fully prevent access or they don't.

Did you ever try plugging your Mac into your friend's PC connection? You mentioned they work on the same network, but schools can generally block the ports on specific connections within their network.

Do you have the option to take your Mac to a connection outside the school and try to connect? A Wi-Fi connection, like at a coffee shop may work, but I'd prefer that you try a hardwired connection if possible.

I've never heard of any Mac firewall programs blocking trace routes on a Mac, but just to cover the bases, do you have PeerGuardian or any firewall programs installed other than the integrated OS X firewall? At this point, I suggest removing them temporarily if you have them.

Also, you mentioned the trace route you posted was the only time you've been able to run it to us.logon.worldofwarcraft.com. The trace route posted indicated it being run to 206.16.147.13 which is the Terokkar server at this time. The IP address of the us.logon.worldofwarcraft.com server is different.

Can you run a trace route to other websites? Try running one to www.google.com or www.yahoo.com. If you can, then something is specifically targeting the us.logon.worldofwarcraft.com server on the network.

Eulogy,

I'm glad we agree! I'm with you on some compatibility issue between their network and OS X. I'm not sure how that could be, but I don't know everything about networking. As to what more you can ask them, I say speak with someone higher up in their IT department first. Ask for a supervisor if you need to. It sounds like the IT department has been helpful thus far; some schools won't open ports for our game, so hopefully you don't need to escalate this too much. Maybe show them this thread.

Do you know of anyone else on campus with a Mac? Do they play World of Warcraft? If there is someone but they don't play, ask if you could install the game temporarily. I don't believe you'll be even able to connect to patch since there's an issue trace routing to the logon server. So this shouldn't take longer than 30-45 minutes. Just installing the original game should be enough.

If you are able to do this and the game still doesn't connect on their network, you'll have two computers with the same issue. This can go a long way to help further troubleshoot an issue in an technical specialist's mind.

Eulogy,

You're welcome! I hope your school is able to figure out the issue with the connection through OS X. Feel free to let us know if you have any further issues.