Turn off the AV and the firewall.....

[pam123]

Is this usual when playing MMORPG?
It's the only thing that gets Earth and Beyond to run but it's making me nervous.
I'm guessing there's something about on-line games that makes this feasible, or EA wouldn't recommend it, but I'd be alot happier if I knew what it was.:confused:

[Tiretool]

E&B... I beta tested that one... seemed really cool until I heard they were going to charge monthly to subscribe to their servers... That turned me off completely.

The game was brilliant though. Really nice layout made it so that you didn't need the keyboard for anything at all... You could do almost anything with the mouse only.

Very nice graphics too...

[RenegadeKing]

Honestly, I run my computer all the time as DMZ host with my router and no firewall, and for a while, had no AV. I'm virus/trojan/worm free, and if I've ever been hacked, nothing nothing bad happened because of it. I do take other precautions though. I think you should be fine leaving the firewall and AV off while you play a game.

[pam123]

I'll take a deep breath and do it.
I don't think I'll ever be happy about it but I'll do it.

[RenegadeKing]

Does it actually stop you from playing if you have a firewall and AV running?

[Fastfly]

If you Write a Email to the Maker of the game you will usally quickly get a email back with the ports the game uses so you can program your Router and or Firewall.

[pam123]

Yes RK it's a dead stop.
I either get a complete blackout in video or a computer freeze at the "contacting server" screen.
EA actually advises doing so.
Is there some sort of protection that on-line games can give that I haven't heard of?
That is, are you safe while playing the game but not otherwise ?
I can't come up with any other reason for the advice.
I have the free version of ZoneAlarm. I don't think it gives me enough settings for configuring portals but I'll be checking that out tomorrow.
Thanks for the directions Fastfly!

[RenegadeKing]

The game won't keep you safe. The reason they tell you to disable your firewall is because it can block the game from connecting to the server correctly. They advise that you disable AV probably because it can lag the game's performance.

If you can get the ports that the game uses, as Fastfly suggested, you can configure your firewall so that it will bypass them so it won't interfere while still keeping you computer safe.
hth

[pam123]

Okay RK,
thanks!

[pam123]

I have the ports the game uses.
Since I've used default settings, it's ZA, I've never configured a firewall before so I'm taking this over to security.
Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.