What strategies/tricks do people have for getting logged in and staying logged in when the servers are trashed?
On Live it seemed like the login server would go down more frequently than any of the game servers so when it goes down you just try not to get booted. It also seemed like the world was bifurcated where if you zoned into some set of zones you'd get booted so you had to avoid them.
If world is down, all other zones will be down as you need to talk to world once you change zones.
The process goes like this when hitting a zoneline in live:
Client requsts zoning out -> server sends request to other zone -> other zone replies with data saying you're accepted or not and forwards that back to zone you transfer from -> zone either accepts or rejects the request -> zone forwards response to client -> client sends logout packets to zone acknowledging travel -> client sends login request to world with 'zoning' flag set, which tells world not to send it all other data -> world sends new zoneserver info, if not present you are kicked to character select, if world is unable to fetch characters you are kicked to login -> your client accepts new zone info --> if client is unable to connect, it freezes indefinitely until timeout -> server sends zone header information which contains information like gravity -> client acknowledges this, sends request for player information -> player information is sent to client which then can reject it if it's unavailable or an invalid crc, which will freeze the client indefinitely -> client accepts playerprofile, requests for world switches (doors, ground spawns, other spawns etc) -> server sends world objects, -> client acknowledges world objects, sends a 'client ready packet' -> client is sent remainder of non-critical data (pet name, pet status, AAs, etc) -> server replies last with the same 'client ready packet' last which makes you able to move around ingame and allows the server to send all normal data that's not part of the zoning process after.
The zoning process is extremely fragile and there's only like fail conditions for like 2-3 of those steps failing.
Also this doesn't include server initiated requests for players to zone. I believe on emu for a while (and maybe still live) you could actually reject the zone change packets incoming on the client and be stuck in the position the server requested you to zone at. For example, if you didn't 'go to your home zone' after dying, you would literally just appear back in the spot you died at or potentially the safe coords in the zone, depending on what part you closed the connection on.
