Realm has aparantly been down for a while now and while no-one really knows what is going on (the Town Hall board being down too) there is not much we can do but guess. I personally think they are moving the servers due to the closure of the Oakhurst office and this could be the reason for the disruption and the fact that the IP addresses of the servers are changing. So until the dust settles, I am sorry that I can't offer any more insights and ignore the IP addresses mentioned on this page.
Connecting to The Realm is an intricate process which goes through many stages where faults could happen. I call these "Possible Points of Failure" (PPF). So to find out where your problem is, we will step through the connection process, look at the Possible Points of Failure and see if any of these match the problem you are having.
1/ Start up your Internet Connection. (Tip: Always make a mental note of the speed you connect at. If you got a very bad line with a slow connection, this could lead to lag. If you connect at less than 28,800 bps try again until you get at least that.)
I can't connect to my ISP.
The modem won't dial.
I connect, but my ISP boots me off after only a couple of minutes or randomly.
2/ Start the Realm software. (Tip: Make sure you are starting Realm using the "wlaunch.exe" file instead of "sciw.exe" as this is the correct file to begin Realm.(However, see "Avoiding Lag" for more on this.))
The software won't start. It could be ...
Corrupted files, damaged hard drive, so reload
Conflict with new program or drivers
3/ Can't connect to Routing Server (205.185.62.90 7001 -- if it is another number it is probably the Game Server you are not connecting to, and that is dealt with below).The window "Connecting to Routing Server" comes up, but there is a long wait followed by the message:
"NETERR: Could not make conneciton with '205.185.62.90 7001'. The server is probably down, try again in 10 minutes. Script 45012, ip 0xe2."
The Internet between your ISP and the Routing Server has a problem. A while back Sierra's ISP, Netcom, had been flaky causing this problem, but this seems to have settled down a bit now. Nothing you can do about it, apart from check the Town Hall Message Board and there will probably be people commenting about it there. Just keep trying.
The Routing Server could actually be down. This is pretty rare, (as opposed to the Game Server which is more likely to be down) but also not much you can do about it.
4/ Can't connect to the Update Server.
Actually the Update server and the Routing server are, I think, the same machine. So if you can get to the Routing Server, then the Update server should work OK too. If it DOES stop here, then the routing port is possibly hung, and not much you can do until they reboot the server. Where you MIGHT run into problems is downloading patches.
Downloading patches problems
The "Patch" files download, but won't update themselvesI keep timing out while downloading "Patches"
Patch process brings up error messages
5/ Can't connect to Realm Server (206.79.254.132 8000 -- if it says the number '205.185.62.90 7001', then you are probably failing to connect to the Routing Server, see above.)
The window "Connecting to Realm Server" comes up, but there is a long wait followed by the message:"NETERR: Could not make conneciton with '206.79.254.132 8000'. The server is probably down, try again in 10 minutes. Script 45012, ip 0x333."
This means that either the connection to exodus.net or the main server itself is down. Again, there is not a lot you can do apart from trying to Ping or Tracert the server and see where the problem is. Unfortunately there isn't much you can do about it.
Note: If you receive the login window or any other message, the server is up. If you cannot log in or have some other problems, please keep looking below.
How to "Ping and Tracert"Look on Town Hall Message Board
"Server Status" button says its up, but I can't connect...
I get the Sierra logo, but the sofware seems to just hang..It says I have the wrong password, bit I know it is right!
There are too many users connected, or a long login queue.
Everything runs really slowly, and I get network errors and PNF's.
