Runes of Magic US / AU

I've had this probably several times in the last few years and have never gotten a real answer about it.

Tonight, I went to log into the game, and got the above "connection lost" error. It's been working just fine for the last week, up until tonight. I have changed nothing in the firewall settings. Upon checking the firewall settings, RoM is in there as an allowed program. So I decided to uninstall and re-install the game. Still not working.

I was thinking that possibly something might be wrong with the connection here, but internet is running just fine. And in fact, my friend who also plays RoM, sitting across the table from me, on the very same network connection, has no problem logging in. I tried logging in on his computer with my account, and it worked just fine. I've tried logging in probably 30 times over the last few hours.

Suggestions?

If the servers were down for maintenance, then how was I able to login on my friend's computer? And how was he able to continue playing his toon?

I still can't get logged in 12 hours later. There has to be some kind of bug in a file somewhere. I've had this happen several times since I started playing the game a few years back, and each time I've posted about it, I"ve never gotten an answer that makes sense. I've done searches on Google about it, and it seems many others have had this problem, and the usual answer is about the server being down for maintenance. Those people likely had no access to another computer on the same network that also had the game installed on it, so they had no way to check and see if the servers truly were down for maintenance, and just accepted that answer. But I DO have a way to check if they are down by logging into my friend's computer just a few feet away. And they were NOT down.

And it's not my firewall. ROM was in the list, and I even added the "client" and "client update" files just to make certain. But why would I even have to do that if it was working just fine the way it was the night before?

And it's not my connection, because I was able to download a 1GB service pack file for Windows in the normal amount of time.

Last night, I tried renewing my IP, and when I started the game, it actually got past the first login screen and to the "server select" menu. But when I selected the server and clicked "confirm", it just sat there for a few seconds then I got the "connection lost" message again.

Both of us are on wireless, but his game works and mine doesn't. It's not a connection issue because, as I said above, I can download huge files in a short time and get on the net just fine.

I already tried copying his RoM program folder to a hard drive then copying it to my computer. No change. I keep a backup of the RoM program files folder so that in case Windows takes a dump and I have to reinstall Windows and all my other programs, I don't have to re-download all the updates all over again. That backup file was current.

I posted in a thread similar to that about a year or so ago, and there indeed was a problem on my route to the game servers. But that's not what's going on here. If that were the problem, then my friend's computer would not be able to get through either, since we are on the same network right here in the same house. The routes to the game server would be identical, so if I couldn't log in, then he wouldn't be able to either.

I am uninstalling the game so I can reinstall it again. I have deleted the hidden game settings folder in My Documents just to make sure. After I get it reinstalled, I'll update here. It's probably going to be a while before I can update this, because this time I'm going to just let the game download the updates instead of restoring the backed up program files folder.

This is annoying as hell because I just bought a bunch of dias. And not only that, but the XP/TP event is going on right now.