I had played Aoe2 DE for many months without any issues. Yesterday I installed the latest update, and on the same day I switched my antivirus from Kaspersky to F-secure.
Now, when the start screen opens, multiplayer is grayed out. When I click “reconnect to multiplayer services”, following warning comes up:
This used to happen to me and I would always spam click “Retry” and it would magically work. Not using Steam but Windows Store instead (which I’ll never purchase anything from ever again).
p.s. - codebase is just a flaming dumpster, big reason why I never even bother with AOE 3 re-release. these “newly created bugs” are all self-created over past couple years. AOE 2 used to be an amazing, lean and clean running game. instant everything.
Bump, same issue on Steam version, however, the only update i had was the initial hotfix (40mb) and not that 512 MB update you posted which fixes the problem
This happened after some time, so I recond F-secure found something it wanted to block with the latest update(s).
I added these exceptions, but it didn’t help. So I tried uninstalling F-secure and reinstalling it again. Then I added these exceptions before doing anything else. Now the game works again. I don’t know why.
My problem never went away completely. What I have learned so far, is that if I disable my firewall completely before starting Aoe2de, the game connects to multiplayer services properly and the problem doesn’t occur. After the game has connected and I’m in the main menu i can enable my firewall again no problem. So it seems there is something that my firewall is blocking at the moment Aoe2de launches. The strange thing is that according to the firewall it is not blocking anything even when it is active.
Is that AoE1:DE, or AoE2:DE? Looks like “2” to me, as I don’t recall AoE1’s menu looking like your screenshot.
You posted in the AoE1:DE forum.
Regardless, I only see AoE2:DE reports from others. This AoE2 Support page may help you
If you still have the issue after the troubleshooting steps, view the note at bottom of that support page about submitting a request to the Support team.
For what it’s worth, one person a long time ago said they disabled firewall as the game launches and then enabled firewall when the Main Menu appears, and that was a workaround for them:
Searching the forum for “0xffffffff” may yield other helpful results for you
I’m guessing you are correct that it’s because you are signed in elsewhere, as I am in the same situation - but since I cant pop home (several hundred miles away) to sign out this is really annoying.
I’m had the same issue and i can not play online, someone know how to fix -it? I already followed the steps on the troubleshoot but it didn’t worked, I even reinstalled the steam app and AoE2 game and isn’t worked also.