Feldon 
Remember in 2014 when SOE missed renewing the main DNS server for all of SOE’s websites including EverQuest2.com? This resulted in thousands of SOE customers becoming unable to reach any of the company’s websites. Now it seems a similar situation is once again striking Daybreak Games, this time due to the continued use of the deprecated “Station.Sony.com” domain.
Despite the company’s transition from Sony Online Entertainment to Daybreak Games two years ago, the game Launchpads and in some cases the game clients themselves (such as EverQuest2.exe) still make extensive reference to station.sony.com or even soe.com. It seems that today, an employee of Sony USA said “What’s this do?” and blew away the DNS entries that were allowing this wrong setting to still work.
The cryptic error message “There was a problem getting the list of files for download. An update may be in progress. Please try again in 20-30 minutes.” is covering up the problem.
There are two workarounds, credit to Brummy for providing us the details…
Workaround #1 — Switch to OpenDNS or GoogleDNS
The easiest solution which might work is to switch your computer’s DNS from your local internet provider (who might not update DNS but every 2-3 days) to OpenDNS or GoogleDNS. These services are free and are strongly trusted in the internet community and there is absolutely no harm in switching your computer to those services. By doing this, your computer will access the internet more quickly and be less vulnerable to temporary DNS glitches at your local provider.
If you want to understand how DNS works, check out this HowStuffWorks article.
Workaround #2 — Add Manifest and Patch DNS entries to your Computer
- Open My Computer.
- Open Windows -> system32 -> drivers -> etc.
- Drag the “hosts” file to your desktop. (It will ask your permission)
- Right-click on the “hosts” file and choose “Edit”.
- Add these two entries on their own lines all by themselves with no spaces or symbols in front:
64.37.169.11 manifest.patch.station.sony.com
69.16.175.42 eq2.patch.station.sony.com - Choose “Save” from the File menu.
- Close the window.
- Drag the “hosts” file back into the “etc” directory.
- Try to run the EQ2 launchpad now.
Will This Problem Recur?
Will this be the last of these issues? Probably not. All of the domain renewal e-mails for Daybreak websites like Everquest2.com are STILL being mailed to mis@station.sony.com. Some day, that e-mail address won’t get redirected to the right address at Daybreak.
Is Daybreak fixing this?
The old workaround of starting straight to the game bypassing the Launcher still works also. This might be easier than changes and sorta waits for DB to fix it.
After doing the above, my EQ2 Launchpad ran without error and downloaded a new EQ2 executable. I guess this is related to the forums bogging down due to requests to soe.com, which I told my browser to ignore that domain.
Thanks for the info!
Wouldn’t be eq2 without a few screwups.
a few, lol.
it is this kind of screw ups that make this game look so pitiful.
also better to switch dns to cryptdns. read more at
dnscrypt.org and http://www.opennicproject.org
You said it.
I just logged in for the first time in a while and there were no issues at all. Maybe it’s fixed now?
Traduction française de l’article ci-dessus disponible sur http://www.guerrier-celeste.fr/48-frontnews/709-comment-resoudre-les-problemes-dns-de-daybreak-games.html
Merci Feldon
Thank you for help, “hosts” workaround did it! )
Can’t be sure yet but workaround 1 seems to have improved my internet connection, which has been playing up recently. *fingers crossed
It did nothing to fix EQ2 though. Workaround 2 worked a treat for EQ2.
I’ve been lucky to have no problems. After patching today, I got to char sel, once…. locked… Came back 15m later, and not getting unrecoverable error and must shutdown box. Are these issues related?
Not good. Glad I don’t pay monthly for EQ2. I would be mad.
Great they “fix” one thing now my game crashes as soon as I pick a toon to play
the host file can be altered easier if you just right-click on it and choose send to desktop (create shortcut). that way if you ever need to alter it again or if the step didn’t work, it is easy to change it.
Except Windows 8 and 10 won’t let you edit there.
and sometimes your antivirus did it over Windows and prevent you to change anything (Avira do that : you must change some rules in it in order to update the file)
If Windows 10 won’t let me edit then how do I make this change?
I am not a computer whiz so any suggestions?
Move the hosts file to your desktop. Then you can edit it.
figured it out finally 🙂 so now I’m smarter than yesterday. Thank you