Act 2 Town Problem

*If you don't want to read all of this please scroll down to the recap*

I got a character in HC league in her 60's. Lately whenever I enter town the game freezes. I can walk around town, there's music in the background the npc's do their animations but I cant talk to them, global chat disappears, I can't use the WP, the little icon of grace period in the top left of the screen goes down to 1 sec and stays that way, and if I press F1 the latency is usually zero and shows a flat line or 1670 and shows a flat line.
I've tried waiting it out, figured it may be lag so it'll go away but it never does. I have to disconnect and when I do disconnect upon logging back It's still the same.

I discovered that it happens like 99% of the time in town. Now I've tried using the WP to go to different locations but obviously the WP is unusable.
I'm playing on the European server, I discovered when I switch to the American or Singapore servers the game becomes just fine and dandy (except for the horrible horrible lag I get from those servers) and if I then switch back to European server the problem continues. Now I've asked in global chat if the EU server is down or experiencing problems but I've been told several times that the server is fine.

The only way I found to solve it is to log in the game from the American server, teleport to Act 1 town disconnect and switch back to Europe, from there I can teleport to the location of my quests in Act 2, play the game until I finish the quest or get my inventory full and then when I need to portal back to town it portals me to Act 2 town and I get the frozen game again...

From my observations I think the problem might be linked to the amount of people sitting in town. Because I play HC and my character is level 60 it means that I'm in merciless difficulty Act 2, where most of the player characters are. and since alot of players AFK in town and its the last difficulty of the game they all funnel to the same difficulty and same Act 2 town.

That problem also occurred a few times when I was in Act 1 town and also alot of other players where standing there.

In the recent Open weekend one of my characters that were participating in the HC one week race died, and when I've hit the ressurect button I was in default league in Act 1 town surrounded by 5,000 players and of course the game froze. Now since most of the new players in that weekend created their characters in default league I haven't experienced horrible lag while playing in HC but upon death and ressurecting in default league the freezing in town continued.


I don't know what to do anymore.


*To those of you who can't be bothered to read my problem here's a recap:*

- when entering Act 2 town (merciless diff) the game freezes. I can walk around town but I cant talk to the vendors, use WP's or see global chat, the little grace period ticker in the top left goes down to 1 and stays that way. If I hit F1 the latency bar shows a flat line.
- As written above it happens upon entering town and it doesn't matter if I come back to town from an instance via WP or portal, or when I spawn in town when I log in PoE after picking a character to play.
- I play on the European server. My latency is usually 110 ms, 216 ms on the American server and 440 ms on the Singapore server.
- I can "work around" the town freezing problem by disconnecting from the game and re-login from the American server, then WP to Act 1 town disconnect again and switch back to Europe server, from there I can do my quests in the Act 2 zones but avoid using portals because they'll take me to Act 2 town and the game will freeze again.


Thanks in advance...

Thanks for the reply Thomas, just encountered the problem again, this time my character died in the one week HC resists race, when I clicked ressurect I ended in default league with freezing town thing. Here's the log from the WinMTR:

|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| WinMTR statistics |
| Host - % | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last |
|------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------|
| 192.168.0.1 - 0 | 116 | 116 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| lo10.cab1.hfa.nv.net.il - 0 | 116 | 116 | 10 | 14 | 21 | 11 |
| core1-cab1-hfa.hfa.nv.net.il - 0 | 116 | 116 | 10 | 13 | 21 | 11 |
| gw2-te2-0-core1.hfa.nv.net.il - 0 | 116 | 116 | 10 | 14 | 22 | 12 |
| ten0-4-0-0.gw2.lnd.nv.net.il - 0 | 116 | 116 | 83 | 86 | 100 | 84 |
| 10.70.10.1 - 0 | 116 | 116 | 82 | 87 | 98 | 82 |
| bbr01.lon01.networklayer.com - 1 | 113 | 112 | 89 | 96 | 146 | 102 |
| ae7.bbr02.tg01.lon01.networklayer.com - 0 | 116 | 116 | 94 | 102 | 150 | 96 |
| ae0.bbr02.eq01.ams02.networklayer.com - 0 | 116 | 116 | 91 | 100 | 179 | 94 |
| ae6.dar02.sr01.ams01.networklayer.com - 0 | 116 | 116 | 99 | 106 | 147 | 99 |
| po2.fcr01.sr01.ams01.networklayer.com - 0 | 116 | 116 | 94 | 103 | 232 | 95 |
|159.253.137.132-static.reverse.softlayer.com - 0 | 116 | 116 | 91 | 98 | 112 | 92 |
|________________________________________________|______|______|______|______|______|______|
WinMTR v0.92 GPL V2 by Appnor MSP - Fully Managed Hosting & Cloud Provider

I'ts been 2 months now since I started the thread, any follow up?

A few more things I've discovered:

1. The problem isn't restricted only to Act 2 as this thread title suggests. It also happens in Act 1.

2. I took some screen shots 30 mins ago of it (November 3rd 2012, 21:02) to show the bug visually.

I've posted 2 pictures, in 1 picture you can see the screen with the F1 latency bars on and in the other picture the F1 bars are off so you can see clearer.

In the screen shots you can see:
- I'ts in Act 1 town.
- The latency is a flat line.
- There are no NPC's (Nessa, Bestel, Tarkleigh) in town (there are alot of other players visible just standing there).
- The Npc's are also not appearing on the mini map (usually they should be marked as little white x's in their respective locations).
- There is a hole in the ground where the WayPoint should be.

im having the same issue....log in act2, game takes ages to get off the loading screen then once im in town, i cant see any vendors, any side portals or any waypoints.
I am completely stuck in there and the only thing i can do is switch to american servers and then switch to act1.
thanks for the attenction and hoping for a fix soon as i have the game since 2 days and i reeeeally wanna test it with my friends.
Regardless,
Atrox from D.p.i.

updating post.
I now cant connect to EU servers anymore, only forcing shut-down of Path of exile.exe, then switching to US server seems to be the only fix for this.
keeping u updated on this.
thanks.

after some days of good playing and testing connections and such,I think my previous problem is solved and i thank the developers for theyre awesome attenction and dedications to this.
Will try to post more major errors or bugs if i ever see them, as soon as i can.
So far i havnt seen any that disturbed me to the point of opening a thread :D
Sorry for the bad English
high five
Atrox

I am also having this problem, is there any news on how to fix this issue?