[Mac] Wow unable to connect to news server

[DeathKnight Guy]

Hey everyone

I have been having this problem for quite a long time now, and I have tried everything to resolve it, but no go. I have posted on the wow official forums, and sadly they just said contact your ISP about this problem, but I have no idea what to tell them.
For sake of time I am just going t copy and paste my problem from the official forums.

"Hello, ever since I moved to Lebanon for my summer holiday, I have been having problems with WoW, this whole time every time I would open up the launcher problems would arise. Firstly for some reason it starts to take about a minute to open up, which is usual. Secondly after a few seconds it would say and I quote: "Cannot connect to the news server. Please check the network and try again later."

Now the weird thing is that I can connect to my internet fine, no problem. Also my StarCraft 2 works perfectly well and launcher can connect. As if this wasn't enough also maybe after a minute or so of having the launcher open, a pop up would appear saying:"Launcher could not obtain patching information. Please check your internet configuration"... weird

I have tried a lot of stuff in the past 2 weeks, restarting the router and computer, reseting safari etc... etc..

Just a bit of background information, I live in UAE and wow worked perfectly well there, and usually when I come to Lebanon wow also works, just this time I dont know. Also during writing the post I noticed that when I click the launcher, it doesn't open up the launcher but a pop up repeating could not obtain patching info etc...

Also lastly, when I try to open wow up directly, when I type in my acc info, wow just freezes for like 2 minutes then says disconnected from server.

I am running Mac OS X version 10.6.7, wow version 4.2.0, never had this problem before. Please help me fix, I really want to play

Sorry for the large amounts of writing. Just wanted to be specific

Thanks "

Blizzards says I should contact the ISP, but what do I tell them? Wow cannot connect to the new server? :S Also at times Starcraft II patch updater works and sometimes it doesn't.

Thanks for reading, and hope I can fix this

Edit: Sorry if this is the wrong place to post it, just seems the most relevant place, because it is a computer problem

[skidmarksteve]

try turning off peer to peer perhaps?

[DeathKnight Guy]

try turning off peer to peer perhaps?

What is peer to peer? If it is an application I am pretty sure I dont have it

[skidmarksteve]

in the advanced options in the launcher -> options - > downloader options -> untick second box

[DeathKnight Guy]

Still nothing, I un-ticked it and still says Cannot connect to news server.

[skidmarksteve]

check firewalls? bulit in one and any others you have installed...

and follow
http://portforward.com/cportsnotes/battlenet/wow.htm

Edit: ah osx almost forgot you probably don't have a firewall... hmm

[DeathKnight Guy]

Yeah, and I turned of the inbuilt one

[skidmarksteve]

cant remember if the osx wow has a repair thing like windows or not... if it has i would try that next... might take a while and need to re-download some of the game though..

would be in the wow install folder..

[DeathKnight Guy]

I tried the repair hundreds of time, but it also says it cannot connect to the internet.

[skidmarksteve]

deleted interface Cache and wtf folders? (this will clear all your settings and mods)

check that your wow folder\data\enUS\realmlist.wft contains:

set realmlist us.logon.worldofwarcraft.com
set patchlist enUS.patch.battle.net:1119/patch
set realmlistbn ""
set portal us


Try to ping enUS.patch.battle.net and ak.worldofwarcraft.com.edgesuite.net (They don't have to reply, but need to resolve to an IP address)

if that all matches and the ping resolves i have no idea... night!

[DeathKnight Guy]

I have deleted them, and the realm list is right. I don't understand what do you mean by ping. Hmm what a weird problem

[skidmarksteve]

http://kb.iu.edu/data/ajok.html?cust=455676.96521.30

really going to sleep now, gl ;D

[DeathKnight Guy]

Erm I am on the eu servers, so what do i ping?

---------- Post added 2011-08-29 at 06:54 PM ----------

Ah I guess it should be engb instead enus

---------- Post added 2011-08-29 at 07:04 PM ----------

Alright well I did the ping for both, and did a trace for both IP. and from what I am reading from the guide you gave me, that if no packets are returned, then there is a problem, no packets were returned from the patch one but for "ak.worldofwarcraft.com.edgesuite.net" I had 0% packet loss, so it seems just to the engb.patch.battle.net was a problem

---------- Post added 2011-08-29 at 09:04 PM ----------

Any one else out there who could help me continue on from where I got to? Help really needed

[Tyrianth]

Try starting the game with the actual game app instead of through the launcher. It's not a permanent fix if you want to use the launcher but at least you'll be able to play. That is of course assuming you can connect to the game servers.

edit: opps just reread your OP. that doesnt work.

have you tried clearing your DNS cache. Not sure how helpful this will be, but it can't hurt to try. Open terminal and type in

dscacheutil -flushcache

to clear the dns cache.

and instead of pinging do a traceroute, use the network utility if you don;t know how to do one through the terminal

[DeathKnight Guy]

Yeah I flushed my DNS cache many times. I did a traceroute but I am not sure what to do after I did it

---------- Post added 2011-08-30 at 02:07 AM ----------

Well the traceroute says when connecting the the patch website that request is timed out when it is going past 12+