Lord of the Rings Online Forum

I was having no problems up until today's patch. The patch seems to have downloaded fine. And the game appears to start loading up, but then fails before getting to the character login window.

Anyone else having this problem?

I was unable to patch without using the "patclient2.dll" technique.

Although, I failed with the more typical -- not current patch level -- message.

After re-patching using the patchclient2.dll setup, I was able to login with no problem.
(Today's "hotfix" took about 15 minutes to patch on a 3 meg DSL line.)

I would try re-patching using the patchclient2.dll technique.

I read that thread, but I have no folder called "Crossover" under Library/Application Support. I can't seem to locate the patchclient.d11 file that everyone is referring to. I am using a MacBook Pro. OS 10.6. Where would this file be? Or do I open it up from within the Crossover application somehow??

OK, I followed the patchclient2.d11 instructions -- but when i do that it tells me the patch is already finished, and it still won't load the game. Is this because I tried to patch the wrong way first? And now I am stuck with a faulty patch in my system? Or is there something else going on?

Paul Burrows wrote:

OK, I followed the patchclient2.d11 instructions -- but when i do
that it tells me the patch is already finished, and it still won't
load the game. Is this because I tried to patch the wrong way
first? And now I am stuck with a faulty patch in my system? Or is
there something else going on?

Tell us exactly what you have done, sometimes it helps (sometimes it doesn't though :))

OK, it might help to know that I was running lotro fine on my macbook pro up until last night (the 15th) -- i.e., after the initial Enedwaith release patch. Thursday evening (September 16) I went to try running the game, and realized a new patch was out, because it wouldn't let me into the game. So the first thing I tried was just opening up Pylotro, opening Tools/Patch/Start. This began what I thought was a normal patch, and it seemed to work fine. Then I tried running the game after it finished, and it opened the initial Lord of the Rings image page, said the connection was successful, and then when it went to retrieve account / character info, it failed, with a message like "Error -- Cannot Patch", and a "Quit" button to exit.

So, after that, I went back to look at the forum posts on f2p patching difficulties, thinking I might have missed something. I realized that I didn't try patching the way I first learned to do it: so thought that might have been the reason. I went back, opened Pylotro, then did Settings Wizard/Find Game/etc., in order to try patching that way. This time, when I ran Patch/Start it didn't run anything, it just said "Finished" almost immediately.

So I then went to try copying the patchclient.d11 file. I opened up Crossover Games (9.1), opened up "Manage Bottles," then clicked "Advanced," then clicked "Open: C Drive in Finder" button. That's where I found the patchclient.d11 file under Turbine/Lord of the RIngs Online. I initially just duplicated that, dragged it onto my desktop, renamed it, then put it back in the Turbine directory (one up from the Lord of the Rings Online directory). Then I tried repatching by going Pylotro/Tools/Options/ticking "Advanced Options," patchclient2.d11. Then running Tools/Patch/Start. Again, when I ran the patch, it said "Finished" almost immediately, so it appears not to be trying to download anything new. Still no success.

Then I tried the same patchclient duplication method using the patchclient.d11 file located under the Turbine/Lord of the Rings Online/Backup folder -- thinking that was an earlier "clean" copy. Still an immediate "Finished" notice upon hitting Patch/Start. And still no success loading the game (after the initial window appears and connection is made, it crashes when trying to load the characters, with the same error message as before).

What did I do wrong??

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Cheers,
Paul

Sounds like the version of patchclient.dll in the backup directory is also a bad one, go to this page and grab the patchclient2.dll from there, stick it in the Lord of the Rings directory (the one with lotroclient.exe in it) and try using that one.

Thanks, that seems to have done the trick! I am not sure why it worked, or why the old .d11 file was bad, but thanks. I hope these kinds of work-arounds aren't required for every patch.

Paul

Alan Jackson wrote:

Sounds like the version of patchclient.dll in the backup directory
is also a bad one, go to
this
page and grab the patchclient2.dll from there, stick it in the Lord
of the Rings directory (the one with lotroclient.exe in it) and try
using that one.

I did that, it didn't work for me. I still get the black screen with "Error, cannot patch" and [Quit] on it after it makes it past the login server.

Derek Ho wrote:

I did that, it didn't work for me. I still get the black screen
with "Error, cannot patch" and [Quit] on it after it makes it past
the login server.

What have you done so far?

Derek Ho wrote:

I did that, it didn't work for me. I still get the black screen
with "Error, cannot patch" and [Quit] on it after it makes it past
the login server.

The error message implies that you still need to do a valid patching.

Once past the login server, the Turbine client is actually running and verifying its own status against the game servers.

One thing to remember... each time you patch, you need to go back to the options page and tick the "advanced options," check the Patch Client DLL value and save it again... then patch.

You can re-run the patch operation multiple times to verify current patch status, and some times you must.
When it is "Patching" successfully, PyLotRO will ALWAYS display "Connecting to patch.lotro.com:80" and "Checking files..." multiple times before it displays " Finished ".

Any time PyLotRO simply displays " Finished " and nothing else, the patch process has not completed successfully.

Sorry, I did a complete patch through Pylotro -- several times. I first copied the patchclient.dll out of backup then copied the patchclient2.dll from your website and used the advanced options to specify that patch client and patched again. I had also installed the DirectX DLLs in the "Turbine\The Lord of the Rings Online" directory. What I must NOT have done is what you just outlined -- go back to the options page and tick the advanced options again.

This very last time trying to execute the clientpatch2.dll, it connected twice with 0 bytes to download then connected a third time and started downloading the 77 clientcell##.dat-##### files that I remember from the Windows client patching. It was this second stage of patching -- getting the client_cell files -- that I needed because now it gets past the login server and lets me not only get to the character display screen but actually log into the world. I guess I didn't have this issue with the Sep 8 patch (initial F2P for subscribers) because I was traveling and using my Windows laptop so I just used a USB drive to copy the patched files over to my Mac mini.

I'm guessing this second stage of patching is where the patchclient.dll comes into play. I'm not really sure why Turbine does this patching in two different stages (sometimes three if the launcher itself needs patching) but now I know ...

William H. Magill wrote:

One thing to remember... each time you patch, you need to go back to
the options page and tick the "advanced options," check the Patch
Client DLL value and save it again... then patch.

It should save the name you enter, it certainly does for me (both stand-alone and native Linux version). Basically once you click save on the options window it saves the base details which include the name for patchclient.

Derek Ho wrote:

I'm guessing this second stage of patching is where the
patchclient.dll comes into play. I'm not really sure why Turbine
does this patching in two different stages (sometimes three if the
launcher itself needs patching) but now I know ...

Yes.

On a PC, the patch-process "restarts" the loader after patching the file "patchclient.dll" -- this is where the problem occurs.

Alan Jackson wrote:

William H. Magill wrote:

One thing to remember... each time you patch, you need
to go back to the options page and tick the "advanced options,"
check the Patch Client DLL value and save it again... then
patch.

It should save the name you enter, it certainly does for me (both
stand-alone and native Linux version). Basically once you click save
on the options window it saves the base details which include the
name for patchclient.

Yes, it does. However, as I "reworded" things in the tip I just posted... "trust but verify!"

This seems to be something which folks manage to "think they did." If they had previously saved the patchlient2.dll value it will appear, but that is only if they successfully clicked the "save" button. Similarly, should they, for some reason, delete or corrupt the "LotROLinux.config" file, it will be gone.

... too many years spent explaining "the reason the monitor was black is because it wasn't turned on" to users. :)

Alan Jackson wrote:

William H. Magill wrote:

One thing to remember... each time you patch, you need
to go back to the options page and tick the "advanced options,"
check the Patch Client DLL value and save it again... then
patch.

It should save the name you enter, it certainly does for me (both
stand-alone and native Linux version). Basically once you click save
on the options window it saves the base details which include the
name for patchclient.

It saved the name for me. What it didn't seem to do was save the selection of advanced options. If the advanced options are only to be used to change the name of the patch client then I'm not sure what went wrong but it's working now.

Derek Ho wrote:

It saved the name for me. What it didn't seem to do was save the
selection of advanced options. If the advanced options are only to
be used to change the name of the patch client then I'm not sure
what went wrong but it's working now.

It never did save the fact that you'd ticked that, I did it that way because the end user would have to deliberately have to re-tick it to change those settings so accidental changes were eliminated.

Edit: The idea was that you shouldn't need to change those two values anyway but in the past for DDO you did need to alter the patchclient and at the moment for LotRO you either need to do the same or use one of the other workarounds.