+1 !
I have been having this same issue. I got back recently from a hiatus away from P99. Before that, I was playing on a Mac (using the Wineskin method) without any of the OP's issues. Now that I'm back, I've been experiencing the exact issues OP describes but it's the same installation I used before. For me the zoning crash happens about 25% - 50% of the time. When I zone, if I see the loading graphic and the progress bar I know that I will probably make it but sometimes the progress bar disappears (as if it's the final step in the zoning process) and then just hangs indefinitely. Most times I zone and never see a loading screen -- just the frozen picture as I hit the zone line. I have to force kill EQ, re-open it, and wait until the server times me out.
I can't tell you what a soul-crushingly bad issue this is to live with. I lose groups because of it. I sometimes haven't been able to tip porters (I now always tip in advance) or get a SoW after port. I lose buffs that I could have gotten after getting a rez. When I move with a large group through several zones, everyone ends up waiting on me wondering WTF happened. I was even being helped by Greengrocer earlier this morning with some crafting services and he got stuck waiting on me as I crashed zoning, then crashed zoning back in. I lose track of my /tell history and can't follow up with important conversations. The list really goes on and on. Zoning for any reason scares me and I dread doing it.
I haven't had the server-list-blank issue but I do get the empty character list and spell file out-of-date issue. At first I thought I was accidentally connecting to the wrong server but it's happened too many times when I'm sure I'm connecting to the right one for it to be a server selection issue.
Another issue I should mention is that my lag after coming back is extreme. Mobs and PCs ghost all over the place but my lag indicator shows 100% quality. I have little lag spikes very often, maybe every 5-20 seconds. Sometimes are worse than others. If it's a packet loss issue I wonder why the F11 network quality meter wouldn't report it?
My hypothesis is that the two issues are related somehow but I don't have much to back that up.
I've encountered a few other people who know folks having the same issue. This is clearly not something only I am getting and I don't think even the fact I play on a Macbook is to blame, especially considering it worked flawlessly just last year.
If there is anything I can do to help the devs diagnose this issue, I'd love to try. I am also a software engineer so maybe I could send a pcap file of my network traffic, record the time/date it happens so the devs can check for any errors in the server logs, etc. I'd love to get this issue fixed.
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