That's why I don't think it's on my end.  Other people have indicated they have been unable to connect to their inbox as well.  I don't even make it to the inbox...it just says "loading" and never gets off of that. 

Has anyone that has experienced an ongoing problem connecting to message chess been able to re-establish a connection?

I have also just finished rebooting the modem and router.  And I still only see "loading" when I go to my Inbox, however (I was able to this before) I can connect to see if there are any message chess games to play...currently there are none.

 Alnark wrote:

I have also just finished rebooting the modem and router.  And I still only see "loading" when I go to my Inbox, however (I was able to this before) I can connect to see if there are any message chess games to play...currently there are none.

So that didn’t make a difference – rebooting modem/route. Reason I recommended it is because it’s one of the more common suggestions that come up trying to resolve any com problems. OK – so you can see “loading” and nothing in the Inbox. If I remember correctly, the very first time I logged in to play a live game, I created the match and someone contacted me shortly and we played live for about 30-40 minutes. Then I decided to play message chess and when I first clicked on it, I did get the “loading” with the concentric circles that lasted about 45 seconds. Since nothing happened, I exited by clicking “B” and tried again. The same thing happened again – I was starting to think about the posts I had read and how now I was being confronted with the same thing. I immediately logged out completely of Chessmaster and returned to the blade. Then I logged back in and when back to message chess. Clicked on create a match and now the loading started again, but this time it created a match. I waited for a few minutes and figured that I would have to stay there waiting since I not knowing any better selected 15 days (thinking about the total number of days to play). This is how this thread started – I didn’t understand the time limit and some of you have helped me understand which I’m grateful.

So I deleted that created game because I didn’t know how long I would have to wait till someone acknowledged the game. I create a 72 hour game and this time the loading lasted for a few seconds and it appeared. Within one minute someone accepted and we have been playing over the last 2 weeks and I’ve logged in everyday without an issue. Then I had another person that accepted a game from me, as I was testing the game to see how something worked out. What I would say is that I tried repeatedly several times and got through, but did have the same issue of “loading” and nothing would happen for a while.

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Still down....did anybody that was having problems find a solution?

*** no.  I havent been able to get into my message chess inbox for about 2 weeks now....

  hey UBI,  its time for a refund....

I am in Colorado as well. I have been playing message chess for about a week now and have not run into any problems that have been dicussed in this thread. I'd be happy to help in any way I can if I find a solution. Oh and another thing, twice in one day I have been accused of cheating on message chess by people who don't understand what they are getting into. (a timed match played over an e-mail system) I am not cheating! I love chess! I am wondering if anyone else has run into this kind of negative feedback during their message chess games? Sorry to get off topic here but it seems that this would be a good place to discuss this.

---

"How about a nice game of chess?"

I also have not experienced any issues with accessing message chess. I've been playing one game over a period of weeks, 18 moves so far without a problem. I played one other game that lasted only one move because my opponent never made his first move. Unfortunately there seems to be several who have been experiencing problems accessing message chess, yet they can access Live without a problem appearing to indicate that there must be a problem with the game.

Online communications is extremely complicated. In my company we sell an online E- cabinet that allows upload and download of a very large files even 80 MB. One of our customers on Friday was getting hung up after uploading a file halfway. Of course he thought it was us and when our techs tested his line he was using a DSL connection and it was probably his ISP that was having the issue due to the huge file size he was uploading. We tested it on our end and there were no issues, unfortunately there was nothing we could do, but I'm sure he felt it was us.

One can see how complex this whole thing is by simply looking at the manual settings if one had to set them one by one. So just because you can communicate with one service doesn't mean it will work with all. One thing for sure in order to access message chess you need to be connected to Live first, hence why Ubisoft will probably point you to Microsoft if you are experiencing problems logging in to the game. Hopefully if you get a good Microsoft level two tech rep, not a level 1 because they will only deal with the basic issues, he might be able to help ensure that your system is configured correctly manually. That can take some time, but it is worth it.

I think it is more difficult it appears to cheat in message chess compared to online, but if one doesn't understand the time limits and thinks the game can be played in a short period of time, they will be disappointed. I had never played message chess before and since I didn't understand what the time limits were about I started this thread hoping someone would shed some light on it.

The person that I've been playing with is currently playing with four other people and has no problem logging in. However he's played other games where his opponent started playing making a few moves and then stopped, allowing him to win by default. His opponents probably did not envision that one of these games can last for weeks - so there is no instant gratification compared to other games that you can play.

 

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It has to be a problem with their server.  I hooked my 360 directly to the cable modem and still couldn't get through.  No firewalls, no wireless, no router...just straight connect to the pipe and nothing.  Of course, all downloads and Live worked just fine.

 Alnark wrote:

It has to be a problem with their server.  I hooked my 360 directly to the cable modem and still couldn't get through.  No firewalls, no wireless, no router...just straight connect to the pipe and nothing.  Of course, all downloads and Live worked just fine.

That was an excellent process of elimination. I wonder though, when we access Chessmaster are we connecting directly with their server or are we first connecting to Live and then to the Ubi servers. There is still the unknown entity-your ISP.

As I mentioned in the previous post that customer that was experiencing disconnects after uploading 60% of his files thought the problem was on our end. Since he is using a DSL connection his ISP is probably disconnecting him because his connect time is too long due to the large file that he is uploading. So in your case, you still have the unknown-what is happening between your cable modem and your ISP as well as from your ISP To Live or the Ubi servers. Just because one connection works does not mean that all connections will work.

On my end my PC connects wirelessly to the router and my Xbox 360 is hardwired via an Ethernet connection to my PC. In order to allow my Xbox to connect to Live I set up an ICS connection on my PC. So in a way my Xbox is sort of two levels deep and I don't have a problem connecting. Since it appears that Ubi doesn't want to cooperate, hopefully Microsoft technical support can shed some light on this although they might point you to your ISP ultimately.

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yigmalsh,

Is your ISP Comcast? Or have you been able to reconnect?

Also having problems with "message chess" recently... within the past two days or so it no longer allows access to my Inbox.  Comcast is my service provider, but I've made no recent changes to my setup and was able to play games just a few days ago without an issue. Everything else on Live works fine... I'm absolutely certain the problem is isolated to this aspect of the game as I've had no problem playing regular matches.

Hopefully they fix it, because when I can actually find a match where the other person consistantly makes a move, I find this to be one of the more enjoyable aspects of the game. If not I'll probably have to make a call to Xbox customer support to complain... and see if I can get my money back for this defective product.

This is exactly what happened to me. However, it's now be 2 months and I'm still without my beloved message chess. I'm Comcast as well.

 BurpSanchez wrote:

Also having problems with "message chess" recently... within the past two days or so it no longer allows access to my Inbox.  Comcast is my service provider, but I've made no recent changes to my setup and was able to play games just a few days ago without an issue. Everything else on Live works fine... I'm absolutely certain the problem is isolated to this aspect of the game as I've had no problem playing regular matches.

Hopefully they fix it, because when I can actually find a match where the other person consistantly makes a move, I find this to be one of the more enjoyable aspects of the game. If not I'll probably have to make a call to Xbox customer support to complain... and see if I can get my money back for this defective product..

 Alnark wrote:

This is exactly what happened to me. However, it's now be 2 months and I'm still without my beloved message chess. I'm Comcast as well.

As I've touched on in previous posts, communications and all the protocols that have to be negociated with are extremely complex. If both of you are experiencing issues connecting and both have Comcast, I would try to work closely with their level 2 technical support person to address this issue. Don't bother with the Level one rep because they will just have you go through the basic stuff like rebooting, is your modem plugged in, etc. A change they make on their end, might not be compatible with Ubi's connection. Maybe they perceive the connection to be associated as some type of spam and have it blocked.

At my company we provide internet connectivity for multiple products. Technically you can go anywhere in the world and access our servers, receive emails, etc. However, if one visits certain European countries or try to send/receive emails from same, our filtering programs will "sniff" it out and block all communications. Reason - there is an incredible amount of spam associated in certain European countries and since we can't scan each email to see what might be and what might not be, we have a global block on a certain groups. Bottomline, some of my customers are not happy. Yet everything else works great.

Another example - at one time AOL blocked all emails that originated from our servers thinking we were spam. It took us weeks working with their tech department to resolve the issue. I've been playing message chess now for a couple of months and my friend has been playing over 6 message chess matches. I spoke to him on Sunday. Never a problem, he's in FL. I'm in NY. Everyone he's played, always connected and still are connecting everyday. So I would not be so quick to blame the game till all the other complex issues are addressed.

I understand - when our customer's can't access email or programs, the first thought in their mind is that it's us. 99% of the time it's not us, it's one of the other parties in the system that they are dealing with, once our packets of info leave our servers and begins its journey to them over the internet. Let's see what you guys find out after contacting MS or Comcast your ISP.

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That's all well and good. My point is simply that I've had Chessmaster since the day it came out, haven't had an issue connecting to message chess until earlier this week, and I have no problem whatsoever accessing any other content on Xbox Live.

Not only will it not allow me to access my Inbox... the games themselves are not playing themselves out with the timer, meaning when I attempt to establish a new game it says that my game quota of nine games is full, all of which are well past the time limit to make a move. If the problem connecting were on my end, I imagine the time limit would have run out and I would have recieved a loss, since this is not the case it seems as if all nine of my opponents must be experiencing the same problem.

Exactly what happened to me, except it happened over a month ago...

 BurpSanchez wrote:

That's all well and good. My point is simply that I've had Chessmaster since the day it came out, haven't had an issue connecting to message chess until earlier this week, and I have no problem whatsoever accessing any other content on Xbox Live.

Not only will it not allow me to access my Inbox... the games themselves are not playing themselves out with the timer, meaning when I attempt to establish a new game it says that my game quota of nine games is full, all of which are well past the time limit to make a move. If the problem connecting were on my end, I imagine the time limit would have run out and I would have recieved a loss, since this is not the case it seems as if all nine of my opponents must be experiencing the same problem.

Listen guys I know how frustrating it must be. If you do a search on Google you will see that many are having issues in either connecting to Xbox Live or being disconnected. It also appears that Comcast does not provide technical support for Xbox Live directly. From their site:

What should I do if I'm having trouble connecting my Xbox 360 to the Internet?

Microsoft has created a wizard to assist in connecting your Xbox 360 to the Internet, which can be found here.

If after using the wizard you are still unable to connect your Xbox 360 to the Internet, you should contact Microsoft directly. Comcast will be unable to assist in troubleshooting Xbox related issues.

Furthermore it appears that Comcast has several Internet connectivity options, but in general it only allows for one device to connect. So if you're using your PC and the Xbox according to their site you need to establish a second line and there is a fee for that. They also have something called Comcast Pro which you can read about at their site.

Here is the Microsoft link to assist in connectivity issues:

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/support/connecttolive/xbox/highspeedisps/comcast.htm#ContactInfo

I'll say this again, even if you are connecting to Xbox Live does not mean that the problem lies with Chessmaster. You're going to have to contact Microsoft technical support to assist with this issue.

You said that, "Not only will it not allow me to access my Inbox... the games themselves are not playing themselves out with the timer, meaning when I attempt to establish a new game it says that my game quota of nine games is full, all of which are well past the time limit to make a move."

That is right, the games are not playing themselves out with the timer since you are not connecting to the Inbox properly, you are not exchanging information with their servers correctly hence why your timer is out of sync with the information that is on the servers.

You said: "If the problem connecting were on my end, I imagine the time limit would have run out and I would have received a loss, since this is not the case it seems as if all nine of my opponents must be experiencing the same problem."

Is very possible that your opponents if they have been able to connect successfully have already won the games by default since you didn't make any further moves. When you do finally connect, I have a feeling you will find that you have lost all games. You should contact a couple of the opponents to see what they see on their end.

But most important you need to contact Microsoft technical support and speak with a Level 2 Rep, otherwise you will continue living with this problem.

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yup comcast.... i try every day or so...i can do everything in this game except connect to my inbox..... sorry to the 2 guys i was playing......

Just got off the phone with a supervisor and my problem has been forwarded to upper management.  We went through it all...delete the game, restart...delete the add-ons (thinking one of them was corrupt)...no luck.  re-download again...no luck.  Perform connectivity test...all clear.  He had me perform a top secret level cleaning of my guess is some type of registry in the system...still no luck.  So now, I have a reference number and should receive a call within 5 days.

Littledwarf333,

Are you on Comcast by chance...starting to wonder if there is a link here...

Does anyone have any new information on this issue? I'm still having trouble believing that the internet provider has anything to do with it... given the extremely isolated nature of the problem. Skier seems pretty confident in himself though. Even if it is the case that the game is having problems communicating over a Comcast setup recently (as opposed to the five months or so following it's release,) it still seems to me that the problem lies with Chessmaster, if every other game that I own functions seamlessly online, why can't Ubi make this one compatible with a Comcast setup?

 BurpSanchez wrote:

Does anyone have any new information on this issue? I'm still having trouble believing that the internet provider has anything to do with it... given the extremely isolated nature of the problem. Skier seems pretty confident in himself though. Even if it is the case that the game is having problems communicating over a Comcast setup recently (as opposed to the five months or so following it's release,) it still seems to me that the problem lies with Chessmaster, if every other game that I own functions seamlessly online, why can't Ubi make this one compatible with a Comcast setup?

I know it appears odd, but just because it was working before, doesn't mean that Comcast hasn't implemented some change in their communication's protocols to cause this "accidently" with this game because of how this game might need to interact with the MS Live & Chessmaster servers. If you notice there is a trend and the problem appears with people that are using Comcast. Maybe MS has to make a tweak on their end to resolve this, maybe Comcast or maybe Chessmaster. However, Ubisoft does not get involved in these issues, so you have no choice in the matter, but to contact MS and seek their technical assistance. Doesn't mean the problem is with your Xbox itself.

Alnark has contacted MS and they are looking into it. If I were you, I'd contact MS also so they see that this is a trend and take a more proactive look. If only one person complains or brings it up, they might not pay as much attention to it.

if every other game that I own functions seamlessly online, why can't Ubi make this one compatible with a Comcast setup?

Good question, but why can't Comcast have their settings so that all games no matter who makes them will work flawlessly. At work we have customer's that ask, "why doesn't your software work 100% perfect with Firefox"? My response is, "we're a Microsoft Shop and design our software to work flawlessly with Microsoft sofware, namely IE 7." We can't and won't support our software on every single browser out there, especially since Firefox doesn't control the browser market. You have Safari from Apple, great browser, but you can use it at your own risk and if you have a problem, then you have to contact Apple for support. The point is though that Ubi probably did design their software to work with specs provided by MS - highly likely. If Comcast made a change that was unplanned by MS, then yes, maybe MS will add a tweak on their end to take into consideration what is specific to Comcast.

The interesting part is that MS promotes Comcast as an ISP in a certain way, which means that Comcast is probalbly an MS Partner. If so, there will be some cooperation between them. At our level, we have no cloat with Comcast. 

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Well, MS is about as customer responsive as Comcast :(

Still no call back.

My Message Chess is giving me problems now as well. First it added two games that ended up as a defeat for me. thing is the game was played against myself. No moves were made, and it says my ELO is now 0. My ELO on the leaderboards has not been affected by this glitch. It wont let me delete the finished games either. My game quota will still let me create 9 games even with the two glitched ones in the menu.

Then this morning I was able to access my inbox and view my current games once. I left message chess, ate breakfast, came back to message chess and it would not let me in. I tried about 10 times to access it and it kept saying Chessmaster live server down, try back later. That is the same message that was showing up when I would try to delete those two games in my inbox.

I do not use Comcast as my ISP. I have an indepentant provider with no limitations blocking games online. My speed is very slow, it will only alow me to play two player games online. We live in a small mountian town and our highspeed is sent via line of sight to receivers on our roofs. All of our neighbors share the internet, so I think my problem with the speed is a bandwith issue. But that has NOT affected my message chess games at all for the three months that I have been playing online.

Something is obviously wrong with Chessmaster live. I hope we can get to the bottom of this problem.

---

"How about a nice game of chess?"

Quick recap:

Message chess doesn't work. 
Contact Ubisoft. 
Canned response.
Contact Comcast. 
CLUELESS.
Contact Microsoft. 
Told I would hear back within 5 days. 
Still waiting.
I think I've burned enough energy on this game.
Moving on.
Good luck.

 Littledwarf333 wrote:

My Message Chess is giving me problems now as well. First it added two games that ended up as a defeat for me. thing is the game was played against myself. No moves were made, and it says my ELO is now 0. My ELO on the leaderboards has not been affected by this glitch. It wont let me delete the finished games either. My game quota will still let me create 9 games even with the two glitched ones in the menu.

Then this morning I was able to access my inbox and view my current games once. I left message chess, ate breakfast, came back to message chess and it would not let me in. I tried about 10 times to access it and it kept saying Chessmaster live server down, try back later. That is the same message that was showing up when I would try to delete those two games in my inbox.

I do not use Comcast as my ISP. I have an indepentant provider with no limitations blocking games online. My speed is very slow, it will only alow me to play two player games online. We live in a small mountian town and our highspeed is sent via line of sight to receivers on our roofs. All of our neighbors share the internet, so I think my problem with the speed is a bandwith issue. But that has NOT affected my message chess games at all for the three months that I have been playing online.

Something is obviously wrong with Chessmaster live. I hope we can get to the bottom of this problem.

You said you lost two games playing against yourself, I assume in message chess. How were you able to do that, I'd like to know? I've been thinking of how to do that and the only way would be to have two Live Gold accounts active under my name and log in with one, start a game, log out, then log in with the other one and accept the game. Is that what you did?

"I tried about 10 times to access it and it kept saying Chessmaster live server down, try back later. That is the same message that was showing up when I would try to delete those two games in my inbox."

That would make sense though, if their server was down, then you would not be able to connect so that info on your end will be sent to their server, so deleting games might not be possible. Some info is transmitted and some is not unless you are connected to them. Makes sense.

When I first got the game, I had some issues with my wireless broadband connectivity, so being that my Xbox is connected to the internet via my PC, I used the PC's dial up connection at 56K to connect to Live and to Chessmaster. Was not able to access any of the on demand downloadable videos because it would time out, but I was able to connect to Chessmaster at that lower speed since the game doesn't require a high speed connection like an online coop game would.

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 Alnark wrote:

Quick recap:

Message chess doesn't work. 
Contact Ubisoft. 
Canned response.
Contact Comcast. 
CLUELESS.
Contact Microsoft. 
Told I would hear back within 5 days. 
Still waiting.
I think I've burned enough energy on this game.
Moving on.
Good luck.

Hi Alnark,

That's a pity. Maybe it's taking them longer to determine the problem because of how they have to escalate that issue. If it was me and several days passed after the 5 business days, I would be on the phone with them again to see what progress they are making. Shows them my level of interest and insures them I haven't forgotten about it. Maybe the person that is working on that issue had a personal emergency to deal with and your issue is sitting there unresolved. If you bring that to their attention, someone else will pick up the ball and run with it. You finally took the initiative to get the problem properly addressed, shouldn't give up now.

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Hello Skier 7667

You asked me this.

"You said you lost two games playing against yourself, I assume in message chess. How were you able to do that, I'd like to know? I've been thinking of how to do that and the only way would be to have two Live Gold accounts active under my name and log in with one, start a game, log out, then log in with the other one and accept the game. Is that what you did?"

 

 

Both of the games that have showed up in my inbox were not started by me. If they were I don't know how I did it. The Message chess inbox never told me that a game was even in session until it was a defeat. My gamertag shows up under both player boxes and white player is on the left. The ELO reads 0 for both players.  At least it's not affecting my actual ELO. And it will still let me have nine games going at once. (so 11 games show up in my inbox). I was never able to make a move with either game.

My Message Chess is letting me into my inbox again. I have four games going now. When those are completed I will delete and re-download Chessmaster. Hopefully that will rid me of this glitch.

Thaks for everyones help and advice.

---

"How about a nice game of chess?"

So now it's not letting me in to my Message Chess inbox AGAIN! I lost all the games that I had open due to expired time. My rating droped alot. I am so mad at this game right now! It will let me play a live game with somone else, so its not a connection issue. I took my Gamer profile to friends house to use his faster highspeed. Still no luck accessing my inbox from there. I wish these problems we are all having could be adressed. Chess is a fantastic game and I love to play it.

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"How about a nice game of chess?"

 Littledwarf333 wrote:

So now it's not letting me in to my Message Chess inbox AGAIN! I lost all the games that I had open due to expired time. My rating dropped alot. I am so mad at this game right now! It will let me play a live game with someone else, so its not a connection issue. I took my Gamer profile to friends house to use his faster highspeed. Still no luck accessing my inbox from there. I wish these problems we are all having could be addressed. Chess is a fantastic game and I love to play it.

This is interesting...you took your profile to a friends house and it still wouldn't let you login?  Hmm...maybe it really is Ubi servers somehow and nothing to do with internet connections.  Although I've given up pushing this problem onward and upward, maybe someone with a little more time can champion the cause!  :o)

 Littledwarf333 wrote:

So now it's not letting me in to my Message Chess inbox AGAIN! I lost all the games that I had open due to expired time. My rating dropped alot. I am so mad at this game right now! It will let me play a live game with someone else, so its not a connection issue. I took my Gamer profile to friends house to use his faster highspeed. Still no luck accessing my inbox from there. I wish these problems we are all having could be addressed. Chess is a fantastic game and I love to play it.

This is interesting...you took your profile to a friends house and it still wouldn't let you login?  Hmm...maybe it really is Ubi servers somehow and nothing to do with internet connections.  Although I've given up pushing this problem onward and upward, maybe someone with a little more time can champion the cause!  :o)