Solution:
The issue is caused by a bad DNS being selected by my network settings. The solution is to manually set the DNS to a different public DNS, in this case Cloudflare's new DNS at 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1
Was able to change the DNS, get SOT working, then disable it, and make it stop working again. Confirmed fix.
Thanks to a random video from LinusTechTips (thanks Google for spying on me and referring me to a relevant youtube video that amazingly was posted just 3 hours ago..)
Link to video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqnvrjgyEMc
I don't ask for help often but sometimes I need some expertise. Any tech gurus out there?
I personally think this is an ISP issue, not a SOT issue, but it manifests itself as me not being able to play SOT without a VPN.
Here's the problem:
Freeze and crash to desktop after I select sloop / galleon / party size (right after "searching crew ledger...") Initial menu screen takes a while too "searching for supplies", etc.
Here's other observations:
Internet "works" just fine, download @ 100mbps, upload @8mbps, ping 7ms from Ookla speed test. Xbox app network diagnostics shows good connectivity as well.
However, some things seem to be loading slower than usual despite the good results above (Youtube not streaming right away, video starting off at lower rez), pages taking a bit longer. That is, until I turn on NordVPN... then things work fine as intended, I don't get the crash in SOT, but I also can't connect to party chat on xbox app (a small issue).
Thing is, this is replicable across two different PC's as well (both Nvidia gpu's) but otherwise different. Resetting router and modem did nothing. Resetting PCs did nothing.
Is this just some sort of bad node that an ISP is using at random times that a VPN somehow is circumventing? Is this a network virus that my antivirus is not catching?
This issue has now come up twice within two days, the first time it resolved on its own after about 2 hours. Using C*x internet btw if that makes any difference.
Looking for any info someone can provide. For example, a ping test for SOT / xbox live similar to blizzard's ping test that could tell me what nodes my connection is running through. If it is an ISP problem, I need to be more specific with them than just, "it's not working," but I have no idea where to go from here.
