BF1- Failed to connect to EA online ( PC )
My BF1 was not connecting to EA servers, in my case I discovered the problem and it was not because of network connectivity problems, it was due to authentication problems
Here is my full story:
1 - When the game come out I bought it and install it using a origin account linked to my email ( eg : [edit: email address removed])
2 - Played the game without any problems, the multplayer ALLWAYS connected to EA servers and I played it for 6 moths.
3 - On the last week of March 2017 I request EA support team to delete my EA Account. As expected all my BF1 data was deleted with the account.
4 - The next week I created a new account on Origin for the same email ( eg: [edit: email address removed] ) picked up my BF1 game code and tried to redeem it in Origin. I got an error message saying the game code was already taken.
4.1 - Called to EA support and after interaction with 3 different support guys, they granted me the BF1 game on my Origin account.
4.2 - I Could not redeem the BF1 code because EA, even after I requested the account deletion explained on 3, did not delete the [edit: email address removed] account from there database and so the game code I bought remained associated with a deleted account.
5- Upon donwload the BF1 game EA support gave me on 4.1, I entered the BF1 and got the error message "Failed to connect to EA online" on the main screen.
5.1 - Contacted EA support again, they ask me to do all the network troubleshooting procedures that I did. After some superficial analysis from there "specialist" team they said I was having to many packet loss on my connection to EA servers, which as true, but was not the source of my problem. I was told by EA "specialist" to contact my broadband provider to solve the packet loss problem.
So at this point I could not play multiplayer and was really upset with the way EA looked at this problem, and I started doing my own investigation.
I used the wireshark software to trace the request to ea servers, while I clicked the " Go Online " button on bf1 that you have onthe screen when BF1 cannot connet to ea servers.
I saw the BF1 requested a connection to accounts.ea.com but the connection was sort lived and the server always returned a TCP packed called FIN_WAIT1. This means the EA server was telling the BF1 client to disconnect. This could be an authentication problem. But now I had evidence that I could connect the EA servers.
6- I contacted EA again with this evidence of authorization problems in my BF1 account and I got to know that when you delete an EA account, lets say for email [edit: email address removed] the database record is not deleted and when you create a new ea account for the same email another record in the database is created with a different ID.
7- Given this I requested EA support a transfer of BF1 game to another origin account I had to see if I was right about the authentication problem. The EA support guy did the transfer and as soon as the game start it logged in the EA server just fine.
Conclusion:
1. My email ( eg: [edit: email address removed] ) has 2 records with different IDs on the EA accounts database, one in which the account is in STATE=DELETED ( the older record, created on step 1 ), because I requested an account deletion and other record ( the most recent one, created on step 4 ), with STATE=ACTIVE. Those you understand databases will agree that when the autentication/authorization server requests the database about a given account using the email, it is very possible, that the older row is the first to come( because of the way the IDs are created ). In my case the older record states my account is DELETED, because is the last state EA updated my old account. It is natural that a DELETED account cannot log in the EA server. This is the source of all my problems. So, my guess is that the second row is never analysed from the database and so the authentication/authorization server cannot know that the last state for the [edit: email address removed] is ACTIVE.
This is a BUG. Because when I created the ea account again for the [edit: email address removed] (step 4), EA software should have updated the existing record that was in state DELETED to ACTIVE and so I could see all my games again, and the authentication/authorization server on the multiplayer side would see only one record with a proper state and information.
Solution:
1. If you have the same problem, just ask BF1 transfer to a new origin account to EA support. All other solution seems not to work.