Just wanted to throw this in. You do not have to pay the 5 bucks if your on aol, it's only an option that they offer. Also I would ask around and see if they got it fixed yet, there was some kind of a problem between the people at aol and the people at eqoa. Basically the two systems just don't like each other, and the people at both camps go back and forth blaming each other. The problem is called error 6. I actually cancelled my eqoa for a couple of months then broke down and got a second ISP (internet service provider) because I cant get rid of aol. One thing I always found amusing was, you but the game and use aol to play it. The box for eqoa says right on it AOL compatible, not sure about frontiers, I never thought to look on it. I think what it came down to was eqoa was trying a little to fix it, and basically aol doesn't give a crap about it because their main concern isn't for gaming it's surfing the net and perverts and losers in the chat rooms, LOL. I was told by someone that they had it working with aol now though, not sure. One last thing, the error 6 problem was being experienced by a few people who were not on aol, a few on earthling i remember, not sure of others. I signed up for earthling though and have never had a problem with error 6, have had a few other minor problems, freeze up, ... but were always fixed with a reboot. GL