Been getting the 'unable to establish connection' and 'connection idle for too long' error aswell, after trying all these methods + reinstalling the game twice (on Steam)! Currently I'm trying to download the game on the actual web instead of Steam but I doubt it'll work... Got this happening about 3 - 4 weeks now... And I barely played the game (10 day playtime!!!)

Seriously Cryptic, even though I'm a Silver, I still paid for stuff like ATs and slots in the c-store Should've never spent any money on this if I knew this was gonna happen!

What I question more is why did it happen to me on the night when I was gonna get my third char from level 39 to 40...

G'day all recently been having the same problems with connecting to launcher/updater as u guys in this discussion, it has always worked perfectly, second time downloaded and installing still failing this is pathetic i'm not paying for a game that seems so hard just to be able to connect to. please Crpytic get on this ASAP fantastic game would be nice if its possible to play it lol

I've been encountering this problem as well, for three days as of this morning. I've tried all possible solutions, and I've come to the conclusion that it's Cryptic's error, not mine.
Thankfully, I'm not a subscriber (though I would dearly love to play Drifter's new daily and maybe get my hands on some of those goods), so I'm not losing anything other than game time. It is, however, slightly frustrating to attempt to join my friends online, only to find that it's not possible.

Well, i tried to come back, even was considering going "green" and now this crap again... sorry, my money is going now to FunCom and their The Secret World.

The linked champions online.exe in this thread is not working anymore, and since none from the support bothers to update it... your loss.

And btw. i'm playing now MMOs for over 10 years (started with Neocron), and in all that time, i never had so much problems to even get a connection to the game as it is with CO - that should really give you something to think over.

Yes mate i agree, i been playing MMO 1 especially for a very long time and have played others as well and this is the only game i have come across with such anoyying and frustrating connection issues. awesome game really but it needs to be playable for me to pay for it lol

You must remove the game inside the Steam Client, else it will always be opened with Steam, since Steam
changes some registry settings.

Ok how do i do that i downloaded Champions Online using steam and it launched fine and played it for a while. then these launcher connection issues started to occur the same as other people have described since this thread was started.

Inside Steam you have to rightclick on Champions Online, and then "reomove" or something like that.

After that, when you start CO, Steam shouldn't be startet automatically with it.

Tried finding a way to do that, went through Google and everything and it turns out that you can't remove the games from Steam if downloaded from Steam, only uninstall... Well it was a nice suggestion anyway! Still need to finish my download of CO through the actual web, hopefully it'll work.

Btw, like your K-On! pic :)

Latest version of the launcher. I'll try and remember to update the file.

Good luck!

http://www.mediafire.com/?qrwhdzp55jn83dl