Dread Lörd Kaolian wrote:
We haven't had any other reports of problems with the CSS file, and everything is loading correctly on my end and from a few other test locations I tried out, so I'm thinking the problem isn't with the servers. There could be a couple of other things going on. It could be a problem with your ISP, it could be a problem with a router somewhere between our servers and yourself, or it could be a cache issue. You might want to check how large your browser cache is set to. if it is set to something very small, you may want to make it larger. You might also want to try running disk defragmenter on the drive that contains your cache file location, as fragmented cache files can sometimes cause that effect.
You also might try viewing one of the other site skins to see if the issue is confined to a specific skin. For example try everquest.allakhazam.com instead of ffxiv.zam.com, etc.
If none of that works, let me know and we can check a few more things.
Alright, I ran some more in-depth tests on my side and eliminated some possibilities. I was able (admittedly with some difficulty) to reproduce the problem on Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Chrome. The size of the Cache seems to have little to no baring on when the problem occurs. Increasing the size of the cache to 512MB still eventually produced the problem. Clearing my Cache, on the other hand, seems to increase the chances of encountering the problem. On several separate occasions, I had the the problem occur the first time I visited the site with a clean Cache (though this is still within the bounds of statistical normality).
In addition, I tested it on ZAM Everquest, the problem still occurred (eventually).
It bares mentioning that the problem only occurs once in 30-50 refreshes, I was off on my original estimate (apparently I refresh a lot more often than I thought I did).
Given that the problem doesn't appear to be pandemic, I'm more than willing to live with it and say that it is probably a problem with my ISP. I posted these results mostly for closure and so you would have the information available if you wanted to look into it more.