This happens to me very often as well.
Where do I experience problems:
So far I've had these problems on different ISPs, so I conclude it's not me behind the school server to be the problem.
1. Firefox 3.6.3 installable version
2. Firefox 3.6.3 portable
3. Firefox 3.0.5 portable + installable
4. All of the above with around 10+ add-ons AND without
5. IE 7,8 (hate that browser)
What do I experience:
1. Often the mainframe (elementsthegame) will NOT load.
2. Connections page (/connections.html) will NOT load.
3. However, In Development (development.html)
I have to hit refresh (from 5 to 105 times in a row) in order for the mainframe to load sometimes. I'm using a laptop with XP SP3 but I doubt this is the problem.
Often Top 50 will freeze at "looking for an opponent"
I have noticed that the statusbar of Mozilla goes like this
"Looking up elementsthegame.com" -> "Connecting to elementsthegame.com" -> "Connected to elementsthegame.com" -> "Waiting for elementsthegame.com" ->"Transferring data from elementsthegame.com"
When Top50 freezes it goes a crazy loop of "Connecting to elementsthegame.com" -> "Connected to elementsthegame.com" -> "Waiting for elementsthegame.com" and then just freezes on "Waiting for elementsthegame.com"
How I solve it.
I open connections in a separate tab (9/10 cases shows under 700ms ping) then go back to the game and go several times the loop "Top50 - directly hit menu" and usually it fixes the problem (9/10 cases)