Forum

Have you checked whether it's the issue in the FAQ?
https://aao25.com/support/#faq
I.e sometimes Windows just set the sound for AA super low for whatever reason.

My account was Hera or niftyaaronkc and for some odd reason it isnt in the database anymore?

We do not have access to the original / official AA database - that belongs to the US Army. That's why your accont doesn't exist in our database.

Sounds to me like the issue might be that you're running the server on the same machine you're trying to log into it from. I.e a NAT loopback issue.
There's a number of resources on this topic, e.g:
https://aao25.com/wiki/index.php?title=FAQ#I_am_trying_to_run_a_server_and_I_have_opened_the_ports_on_my_router_but_it_still_says_the_ports_are_closed.3F
https://aao25.com/wiki/index.php?title=Create_A_Server#NAT_loopback_2
https://aao25.com/forum/general-chat-90/how-to-enable-nat-loopback-on-wnr2000v2-(n300-router)/

I was able to login to my account on 25Assist.
Username: hvyft
Player Name: [HoM!CiDE]

Do I just have a separate "forum" username now, and use my old AA account for gameplay? Forgive me for being out of the loop.

The in game account and forum account are indeed separate.

Glad you remembered your login! Looks like you last logged in some times 2019 (4 times), before that in late 2016 to early 2017 (a dozen or so times). So you've been back every now and again

I've seen quite some posts about the "Out of bounds exception" regarding the Server Manager.
Most of the times it seems the problem is that people haven't pressed the "start new server" button.

As I'm sure you can tell, that website no longer exists. And neither does what it became later (battletracker.com).

With that said, the account you're referring to exists in our database:
Account / login Name   Epic!
Battletracker ID   146333
Player Name   [oR.epic]
Honor:   105

So I would suggest you log into it. If you're not sure what the password is, then have it reset. The email is a @yahoo.com one (PM me if you don't know which one).

Welcome back!

I do understand your stance. And it is indeed frustrating that due to the limited size of the community, there are not too many servers available and often even fewer server owners. And because of that, a user's ability to play the game can (effectively) be down to the whims of a few individuals.

However, what we need to understand is that it's (generally) their server. They can regulate it how they want (within certain reasonable constaints, of course). We (the 25Assist team) do encourage keeping servers open and not banning people due to personal grudges and other subjective reasons. However, we're unlikely to intefere in these situations. We simply don't have the standing to do so.

I suppose the way to better manage this would be what the US Army did. To centralise the server ecosystem and only allow certain servers in our server lists (however one would curate them). However, we (25Assist / aao25.com) are in no legal position to be doing this. This game still belongs to the US Army. We help make the game playable, but don't try to levy undue influence on it (for the most part at least - and especially lately).

Again, I'm sorry you've been frustrated by the situation you've come back to. I wish the community saw the value of having a diverse (read: large) set of players even if some of them - compared to the ones in charge of the servers - are more skilled than the ones, or have different politcal views, or sexual orientation, or wear their wedding ring on the wrong finger, or have something else arbitrarily different about them. But that's saddly not the world we live in.