My friends and I are having the same issue with the timeout trying to join the game. There are 4 of us, all Xbox Series X and were in Arx before the big December patch, now still in Arx no one can join the game, it always times out. We've tried every trick people have shared and they always still get the timeout when trying to join. We've put in way too much time to start over, but some of them haven't finished the game before and would like to see the ending. Hoping Larian fixes this
