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EDIT (September 3, 2013)
I haven't made any changes to my computer, but it seems the problem had fixed itself today. Perhaps my IP address looked funny to Three Rings' servers?
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(There’s a TL;DR at the bottom of the post)

NOTE: I know there was someone who seemed to have a similar problem, but their solution didn't work for me. I'm still having difficulties logging in with both Steam and Web Browser versions.

I normally use swords, but I decided to play around with some bombs in the clockworks today and began noticing things that I wasn't sure had been mentioned before:

• When planting a mist bomb right after planting a Dark Retribution, the mist will not appear on my screen but will appear for others. All I see is a ring of white smoke detailing the radius of the blast and nothing more.
• Occasionally when using Dark Briar Barrage, I would see a couple blasts that consist of only a bouncing Snarby and no spikes.
• After planting multiple Dark Retributions, I start having horrible delays that prevent me from seeing what is actually happening in the game.

Regarding the third bullet, while using DR there were occasional times where all players and enemies would float through walls, despite having four bars of connection. Other times, it would look like my character is stuck in a world frozen in time. I see that I can move around and place more bombs/swing my sword, but other players and enemies are stuck in place. I'm able to communicate with my teammates in-game, but regardless of what they say I cannot see the chatbox update at all until quite some time later. Not all of the messages will show up for me either.

About 10 minutes or so pass as I try to figure out what's going on, and I see that I had been disconnected from the server. I instinctively log back on but get stuck at the character selection screen for at least 5 minutes. I appeared online to my guildmates and friends though, but my location is completely nonexistent since I'm not actually in the game yet. Then, I suddenly get disconnected from the servers again. I've tried logging in as my other characters on different accounts as well, but the same problem happens.

I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling Spiral Knights, both the Steam version and the Web browser version, and an error message popped up when I tried logging back in afterward:

Error: Could not create the Java Virtual Machine.
Error: A fatal exception has occurred. The program will exit.

So, I tried uninstalling and reinstalling Java as well as restoring my computer to an earlier point in time, but unfortunately neither of them fixed the problem. I do not have another computer with me to test whether it’s my machine that’s the issue either. Is there anything else I should do?

I’ve also noticed that the Spiral Knights main website and forums take quite a long time for me to load now, and yet most other websites load just fine.

-----TL;DR------
After I used Dark Retribution several times, I lagged off of the servers. Now every time I log into SK, I get stuck at the character screen and disconnect 5 minutes later. Sometimes, I’ll make it to the Ready Room, but black screens stay up a bit longer than they should and things will load incredibly slowly compared to what it was before. Uninstalling and reinstalling Java, Steam SK and normal SK didn’t help. Not sure what else to do, but I would really appreciate the help. :(