WR-0001 Waiting room failure

Trying to launch the epics launcher and I’m getting the “No response was received from the waiting room service” Waiting room failure WR-0001 error. I’ve followed responses that to check my connection, I’ve opened the ports in the firewall, I’ve flushed the cache, rebooted.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Side question… why do I need to run the launcher for software that is locally on my system and I supposedly already have permission to run? While I do have a connection now, there are certainly times and places were I don’t have, or don’t want (can’t trust) the connection. Shouldn’t we be able to run Unreal Engine, or a stand-alone game without being online?