[Data Center USA] Ping increased. Report your changes here.

I'm playing on balmung from EU....i was hoping the jump would be for like 50-60ping...so i would be under 200 (180ish)...but increased to 210~... I started this game to play with my bf..found some nice friends and fc..never played a game with a ping above 180 since for my personal enjoyment is a bit too much. :( I transfered once to get on balmung...i guess i might have to transfer again to move from it. :/

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Originally Posted by Voison

We're talking about FFXIV... Other games can be different.

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Ah come on... I get it! You are frustrated and so am i! I am just trying to tell you that it is still POSSIBLE to play and have fun with friends if you are playing with a ping around 100ms. Nothing else.

@ZeroSum
Yes i know i could switch to the EU datacenter. I simply don't wanna do that, even if they now offer to take more money with you. I love the NA ppl i played with during the last 2 years. And it really bothers me if i am unable to understand the language in the chat/being unable to talk to my group via VoIP.

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Originally Posted by Alyzore

I'm playing on balmung from EU....i was hoping the jump would be for like 50-60ping...so i would be under 200 (180ish)...but increased to 210~... I started this game to play with my bf..found some nice friends and fc..never played a game with a ping above 180 since for my personal enjoyment is a bit too much. :( I transfered once to get on balmung...i guess i might have to transfer again to move from it. :/

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At least people from eu have somewhere to transfer i will just have to quit the game

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Originally Posted by Aronys

Again, EU people DID NOT get free transfers off of NA. NA people did get them off of EU. We stayed here due to being here for years already, having a community and friends, houses and everything. And the latency was still manageable. Now? It's not. Expecting people to just leave everything behind and try to start afresh is silly when there was no reason to do so until now when we are literally forced to move.

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Someone with a brain and sense. Thank you seems some people don't understand what the issue here really is.

How am i supposed to know? There is nothing we can do besides "trying to live with it" or quit.

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Originally Posted by Raikki

It's central as far as Internet infrastructure goes. Kansas City, MO, is more of a "true" centerpoint, but it's rarer to see major hosting done there. Chicago and Dallas are the usual places you're going to see "Central" servers located.

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Expanding upon this, here are some pings to that IP (24.105.62.129, Blizzard US Central in Chicago) from backbone servers in various locations:

Portland, OR: 49ms (Northwest US)
San Diego, CA: 54ms (Southwest US)
Boston, MA: 24ms (Northeast US)
Miami, FL: 33ms (Southeast US)
Frankfurt, Germany: 109ms

Residential pings will be a bit higher obviously and may not have as good routes as these. Hopefully it's obvious that not only would a huge percentage of North Americans be getting stellar latency, but the impact on European players may have been reduced significantly enough to allow them to stay on their preferred server.

This game feels near unplayable at a high level for me now. Having been accustomed to reasonable latency playing the game for the past 4 years (40ms), the server move has just about tripled my latency and I can no longer dual weave without clipping my GCDs, as well as slidecasting feeling a lot less consistent. My Raiton as a Ninja now clips significantly into my GCD, and overall the game just doesn't feel responsive anymore.

The game is of course playable and all content can be cleared with their target latency in mind (200ms IIRC), but my quality of service playing this game got significantly worse to the point where it's just frustrating being unable to play at the level I was able to play at before. I am now having less fun since there's really just no reason to push myself in this game as much as I have in the past.

180'ish on average, this might get tough on clutch dodging attacks now on my paladin.

Nobody is expecting anyone to do anything, that's like saying 'SEA players are EXPECTED to go to JP DC due to Ping'. I've said it multiple times already across the forums/reddit, if your Ping is not >250ms, then you don't have to go anywhere, because that's the Ping I personally raided and cleared Coil/Savage on. If your Ping is >250, then you're just going to have to either re-learn the game due to timing differences or, alas, transfer. Sorry to say, and I sympathise with the EU players, but venting/complaining is not going to change anything. The best thing you can do is either try and make the situation work the best you can, or do what's optimal for you, not much else that I can think of.

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Originally Posted by Raikki

Expanding upon this, here are some pings to that IP (24.105.62.129, Blizzard US Central in Chicago) from backbone servers in various locations:

Portland, OR: 49ms (Northwest US)
San Diego, CA: 54ms (Southwest US)
Boston, MA: 24ms (Northeast US)
Miami, FL: 33ms (Southeast US)
Frankfurt, Germany: 109ms

Residential pings will be a bit higher obviously and may not have as good routes as these. Hopefully it's obvious that not only would a huge percentage of North Americans be getting stellar latency, but the impact on European players may have been reduced significantly enough to allow them to stay on their preferred server.

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People saying "100ms is good" just show their ignorance of other online games, really. There's a reason so many other games place their NA servers centrally or run several server locations across the continent.

200ms pings from the east coast...

Can someone explain why this is when Everquest's NA servers are just up the road from the FFXIV servers and the ping is half that or lower? Even before the server move.. twisting mudras was laggier than twisting bard songs in a 18 year old game.

The problem isn't distance at all. There's a 100ms added just because its a SE operated server.

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Originally Posted by Alyzore

I'm playing on balmung from EU....i was hoping the jump would be for like 50-60ping...so i would be under 200 (180ish)...but increased to 210~... I started this game to play with my bf..found some nice friends and fc..never played a game with a ping above 180 since for my personal enjoyment is a bit too much. :( I transfered once to get on balmung...i guess i might have to transfer again to move from it. :/

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Well SE warned you at least that it's going to be bad. It's not easy to move to an EU server if you have house and friends but at least after the EU servers moved in Europe you stayed there with your own will and accepted the consequences.
This is what it is and nothing can be done about it.
Anyone playing on the NA servers from EU should seriously and I mean seriously consider to move to an EU server.
If you don't want to move due to friends then you have to accept the consequences it will have to your connection.
As for the housing a new housing area will open soon.
Now is the chance to move.

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Originally Posted by cakesphere

People saying "100ms is good" just show their ignorance of other online games, really. There's a reason so many other games place their NA servers centrally or run several server locations across the continent.

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I understand your point, but the thing to remember is that FFXIV was specifically balanced to consider the fact that many players will experience a 100ms+ ping. Other games can afford to demand a quicker reaction time from players because there are more datacenters available to accommodate more regions. SE only has three separate datacenters, and there are many players who are outside of the 'safe' zone of 100ms. This is why 100ms is okay in this game, but not in others. I'm not sure what the 'magic number' is, but I know Yoshi P has been asked about this and specifically mentioned that the game was balanced to accommodate players with higher ping -- but only to a point. I am way too lazy to look it up, but someone else can feel free to post it if they want to. (In case anyone was wondering, this is why those of us on the East Coast were so spoiled -- we could fit a LOT in before running out of an AoE because we knew we had time to do it. Players on the West Coast are going to learn to appreciate that privilege very soon. :P)

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Originally Posted by Kyouki

Ah come on... I get it! You are frustrated and so am i! I am just trying to tell you that it is still POSSIBLE to play and have fun with friends if you are playing with a ping around 100ms. Nothing else.

@ZeroSum
Yes i know i could switch to the EU datacenter. I simply don't wanna do that, even if they now offer to take more money with you. I love the NA ppl i played with during the last 2 years. And it really bothers me if i am unable to understand the language in the chat/being unable to talk to my group via VoIP.

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Keep reading about people saying the language is an issue on EU servers. Well, I am on Ragnarok and the vast majority speak English including people who are from other countries. We also use Discord too for socializing and raids.

I dont know what my ping was before, but it is 27-32 ms now living in San Diego, CA with Cox.net

The game feels a little smoother in Balmung but a friend of mine on the east coast is getting horrible lag. I dont know if there was a correct solution to accommodate everyone unfortunately. :(

Well, mine went from average of 80-90 to about 130... my tracert shows that my system takes more hops than it previously did to route to Cactuar. I don't hit Level3 currently, but towards the end I notice values shoot up from 40 ms to 130+. :/

Been trying to see if there's a noticeable difference, except I keep getting 90k errors. Not sure if it's on SE's side or mine. ;_;

Server location for a MMORPG like FFXIV shouldn't matter too much unless there is an extreme (EU playing on JP for example). Key word is 'Shouldn't' mind you.

I've played Crysis (with MWLL overhaul mode) on multiplayer on a server in Germany from the East Coast of the US without much of a hitch. Pings were usually between 150-220 when doing so. Crysis in case some of you don't know is a First Person Shooter. The genre most heavily affected by Ping.

I've also played many other MMORPGs on servers on the west coast. Usually seeing pings of about 80-120.

ESO and FFXIV have some of the worst server performances of locally (in the US) based servers I've ever seen. Even before this move the server latency has been pretty intermittent while other MMOs (EQ, WoW, and others) have been fine. I think SE just doesn't have the experience with maintaining larger clustered server bases. And should probably consider devoting resources to remedying that.

I mean if Daybreak can double their server capacity (from 5,000 to 10,000) and add a queue for their progression servers for their 18 year old games. I'm sure SE could manage something similar.

130 to 190-200. Lovely. I can say goodbye to any plans I had about raiding in SB.

Can't wait for this one to blow over.

110 to 170.

Kinda expected, could be worse. It's around 10k kilometres raw distance now.

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Originally Posted by DarkRain

I live in Oklahoma . No real difference its 1800+ mile to Montreal where the old server was and its just about 1800 miles to Sacramento .......

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Wish I could say the same, from my town in Illinois to Montreal it's 849 miles, to Sacramento you ask? 2020 miles. For one of my discord leaders he's out in VA and he said it's almost 3000 miles to Sacramento and about 730 miles to Montreal. Obviously where he and I live, we would benefit from a east coast server, but obviously SE thinks everyone in America lives on the west coast.

yeah i had cd usage issues at times and double weave issues and im sure the biggest culprit was packet loss, could sometimes be in the 20-30% range before. (and apparently that is why i had mana issues with blm and mana usage not tallying up right)
Admittedly servers just came back up so will see if it changes "dramatically" but atm seems im at 0% loss so that is a considerable upgrade for me personally.

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Originally Posted by Jetstream_Fox

but obviously SE thinks everyone in America lives on the west coast.

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Or they maybe think not everybody in NA lives in the US.

66 to 120.
Aether/Cactuar, Not EU though, Im in the Carolinas.(sorry, should have payed more attention to the question)
Is it just me or is it impossible to double weave without delaying a GCD at 120?

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Originally Posted by Ryuko

I understand your point, but the thing to remember is that FFXIV was specifically balanced to consider the fact that many players will experience a 100ms+ ping. Other games can afford to demand a quicker reaction time from players because there are more datacenters available to accommodate more regions. SE only has three separate datacenters, and there are many players who are outside of the 'safe' zone of 100ms. This is why 100ms is okay in this game, but not in others. I'm not sure what the 'magic number' is, but I know Yoshi P has been asked about this and specifically mentioned that the game was balanced to accommodate players with higher ping -- but only to a point. I am way too lazy to look it up, but someone else can feel free to post it if they want to. (In case anyone was wondering, this is why those of us on the East Coast were so spoiled -- we could fit a LOT in before running out of an AoE because we knew we had time to do it. Players on the West Coast are going to learn to appreciate that privilege very soon. :P)

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Fact is that most MMOs (not just FFXIV) are perfectly playable with ping times as high as 150-200ms. People may notice the difference between 50ms ping and 150ms ping, but it will not make the game unplayable.

I have played FFXIV on both EU servers (~40 ms ping time) and on NA servers (~120 ms ping time in the old data center) and did actually not notice much difference between them.

Well, I am in Edmonton, Canada.

My geographical distance from Montreal is about 2,978km, used to have about 75ms.

My geographical distance from Sacramento is about 1,774km, and now I have about 94ms.

I did a brief test with my BLM just now in the game, and I can see no difference in how I performed.

Cheers,
D.

Down from 150 to 100 without WTFast, 100 to 30 with. Sad how much I'm still losing to bad jumps even at 400 miles from the new server, down from 3000.

I have no clue what it was before, but it's sitting at 180 at present. I'm in the UK.

I imagine there's methods to improve it somehow, so I'll be looking into those as at present I haven't done anything to mitigate any issues.

Atlanta here. My ping went from 55ms to 84ms. Nothing to panic over.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

I have no clue what it was before, but it's sitting at 180 at present. I'm in the UK.

I imagine there's methods to improve it somehow, so I'll be looking into those as at present I haven't done anything to mitigate any issues.

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i'm UK too and it seems I have gone from about 100ms to 180ms

Isn't it temporary anyways? I remember EU servers being a bit unstable at first, then corrected it's ping back to normal.

Give it a day or two!

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Originally Posted by ChocoFeru

Isn't it temporary anyways? I remember EU servers being a bit unstable at first, then corrected it's ping back to normal.

Give it a day or two!

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Shhhh. We all know nobody in this game is patient enough for that. Every millisecond counts!

Okay.

I can see both sides of the issue when it comes to EU players on NA servers. Yes, it was technically their decision to stay, rather than move to the EU data center (once it existed). This is true. But is it so hard to understand why? If you had friends on a server you've been on for a year or two... would YOU leave? Probably not. And now they're faced with having to leave after all, or deal with greatly increased latency. Yeah, it sucks. Perhaps there's nothing to be done about it, but it sucks, and I don't think it's fair to tell them to shut up or stop talking about it because nothing can be done, etc. It's probably true that nothing CAN be done, they're not going to move the servers again just to solve this issue. But that doesn't mean people stuck in this position don't get to express their frustration.

It's a weird issue, overall, since while EU players on NA servers now have it worse, as do South American players apparently, players in Australia and elsewhere in the Pacific now have it better. I'm sympathetic to the former and happy for the latter, I guess? And as for EU (and SA) players on the NA servers, I don't have a solution. It sucks. That's it. There is some validity to the idea that the primary concern for SE, when deciding what to do with the NA data center, is NA players, not EU players. But that doesn't change the fact that this situation sucks. I'm not sure what I'd do if I had to choose between staying where my friends are, and getting away from significantly increased ping that was suddenly dropped on my head. So yeah.

THAT SAID

US East Coast people. I'll be honest: I have a bit of a bone to pick with those of you making a huge stink about this. Your new ping is not NEARLY as bad as what a player in, say, Germany would now have to deal with. Some of you (SOME of you; that part is important!) are acting like the sky is falling and SE killed your reason to play, and going out about nigh unplayable ping... But here is the thing.

Boston to Sacramento: about 2600 miles.
San Francisco to Montreal: about 2500 miles.

It's been flipped. Now, do I think this is GOOD? Honestly, no - even though it's good for ME, being in the SF Bay Area (and a couple friends of mine who also live here and play), obviously, but in the larger sense: no it's not good. For a number of reasons, something that was more centrally located would have been better all around. It's clear that geographic location - and the consequences of that location - were not much of a factor in deciding where to go with this move.

But "near unplayable?" Come on now. That's just silly. You are now almost the EXACT SAME distance from the NA data center as WE were BEFORE the move. Whatever impact pure distance has on latency, that impact isn't new. It isn't extraordinary and it isn't crippling. It's the same as it's always been. The only thing that changed is which region is affected by it. Unless you're going to try and convince me that the entire west coast of continental North America was incapable of playing this game at a high level until May 17, 2017, then it's just not that bad. We got along fine for years, and so will you.

I'm not saying it isn't okay to be disappointed. As I said, I think a more central location would have been the better choice. But let's keep some perspective here.

Is there a data center that would satisfy US and EU with a low(ish) ping? Or is this how it's going to be?

The Chaos was labeled Europe data center way way before the move. While they resided in same location, it was still a choise to not use Europe server that already existed.

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Originally Posted by Hasrat

Or they maybe think not everybody in NA lives in the US.

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The only countries that beneft from the server being in California outside of the entire western part of the US, is Mexico and the western part of Canada. They could of picked Kansas or Dallas, two of the biggest Network Hubs in the US which is conveniently located in the center of the country and it would have served people more equal. Or you know maybe done the smart thing and create a West Coast server and a East Coast server. But if in the case of EU players playing on NA getting mad about ping, that's solely their fault, that's like a Verizon customer crying about service because their unlocked phone is connected to Sprints network.

Are they offering free transfers for EU players stuck on NA, like they did for NA players stuck on EU?

Because if not, then that's some messed up shit.

I wonder how much my ping has changed... probably not by a lot because Australian on American server~

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Originally Posted by TheSky

Are they offering free transfers for EU players stuck on NA, like they did for NA players stuck on EU?

Because if not, then that's some messed up shit.

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They are going to do it, but with a twist - See the "Fighting Congestion" post for reference.

They're gonna make new EU servers, then allow free transfer there. You're not going to be allowed to choose. The same will happen in other data centers as well, from what it appears.
Though I'd laugh if that was only within the same data center.

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Originally Posted by DJaySaint

I'm going to sound selfish here, but I don't care about complaints from EU players. They CHOSE to play outside of their region even though they have their own data center. NA data center should be about what is convenient for NA players, not EU players. You have your own data center for a reason.

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Not that I am happy about the move and do agree the choice of location is poor, but I suggest one takes a look at a world map before coming down on EU players. I'm an EU player and have played since 1.0 and thus chose to stay with the legacy server I was on, along with the many friends I had made. The simple fact is any 1.0 player knows (I'll assume the ignorance pouring out of you means you are not one) that although this move is not ideal, it's still nothing like when the servers were in Japan and people should be glad of this. To give a summary, if you think the server move brought them closer to EU, I suggest geographically educating yourself.