Australia deserves better latency

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Originally Posted by Chiramu

Blizzard AUS servers? Hmm. Though Square Enix is not anything like Blizzard. It took Blizzard about 10 years to establish AU servers, maybe wait that time for SE to make some? XD

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Lol if SE put the kind of money that Blizzard does in to their game, we wouldn't be getting 2 dungeons per patch lol.

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Originally Posted by CookieMonsta

Lol if SE put the kind of money that Blizzard does in to their game, we wouldn't be getting 2 dungeons per patch lol.

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I wonder if you are complimenting Blizzard or insulting Blizzard. What you said could go either way.
As a note, I would love some of the designs that Blizzard has in FFXIV.
Rooster mount, best mount ever, too bad we had to worship chocobos. That rooster mount is much funnier XD.

Is AU playerbase really that big that it would be a gain for SE to build another regional DC? I get why we got one in EU cause we are more in numbers than AU( i would assume)

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Originally Posted by Rinuko

Is AU playerbase really that big that it would be a gain for SE to build another regional DC? I get why we got one in EU cause we are more in numbers than AU( i would assume)

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It would seem to be a presence, not only that, dont they have to pay alot more for things like collectors editions etc? Im all for a AU datacenter or something, would be sad to see my friends leave but from my understanding their latency is p bad, and despite that some of the best players ive run into came from au

On Tonberry I get 100ms with WTFast I have almost no lag what so ever we don't really need a server. just change to Tonberry and get NBN you be fine ^^

Why? Why do you have shit latency? I see EU friends play on NA servers just fine, the only issue they have is the time zone, so why are you so different?

Is it really SE's fault for not locating in Australia or is it someone else's fault?

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Originally Posted by Morzy

Why? Why do you have shit latency? I see EU friends play on NA servers just fine, the only issue they have is the time zone, so why are you so different?

Is it really SE's fault for not locating in Australia or is it someone else's fault?

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Probably because of how the internet work there. Some countries don't have their own gateway and underwater cables that go straight from their place to Canada so if they play the game on NA server, their packets will be sent from AU to HK to US then to Canada, then the server send them back on the same routine.

Not really sure if it works like that though. Just a theory.

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Originally Posted by Morzy

Why? Why do you have shit latency? I see EU friends play on NA servers just fine, the only issue they have is the time zone, so why are you so different?

Is it really SE's fault for not locating in Australia or is it someone else's fault?

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I'll rephrase what I said earlier:

"Its nothing to do with internet speed, its the geography. Most Australian cities are East coast and very south. This is a lot of distance to cover even for undersea fibre optic cables to japan. And as a double whammy, Aus doesn't have a big enough online population to warrant local servers (also good luck with the shitty Aus hosting prices). Ideally, there should be an Oceanic server located in Singapore which is almost at the centre of the oceanic population, best compromise of acceptable latency for Aussies, pinoys, malaysians etc etc"

And you can't say "playing just fine" until you try to clear something like A3S with 200+ ping. There's a big difference between playable and pleasant. Believe me, the EU guys loved it when the EU datacentre got opened.

I am playing from New Zealand, yeah country down under, and would love to have a semi local server based in AU. But I am very skeptical about actual server in AU because of 3 reason.

1. Game still playable with latency from Oceanic region
: I get around 200ms-212ms from NZ to NA iDC. It is a lot more stable with tunnel programs etc but I still get average 200ms+/-. Most of my FC members are from the same region or AU have no issue doing raid etc. I recall I had major issue with plums from Titan HM/EX in 2.0 but with bit of practice and nerf, it is fairly easy now. If you get more than 230ms, try not to use Wi-Fi or find better ISP.
2. Relatively Low population
: I still remember how excited I was when SWTOR announced AU server and I absolutely loved it but in reality, I didn't want to play in almost dead server despite such low latency. Majority of player were either bot or free trial players. Obviously, it did not take too long before EA shutdown AU server. I don't even want to imagine how long it will take to findi a party within the same Data Centre even during peak hours. (120min+? or 300min+ for older contents)
3. Infrastructure Cost to run server is too high in Oceanic region
: I am working for company specialized in co-location service and provide domestic/international traffic service for enterprise. I can't post here but I know how much Riot is paying for their co-location for LoL (Oceanic Server) I can roughly estimate the average cost to run a MMO server in DATA center. You need about 65% subscribers over server maximum capacity to reach even break even point. Also, MMPoG naturally attract a lot of DDoS and it require significant effort in terms of running cost which requires initial investment.

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Originally Posted by Shippuu

Because money.

The truth is, the AUS population isn't going to be large enough to justify the expense. Setting up servers is incredibly expensive, and doing so in AUS is probably even more so due to it's location and the general price of pretty much everything there.

It's simply not a big enough market, so no, you don't deserve anything. If they do any other new servers/data centers it's more likely to be a West Coast US one.

And let's not even talk about how a lot of the latency problems probably stem more from the poor infrastructure in Australia than anything else.

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Actually, several years ago Blizzard looked seriously at setting up an Australian server for WOW but in the end abandoned it in the face of what they considered greedy demands from Aussie ISPs to handle the traffic .. I believe Telstra were one of those cited.

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Originally Posted by CookieMonsta

Lol if SE put the kind of money that Blizzard does in to their game, we wouldn't be getting 2 dungeons per patch lol.

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You're right. We would get even less.

Legion dungeons: 10
Heavensward dungeons: 18

One day.

/10Ch

I love you guys :D

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Originally Posted by Aramina

You're right. We would get even less.

Legion dungeons: 10
Heavensward dungeons: 18

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Yeah you would get better quality loot though.

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Originally Posted by Amaranths

On Tonberry I get 100ms with WTFast I have almost no lag what so ever we don't really need a server. just change to Tonberry and get NBN you be fine ^^

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Oh sure because NBN, despite having National in its name, is *so* accessible in all areas of AU.

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Originally Posted by harrisben

Isn't it time for an official Australian server that is actually in Australia? My dream is that they'll announce it at the Fanfest. Other companies can do it, surely SQENIX can do it too?

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WoW has AU servers. But then forces you onto US servers when queuing for instances if there's US people in the party. There are some occasions when US players get forced onto AU servers, Which is hilarious to watch since they can't cope with more than 30 ping.
So it actually serves no purpose in the long run, unless you have a full SEA group.

In XIV, I've found that the actual ms latency is almost unimportant. Aside from edge cases like 'On Hit' procs (MCH/BLM mostly) due to the proc often triggering from a previous skill while you're mid cast of the skill the proc was supposed to make instant.
WTFast hasn't changed my latency much, from 260 down to 230, what made the biggest difference is the smoothness of the connection. WTFast records ping spikes that happen along the standard route and compares them to spikes on its own route.
In the last 5 hours, my WTFast has recorded 949 spikes on the standard route compared to just 7 on the WTFast line.
Combine this with the Ping fluctuation being 1ms compared to the 13ms on the standard route.

There are still times when i've gotten out of the AoE before the cast ends and been hit anyway. However, the time remaining on the cast is constant. I have to get out .2 seconds before the cast ends every time. On a standard route, sometimes its .4, others its .1.

Rather than the extreme cost of setting up a server in Australia, SE would be better served by setting up its own service similar to WTFast and bundle it with the game subscription costs. Would be a cheaper and more effective way of bringing down latency for a lot of players. Such a service would impact a larger part of the subscriber base.

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Originally Posted by faiarrow

Oh sure because NBN, despite having National in its name, is *so* accessible in all areas of AU.

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We can blame the Libs for that. And every idiot that voted them in. I'm just lucky i got on the NBN before the Libs took over ...

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Originally Posted by Sylve

In XIV, I've found that the actual ms latency is almost unimportant. Aside from edge cases like 'On Hit' procs (MCH/BLM mostly) due to the proc often triggering from a previous skill while you're mid cast of the skill the proc was supposed to make instant.
WTFast hasn't changed my latency much, from 260 down to 230...

There are still times when i've gotten out of the AoE before the cast ends and been hit anyway. However, the time remaining on the cast is constant. I have to get out .2 seconds before the cast ends every time. On a standard route, sometimes its .4, others its .1.

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Thanks for the detailed info, I was wondering about WTFast and how it worked, though I don't understand how you could say latency is almost unimportant?

Sure give AUS their own servers but due to the fact that it'd pretty much be only one server, you now have to pay 3x the sub to justify the AUS server.