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

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Originally Posted by LaylaTsarra

I'm on the east coast. I have a wonderful connection at the moment. I don't personally expect to see much if any difference in performance tomorrow. I do worry a bit however about friends I have in the EU. This might be a real problem for some of them and I'd hate to see that happen to them. Worrying about it now isn't going to change the reality in the morning. It's only a few hours away.

On a related note I was playing on the Chocobo server yesterday since it was open (and I was able to create an account there) and there was absolutely no difference that I could see in my game performance. Aren't those servers located in Japan and if so I'm pretty far away from them and it didn't affect me in the least.

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Im already seeing people talking about straight up quitting the game rather than transfer if it turns out to be true.

Connecting from rural Maine to California's gonna be fun. I'm happy for everyone in Australia and NZ, but going from 45 ping to ~145 ping will be awful.

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Originally Posted by DRHaymaker

It seems like you're completely missing the point - anywhere in the middle of the US, or at least not the coast, is a better than this option. Even splitting to both coasts makes more sense than this. Ultimately we'll see how much this affects performance. Undoubtedly however, this makes people less happy, with at best the people who are affected take an apathetic view, which isn't representative of a majority.

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Why are so many people assuming that having a data center in the middle most part of a piece of land the most "optimal"?

Unless SE has released a listing of where the majority of inbound connections are coming from there is no way to know where in North America the vast majority of the traffic is originating from.

As I posted earlier, Boston to Sacramento is 2600 miles. Coast to Coast. It's still possible to get under 100 ms ping times.

I'm located in boston and pinging the IPs in OP I'm getting average 152ms with a 200mbps connection, be it SE, my ISP, other ISPs i'm hopping from, I am most definitely seeing a 100+ ms ping increase. I'm on the fence of waiting to see how it really plays out before doom and gloom.

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Originally Posted by KrenianKandos

East Coaster here that is in Ottawa.

Getting a ping of around 107ms so it's nothing crazy for East Coasters to worry about; as some have mentioned, it's mostly based on your IP that'll determine what kind of ping you'll get.

Funny enough, I enjoy seeing my tracert run from Ottawa, Montreal, New York, St-Louis and then Sacremento. That's quite an interesting zigzag...

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People who get bent out of shape about the straight line distance should look at the straight line distance of those hops. When people complain about the distance to the server they utterly ignore the fact that the actual routing of their packets could be covering anything from 1.5 to 10 times the geographic distance to the host server. Because of that, the number of hops and where the hops are matters far more than the physical distance from their home to the server.

Last thing I'll say since this is getting very fraught...I previously ran a tracert to the old data center on my residential internet and got something like 260ms round trip times. Then I VPN'd into to my corporate network, and via their business class connection using the same damned ISP (business vs consumer!!) I had RTT under 60ms. 200ms difference with the exact same geographic distance. So, geography is not the issue, routing and hops are.

Rip South american players, went from 100 to 215ms.........

I honestly dont understand why so many people are crying about it moving to the west coast. I am a east coast gamer and I play on westcoast servers in every mmo because I like the times better for raiding, and there is almost no difference in lag. Lets also remember they are not just moving the old servers, they are UPGRADING them, adding new hardware, better internet connection, and better of more stuff! This will be a good thing!!! not only will this help the Aus and Hawaii players but anyone living in US/Cdn will not feel much if any difference.

IF YOU IN CDN OR US YOU WILL BE FINE. and if you live in the EU and are on Na servers you should of been EU to start they said NA for a reason.

Eu players if you Xfer chars remember to make 8 chars and Split gold among them and make a FC and deposit extra Gil so you dont lose any (moving all 8 Chars on your Acct does not cost any mroe then moving 1 char, its 1 price for everything)

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Originally Posted by Jackel

Why are so many people assuming that having a data center in the middle most part of a piece of land the most "optimal"?

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Because it is "optimal" for the widest amount of people. If the datacenter was on the east coast, it would be just as unfavorable to everyone from the center-west.

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As I posted earlier, Boston to Sacramento is 2600 miles. Coast to Coast. It's still possible to get under 100 ms ping times.

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Not all IPs are the same. Not everyone has the same access or type of connection to the internet. That chart is a moot point because some people are justifiably worried because when they choose a game server that's on the other side of the coast in ANY game, they can notice a change in speed. Again, "We'll see", but let's stop pretending there's baseless concerns.

I have a question for the expert people out there, me and my wife are from switzerland on server odin. Should we stay there or should we leave as i read eu players want to move to NA because of the relocation.

Eh, I'm going to try and not be alarmist and wait for the servers to go back up and see what I'm actually dealing with in terms of game play.

Reading all the doom and gloom freaked me out at first, but eh, nothing I can do about it now. Not worth dwelling on unless I log back in and it just feels terrible. From now on, my policy will be "wait and see."

Anywhere in US is fine by me at least it not in Montreal anymore that my two cents take it as you will. /shrugs

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Originally Posted by Matrinka

Eh, I'm going to try and not be alarmist and wait for the servers to go back up and see what I'm actually dealing with in terms of game play.

Reading all the doom and gloom freaked me out at first, but eh, nothing I can do about it now. Not worth dwelling on unless I log back in and it just feels terrible. From now on, my policy will be "wait and see."

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Absolutely what everyone should do! Having said that - I would give it a few days for them to iron out any glitches in the matrix that might arise from a big move/upgrade before coming to any definitive conclusion...

Respectfully, Those that keep saying:

"Those EU players should not be on an NA server to begin with.."

Please, no more thanks.

Many of us play with our friends from the US in large communities rather than pulling them over to EU, because the ping was fine before. Now all of a sudden that has changed and thrown us all in the deep end of lovely 300ms+ ping.

All we are respectfully asking, is that SE gives us an opportunity to move server, ideally for free otherwise it would be mighty cheeky of them.

Only thing that bothers me about them choosing Sacramento, CA, is that when California inevitably drops off into the pacific from an earthquake, there goes the Servers.

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Originally Posted by DRHaymaker

Not all IPs are the same.

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Truth be told, that's likely the main issue for US gamers.

I'm currently playing from germany, which means around 3600 miles away. My connection to the servers in Montreal had around 110-120 MS latency and 5% packet loss. The infrastructure on the way being an ocean. When an US person tells me:"Under 100 MS latency coast to coast is possible at times", I wonder what exactly the cable providers in the US do with your signal on the way most of the times. It must be taking the scenic route for sure.

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Originally Posted by Azell

Rip South american players, went from 100 to 215ms.........

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Nope.

I'm from Chile and I still having 200 MS like always. I've been doing savage/raids/etc and I'm able to dps/heal/dps and play DRG without problems and without getting hit.

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Originally Posted by BorisDaBlade

This community never ceases to amaze me. I bet if Square gave everyone a free sub for a year, someone would find fault with it. Pissing and moaning IS NOT going to change where they are going to put the server. Actually no, it was probably because of that pissing and moaning that drove them to move the server from Canada in the first place.

California, if it's even going there, is a pretty logical position in terms of logistics, maintenance, and upkeep. You can't please 100% of the people 100% of the time.

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I want some of those drugs.
http://imgur.com/a/FM0yJ

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Originally Posted by Zojha

Truth be told, that's likely the main issue for US gamers.

I'm currently playing from germany, which means around 3600 miles away. My connection to the servers in Montreal had around 110-120 MS latency and 5% packet loss. The infrastructure on the way being an ocean. When an US person tells me:"Under 100 MS latency coast to coast is possible at times", I wonder what exactly the cable providers in the US do with your signal on the way most of the times. It must be taking the scenic route for sure.

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The truth is simple. For business customers with larger pockets and more options, they have great routing and low latency because they know that large business customers have more options available and more financial clout. For residential customers they know we have usually only a single choice of broadband ISP - the local cable TV monopoly - and so they can route us any which way they please to maintain their premium service for business customers. The end result is that we get reasonably fat data pipes in terms of band width (local infrastructure - 'last mile'), but crap routing and congested backbone segements causing packet loss. But since the ISPs know that we have no choice, they have next to no incentive to do anything to improve matters.

Wish we had Net Neutrality for real, but now we can't even pretend we do.

<resisting the urge to get on soap box>

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Originally Posted by DRHaymaker

Because it is "optimal" for the widest amount of people. If the datacenter was on the east coast, it would be just as unfavorable to everyone from the center-west.[/B].

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I don't think people are pretending here. And "widest" amount of people only works if you have the login location data to support it.
The ping/stability issue for coast to cast players isn't about location of the data center in this case. West Coast players have been down this road. If high latency and packet loss is occurring for players from origin to destination the issue lies somewhere in the middle, not necessarily because the server is X_distance from Y. Cut the distance and issues could still very much present themselves.

This is a business move that had months of discussion in the pipeline before being deployed. For all we know this serves as the most beneficial for the current player base even if forum users freaking out in this thread are the majority.

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Originally Posted by Vexander

Only thing that bothers me about them choosing Sacramento, CA, is that when California inevitably drops off into the pacific from an earthquake, there goes the Servers.

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What bothers me is everything:
Location you are going to screw up international players, Server Cost since California ain't cheap and to make it even worst if some natural disaster hits the place, 2 weeks without FFXIV just like happened with FFXI.

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Originally Posted by LunaSnowfield

Nope.

I'm from Chile and I still having 200 MS like always. I've been doing savage/raids/etc and I'm able to dps/heal/dps and play DRG without problems and without getting hit.

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If your ping doesnt change good for you, but mine is gonna double, that is a whole new learning curve, and tbh, im not that hyped for SB so if its trully west, my journey is probably gonna end tomorrow lol

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Originally Posted by Zojha

Truth be told, that's likely the main issue for US gamers.

I'm currently playing from germany, which means around 3600 miles away. My connection to the servers in Montreal had around 110-120 MS latency and 5% packet loss. The infrastructure on the way being an ocean. When an US person tells me:"Under 100 MS latency coast to coast is possible at times", I wonder what exactly the cable providers in the US do with your signal on the way most of the times. It must be taking the scenic route for sure.

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What can I say, our providers like to rob from their customers and no one bats an eye...

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Originally Posted by Takamorisan

What bothers me is everything:
Location you are going to screw up international players, Server Cost since California ain't cheap and to make it even worst if some natural disaster hits the place, 2 weeks without FFXIV just like happened with FFXI.

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As an East Coaster, I don't disagree with you. Pity they didn't host it somewhere over here. I have no idea why the West Coast seems so popular for MMOs. Blizzard at least has its HQ there, so them I can accept, but does SE have an office over there or something?

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Originally Posted by Xerxus___

I have a question for the expert people out there, me and my wife are from switzerland on server odin. Should we stay there or should we leave as i read eu players want to move to NA because of the relocation.

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As someone from the EU playing on a EU server you should notice no difference. The EU data center is not being relocated (again), the NA datacenters are.
The people from the EU who are worried about the relocation are the ones who've chosen to play on a NA server and may now see an increase in latency.

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Originally Posted by DRHaymaker

Because it is "optimal" for the widest amount of people. If the datacenter was on the east coast, it would be just as unfavorable to everyone from the center-west.
Not all IPs are the same. Not everyone has the same access or type of connection to the internet. That chart is a moot point because some people are justifiably worried because when they choose a game server that's on the other side of the coast in ANY game, they can notice a change in speed. Again, "We'll see", but let's stop pretending there's baseless concerns.

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Agreed, why screw over a large amount of player base? Putting in the center would have the most impact, east would see same/decrease depending where they are, center would greatly decrease while west would decrease/same slightly. All people would be under 100 ms in the US, Canada should all have respectable pings along with the south since it is moved to the south a bit. Now all you are doing is just increasing the east, south America, and Canada.

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Originally Posted by Xerxus___

I have a question for the expert people out there, me and my wife are from switzerland on server odin. Should we stay there or should we leave as i read eu players want to move to NA because of the relocation.

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Just play and test it, who knows the upgrade may make it more playable despite having a higher ping. The only reason I am worried is because they did not specifically point out if the servers are slow themselves to cause the "lag" i see at 40 ms. I am not going to go all doomsday on a 60 ping increase, I just gotta play the game and post my results.

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Originally Posted by Takamorisan

What bothers me is everything:
Location you are going to screw up international players, Server Cost since California ain't cheap and to make it even worst if some natural disaster hits the place, 2 weeks without FFXIV just like happened with FFXI.

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Unless they are physically hosting the data center themselves, their service provider for the data center will have an alternate site.

Has anyone considered just waiting to see if it has any real impact on you before FREAKING OUT?

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Originally Posted by Cadmar

Has anyone considered just waiting to see if it has any real impact on you before FREAKING OUT?

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This is the internet. No one has time to wait for anything, ever.

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Originally Posted by Vexander

As an East Coaster, I don't disagree with you. Pity they didn't host it somewhere over here. I have no idea why the West Coast seems so popular for MMOs. Blizzard at least has its HQ there, so them I can accept, but does SE have an office over there or something?

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SE has its office in El Segundo, CA. I drive by it on the way to work.

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Originally Posted by Zojha

Truth be told, that's likely the main issue for US gamers.

I'm currently playing from germany, which means around 3600 miles away. My connection to the servers in Montreal had around 110-120 MS latency and 5% packet loss. The infrastructure on the way being an ocean. When an US person tells me:"Under 100 MS latency coast to coast is possible at times", I wonder what exactly the cable providers in the US do with your signal on the way most of the times. It must be taking the scenic route for sure.

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Comparing your 3600 mile / 120 ms ping (RTT) to that of a 2600 mile 80 ms ping (RTT) is virtually identical. Unless it wasn't worded correctly I may have missed the point being made? :-/

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Originally Posted by Cadmar

Has anyone considered just waiting to see if it has any real impact on you before FREAKING OUT?

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Staying calm is boring. Freaking out in forums during server downtime gives you something to do. Popcorns and F5 ftw.

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Originally Posted by Cadmar

Has anyone considered just waiting to see if it has any real impact on you before FREAKING OUT?

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The majority of people aren't freaking out, relative to things that people have freaked out about in FFXIV/MMOs in general. The people freaking out more looks like the people who are claiming others are freaking out.

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Originally Posted by TaurusGilgamesh

you can't ping the server itsself, but you can ping the IP of Raging Wires / NTT which leads to the data centers. The IP for that is 204.2.229.234.

So you have two options

1. If you are a PC user open up CMD or Windows PowerShell and type in following


2. If you don't use a PC or CMD is just too confusing to you just use a testserver in Sacramento by visiting speedtest.net. change the server to anywhere in Sacramento and start. It might not represent your latency you end up with but you have a general idea how the relocation will affect you.

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I really hope it isn't there...just pinged 300 lol, i'll definitly quit 14 if it's that laggy..

Thank you very much for the reply and clearing it up for us, cheers

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Originally Posted by Vexander

As an East Coaster, I don't disagree with you. Pity they didn't host it somewhere over here. I have no idea why the West Coast seems so popular for MMOs. Blizzard at least has its HQ there, so them I can accept, but does SE have an office over there or something?

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Unless Canada was charging an arm and a leg and it really was all about money. Logically it costs quite a bit just to move things, and shut down servers, all that jazz -and if they were not lying this move will afford them more options in development.. then I would assume it's because it services most of the NA population well.

Of course I have no idea what the population break down of FFXIV players is, but again to me it would be weird to spend a lot of money and time moving things unless the savings are astounding or if it is actually for general benefit of most players. EU consideration being none now though, since SE now has EU servers - which sucks for people who stuck with the NA servers when they're EU but it sort of makes sense as its no longer the "NA + EU" server.

Although I would note WoW has data centers across the whole of US... So.. East coast player would still play on the east, and the west on the west :P. I assume that is most optimal for everyone. http://wowwiki.wikia.com/wiki/US_rea..._by_datacenter (Of course this is extra costly, and depending on the amount of players you have.. an issue with player density if spread out too much).

Definitely we should all wait to see what the gain/damage is, and wait past any new server stability issues which we might get too (got to break in that new server smell ;D).

From 140 ping to 187 ping...

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Originally Posted by Vexander

Only thing that bothers me about them choosing Sacramento, CA, is that when California inevitably drops off into the pacific from an earthquake, there goes the Servers.

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Originally Posted by Takamorisan

What bothers me is everything:
Location you are going to screw up international players, Server Cost since California ain't cheap and to make it even worst if some natural disaster hits the place, 2 weeks without FFXIV just like happened with FFXI.

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Native Californian must now chip in - Sacramento is on the 'safe' side of the seismically active fault zone that extends from the San Francisco Bay southwards towards Baja California (check a map, Sac is Northeasterly from SF). It's a very attractive location for IT infrastructure since it's relatively close to the major technology industry hub in Silicon Valley, yet far enough removed that a major seismic event won't disrupt operations. Great place for an internet services company to park their hardware and not have to worry about an earthquake knocking all your shit over.

When I heard the NA data center was changing, my first guess was somewhere in El Segundo, CA, because that's where the NA office is, and there are a lot of data centers in the area.

If it's in Sacramento, that's still just a 1hr flight from the NA Square-Enix office.

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Originally Posted by Cadmar

Has anyone considered just waiting to see if it has any real impact on you before FREAKING OUT?

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Oh my how dare you... this is the forum and the Sky is Always Falling here!

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Originally Posted by Vexander

As an East Coaster, I don't disagree with you. Pity they didn't host it somewhere over here. I have no idea why the West Coast seems so popular for MMOs. Blizzard at least has its HQ there, so them I can accept, but does SE have an office over there or something?

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Exactly what MMOs besides WoW have servers over here? Everything is in Texas/Chicago or east coast.