Move the servers back?

There were not nearly as many technical support threads, and people d/c’ing, and complaining of such severe lag when the servers were where they were before.

I don’t understand.

I can pretty much not play this game at night since the sever relocation. I can play laggy gathering and pray I don’t mess with laggy crafting and before I was doing just fine almost never had lag or d/c issues.

The NODES are Dallas Tx, and San Jose, Sacramento California. NTT.net.

It’s obvious to the players and SE, why isn’t it getting addressed?


129.250.3.245 Dallas tx
129.250.3.17 SanJose ca
129.250.7.57 Sacramento Ca

I already removed my Internet security, and port forwarded.

I don’t like being restricted to either coughing up more money to pay for wtfast that *might* help, or only doing raids/trials in the morning.

We already pay for internet, the sub, retainers, mogstation items, and now the app. Now we have to pay for WTFast too since the relocation?

Moving the servers to location they did was very bad idea. CA was worst place could think of to move them to with all fires they have every year that interrupts the path to them. Please move them back. I would rather have ping of 120 than not being able to play from lag spikes and disconnects. I used a service like WTFast and it didn't even help out much.

The problem with moving the servers back to where they were is it only fixes the issue for us. I have friends that play that live in a different state where they were affected like we are now, and since the move they are not affected anymore. What they need to do is put this in a central location for the servers where no area is being affected. I am paying for a ping server connection right now which is absolutely insane that SE expects me as well as others to do this. I can guarantee you it IS NOT the ISP that is the issue, it is the routing of the servers. We have been hearing for months maybe even close to a year, here try this, try that, it's your ISP. You charge us a nice monthly service fee, including charging extra for retainers which is also insane as no other MMORPG does that, so I pay over $30 a month for a game that quite frankly I don't feel SE cares about it's customer's currently. Fix the issues or we need to go to the better business bureau or take it legally to be addressed or recoup for the lousy service we are being provided for a year now where we are seeing no steps being taken to address an issue, but being fed lots of excuses. I posted on the last big thread from about 6-8 months ago and have been using a ping server to get things at least somewhat stable but even now these are appearing running through these which goes through New York where I could at least play with my friends, again paying for something I shouldn't have to, because you have not got up and done anything about this other than make excuses. When will we see some type of resolution? Yes I am frustrated, and I am tired of being run over, but this type of thing is what hurts a company when they ignore things.

On the note of the server relocation, I don't think it's a coincidence that we have been having severe issues being unable to load into solo instances every single patch ever since the relocation. Lag and such aside I've suspected for a long time that the new servers just aren't able to handle the load as well as the old ones

The servers are way better now then they were at the old location.

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Originally Posted by Lorgana

On the note of the server relocation, I don't think it's a coincidence that we have been having severe issues being unable to load into solo instances every single patch ever since the relocation. Lag and such aside I've suspected for a long time that the new servers just aren't able to handle the load as well as the old ones

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Actually, the original servers also had this issue, but even worse. They also stated they had power issues at the location the old servers were.

The game was unplayable for many at 5pm EST because the level3 nodes in Montreal basically just stopped letting traffic through because they were hammered so badly. I haven't DC'd hardly at all since the move, it used to be daily.

And it IS an ISP issue, not a "server routing issue" as the other person said. If it was a server issue, VPN's wouldn't fix the problem. All a VPN does is go around crappy ISP routes. Which means its your ISP or your ISP's ISP (yes this is a thing).

My ping has indeed suffered from it. Rather than reversing the change, I simply want SE to work on making it better in any way they can. I can't believe that there's nothing that they can do to make it better, whether it's inside or outside of their servers.

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Originally Posted by Zumi

The servers are way better now then they were at the old location.

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Agreed. And personally, I've have not been privy to any issues affecting my game play whenever I travel to Northern California.

I feel that the US infrastructure by default is so bad that I think it'd be justified to get new servers on the east coast as well. Aether at this point might as well be the west coast data center, and Primal the east coast. So not only does each side of the US get designated data centers, the current center would get all of its resources allocated to Aether, and Primal gets more resources on the principle of not having to share with Aether.

Or at least that's how I think this would work.

What you might not realise, is that the west coast data centres make ping quite a bit lower for oceanic players (My ping is lower to the NA servers than the JP ones) I have a more stable connection than with the old servers, where they are now.

Southeastern PA on the East Coast here, and... well I've given up on trying to play at 9PM+ EST because the lag is unbearable in doing anything that requires timely inputs whatsoever, like, any dungeon content. Or even solo content. Or any kind of battle, really.

I've kinda resigned myself to the fact I have to do all of my FFXIV stuff by early evening at the latest.

I get 34ms to Google and I get 280Mbps+ down, 12 up, so... this should not be happening. I don't think it's any kind of backbone, or level3 or what-not. It's the servers themselves.

Heck, I get 79ms to my two WoW servers during the same time period I'm seeing this crazy lag in XIV.

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Originally Posted by Maeka

Southeastern PA on the East Coast here, and... well I've given up on trying to play at 9PM+ EST because the lag is unbearable in doing anything that requires timely inputs whatsoever, like, any dungeon content. Or even solo content. Or any kind of battle, really.

I've kinda resigned myself to the fact I have to do all of my FFXIV stuff by early evening at the latest.

I get 34ms to Google and I get 280Mbps+ down, 12 up, so... this should not be happening. I don't think it's any kind of backbone, or level3 or what-not. It's the servers themselves.

Heck, I get 79ms to my two WoW servers during the same time period I'm seeing this crazy lag in XIV.

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Friend of mine plays from PA and has reported no such problems, and we usually are playing that late and later.

No issues here, either, but I expected that because I'm in CA.

The thing to consider is that the NA servers are not purely just for NA players, there are other places in the world that actually connect to these centres and that's what SE (and Devs for many other MMOs) have to plan around. Players from parts of Central/Southern America, Oceania and even further afield may all connect to this one so the location has to suit more than just a single region, and California was the best suited location.

I know some players are adamant that it's an SE issue, but personally I don't think it is and is all down to the respective ISPs. Having played from EU on the Aether NA centre (on an alt before and after the move to Cali), I barely had that many issues at all regarding routing. Sure the occasional lag happened which was an ISP issue, but there was never anything that prevented me from playing the game at any time of day. So from what I found that being several thousand more miles away I still had less problems than those in the actual NA region, so who knows perhaps just like Saito just mentioned previously, US infrastructure could be to blame more than anything.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

Actually, the original servers also had this issue, but even worse. They also stated they had power issues at the location the old servers were.

The game was unplayable for many at 5pm EST because the level3 nodes in Montreal basically just stopped letting traffic through because they were hammered so badly. I haven't DC'd hardly at all since the move, it used to be daily.

And it IS an ISP issue, not a "server routing issue" as the other person said. If it was a server issue, VPN's wouldn't fix the problem. All a VPN does is go around crappy ISP routes. Which means its your ISP or your ISP's ISP (yes this is a thing).

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It absolutely is a server routing issue and kinda shows how much you know about it as I work for the said ISP I am using and it is not a small company. If you know anything about ISP's and how a routing table works then you would know the first 4 hops of a traceroute starting from you are your ISP. The issue doesn't occur until after that which makes it the issue of SE's provider to their servers. I have been working for an ISP way too long both for the business side of things as well as residential services. If you are going to call someone out on things know the facts. NTT is the backbone of SE's current server network. The reason the ping server fixes it is the fact that the routing to the server from New York which is where I run it through has a different routing table than where I am. As far as California being the best place for it Kurando, if that many people are having issues, and the tables have turned where the PA and New York just as two examples that I know of were experiencing the same issues as we are now, then California is still not the right location. As you have stated we have to think about everyone here, and I agree with you, but having this issue for over a year and doing nothing about it for people that do pay money for a service, only to have to pay more to get a decent connection by paying an additional service is wrong. That's not a good business practice, and what's even worse is they ignore it when there have been way too many posts about this.

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Originally Posted by Kurando

I know some players are adamant that it's an SE issue

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I'm taking this out of context, but it's an SE issue insofar that SE doesn't want to invest in multiple server locations.

"Moving back" isn't so much an issue as either putting the servers in a more central location (not ideal) or having them in multiple locations. Keeping the one in CA, for example, as well as getting one back in Montreal and doing the centralized location for good measure.

I don't want to hear that their infrastructure is horrible or that it'd be too hard to accomplish that. We all pay a monthly fee, ostensibly in part to maintain and/or facilitate the expansion of all this backend stuff, and if the game is larger than ever - their claim - then they need to actually loosen the purse strings a bit to ensure it stays that way.

Let's even be a little more crazy and ask that they throw our friends in South America and Australia a bone and find some local servers there, too. I'm sure it'll pay dividends when they launch their next MMO and these problems don't have to crop up again.

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Originally Posted by MomomiMomi

Friend of mine plays from PA and has reported no such problems, and we usually are playing that late and later.

No issues here, either, but I expected that because I'm in CA.

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Maybe they just have a better tolerance, but when I push a button and see the results 1-1.5 seconds later, I consider that "unplayable" because really, that's just aggravating and it makes me not want to play at all.

I had a better connection and input to the servers where they were at originally. It's not a good thing that as a paying customer, I have to account for lag spikes when I'm playing XIV. And, also try to think ahead of how fast the server ticks are going to read my next action so that I can safely move out of an AoE or worst, make sure Enochain doesn't drop off...which has happened in Savage and its frustrating to see that I have 3 seconds left on the timer but the server says "Lulz, no you don't, fam".

Here's the thing about moving back, they couldn't upgrade the servers very easily (at least, that's what they said), and it's overall worse for most players such as I who, despite it being a very minimal difference in distance from me, got a nice consistent connection even if it's not faster. The problem with moving them from Cali AT ALL is that there are not that many US cities or states that have as good internet. The problem is that moving from CA would leave them where? The East Coast? Higher up in Washington? The problem is, the best internet is in CA and the east coast. If they moved it to Canada, a lot more people would be screwed over. If they moved it to central US, the internet for them would suffer and connections would be probably worse than they were in Montreal. And then on the east coast they screw over all the players on the west coast. It's a lose-lose situation. Only city I could see them moving them to that would be beneficial is Austin Texas.

As for people complaining it's not an ISP thing but an SE thing, I know someone in Virginia who has amazing internet and next to never disconnects from FFXIV unless his entire internet takes a dump. This is the same with me and I in New Mexico, have a far worse ISP, and yet he has a better connection than I do in terms of lag. If this is NOT an ISP issue, then explain to me how someone in PA and NM have worse connection issues than someone in VA.

Also, I'd like to point out that ISPs are very untrustworthy companies and are notorious for trying to screw the customer over and most notoriously even tried throttling connections of specific apps, and Verizon recently throttled CA firefighters communications while fighting the CA wildfires.

I'm not sure if moving the location back would help. In fact, I'm in CA and this entire week I have severe rubber-banding and the whole game is a gigantic power point slide show. I rarely dc, but I can get freeze at a place for 30 seconds in a dungeon. Something is very wrong with the US servers.

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Originally Posted by Miziliti

I'm not sure if moving the location back would help. In fact, I'm in CA and this entire week I have severe rubber-banding and the whole game is a gigantic power point slide show. I rarely dc, but I can get freeze at a place for 30 seconds in a dungeon. Something is very wrong with the US servers.

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Its not the servers, for the last time its not the servers. PEOPLE ITS NOT THE SERVERS!

Its the networking equipment outside SE's control. Their datacenter's ISP, or their ISP's ISP. If it was the servers themselves, EVERYONE would be experiencing the same issues. Its NOT everyone.

Its not even fully the ISP, but certain switches/routers in the route. Its not the networking gear at the datacenter, or it would be effecting everyone.

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Originally Posted by LauraAdalena

The problem is that moving from CA would leave them where? The East Coast?

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https://wow.gamepedia.com/Americas_r..._by_datacenter

There you go, Chicago and Dallas are two locations chosen by the game everyone loves to copy. I'm sure there are several other viable locations used by other games (/MMOs) if you make use of Google.

Moving a datacenter cost lot of money. It don't make sense from a business perspective and rest of us in EU and JP don't want another 24-48 hr maintence cause a miniority of NA players have slightly higher ping now, it's unfortunate but SE can't please everyone. At least until they add more datacenters (not ingame datacentre) in a big continent like NA.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

Its the networking equipment outside SE's control. Their datacenter's ISP, or their ISP's ISP. If it was the servers themselves, EVERYONE would be experiencing the same issues. Its NOT everyone.

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It's the fault of the road between server and players, yes.

But I'm really fed off with the argument that "servers" means that everyone have problems. It's not. Computers are not something that either works perfectly or dumps completely. Have you ever tried running a program that outright devours your computers resources simply for staying afloat?! If yes, then you would know that it works smoothly, but other programs suffer.

Computers work through priority. There is NO SUCH THING as multitasking for computers! Every piece of the computer works on ONE THING AT A TIME. The time between it switching from one process to another is simply so small, that unless you have tons of programs open, you won't see a difference with any hardware in the past several years.

That means that a computer CAN and WILL work smoothly on whatever have high priority, but will not work smoothly for whatever have low priority. If there are players that are responsive (due to good connection to the servers) and players that are unresponsive (due to bad connection to the servers) when the servers themselves are under stress, the servers are most likely going to increase the priority for maintaining the good connections at the cost of the bad connections. Hence SERVERS make SOME players win and some players lose stable connection.

There are all sorts of ways developers can influence things like priority. For example, in old Windows'es, alt+ctrl+delete had surprisingly low priority and would not work if your CPU was at 100% due to a buggy program. In newer Windows'es, that combination will open the blue screen with options within moments no matter how messed up the computer is.

Increasing the hardware will also allow the servers to maintain more connections with stability. For things like servers, you do not want them to be used at full capacity. They should be upgraded before that. Servers operating at full capacity are servers that work as slowly as possible on the receivers end. They have to "switch" so often from process to process that not only it takes a while before they return to the old one (in comparison to when they are working under lower load), but may opt out to try and lower priority for what it finds lower importance processes altogether. That's how computers work.

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Originally Posted by Darrcyphfeid

https://wow.gamepedia.com/Americas_r..._by_datacenter

There you go, Chicago and Dallas are two locations chosen by the game everyone loves to copy. I'm sure there are several other viable locations used by other games (/MMOs) if you make use of Google.

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WoW hasn't used a data center in Dallas in years. Everything has been in Chicago or Los Angeles since they did the realm connections in 2013/2014 and they had stopped using the Dallas data center a couple of years before that.

My FFXIV connection has been far superior since the move. When the data centers were in Montreal, it would be 600 ms on a good day and frequently went over 1200. Lag was a constant annoyance. Now it's in the 50-60 range consistently. I rarely notice any lag going on and it's usually gone within a few minutes when it does happen.

If the game servers were the issue then everyone would be reporting the same problems. Outside of a few specific occasions, we're not. There's something else causing the issues the East Coast players are reporting.

SE can't please everyone. FFXIV only has 24 servers in NA (compared to WoW having over 100 since people want to use WoW as a comparison). It doesn't make sense for them to split them between data centers in different locations unless the player base expands greatly. With a large number of players from Pacific Rim countries playing on the NA servers, I don't see them moving the data center to the East Coast to please the players that are now experiencing what other players had been experiencing before the move. Someone is going to end up unhappy one way or another.

To be fair, it didn't make sense for them to move the servers in the first place either and piss off the people that had a good connection with suddenly a lackluster one. Surely, with how much the move costs them they could have just opened another server location for the West Coast.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

WoW hasn't used a data center in Dallas in years. Everything has been in Chicago or Los Angeles since they did the realm connections in 2013/2014 and they had stopped using the Dallas data center a couple of years before that.

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Chosen =/= currently in use. If Dallas was good enough for WoW before, I should think it's good enough for XIV now. And if not, hey, there's Chicago. Neither one is on a coast.

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If the game servers were the issue then everyone would be reporting the same problems. Outside of a few specific occasions, we're not. There's something else causing the issues the East Coast players are reporting.

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Level-3 was messing with you before, and now NTT is messing with... everyone, really. But especially Comcast subscribers on the eastern half of the continent from the sounds of it. Got a guy in my friend circle from southern CA whose ping is lower now, but can't play any more reliably than I can because Square wanted to save a few pennies or something. Another guy in Vegas was screwed when the servers were in Montreal and, last I heard, wasn't fairing much better with NTT in Cali. Yet another guy, in Arizona, has had some rough patches the last few nights our group has gotten together; unsure what his situation was like prior to move.

Either way alternating between one side of the country or the other being unable to reliably play your online-only, subscription-based game is pretty damn sad. If that's truly the best Square can manage, they should reconsider this whole online gaming thing.

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Originally Posted by Sigma-Astra

To be fair, it didn't make sense for them to move the servers in the first place either and piss off the people that had a good connection with suddenly a lackluster one. Surely, with how much the move costs them they could have just opened another server location for the West Coast.

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Didn't they say they couldn't improve their data centre at the old location? I'm sure i read something like that.

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Originally Posted by Luna-M

Didn't they say they couldn't improve their data centre at the old location? I'm sure i read something like that.

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They did say something like that.

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Originally Posted by Luna-M

Didn't they say they couldn't improve their data centre at the old location? I'm sure i read something like that.

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They'd basically run out of available space to install new servers, due to space and power constraints. So they would have needed to move datacenters regardless if they wanted to expand. (Now, perhaps they could have just gone down the street or something as opposed to across the country).

But they also switched datacenter vendors when they moved. The current NA datacenter is managed by NTT, which also happens to be a major ISP in Japan. It makes sense that they likely got a good deal to use one of NTT's Datacenters. (Which, there are a couple on the East Coast too iirc, but only a few nodes in the middle of the US, which other ISPs aren't really routing to).

Edit:
Even as someone in California, my evenings have been getting pretty bad. But it's not really the FFXIV itself so much as the other equipment on the way. I'd urge people to grab a tool like Pingplotter (yes, there's a free version) so they can see where the connection dies. A quick look after the stats have built up show it's usually issues with a bunch of the NTT nodes as they're probably getting overloaded, just like the previous Level3 ones did. There's nothing SE can do to mitigate that when it happens since it's not directly happening in the datacenter.

Question for those that wish there are 2 servers, 1 in East, and another in West. Let's say you are playing from east coast, what is going to happen to your friend who is playing from west coast? Now suddenly, you cannot play together anymore?

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Originally Posted by Neri

Question for those that wish there are 2 servers, 1 in East, and another in West. Let's say you are playing from east coast, what is going to happen to your friend who is playing from west coast? Now suddenly, you cannot play together anymore?

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Already got separated from EU friends that were on Aether because of the move, both from quitting and transferring.

It's more or less a known quantity at this point what someone's experience would be like on an east coast server vs a west coast server, so as long as they aren't cleaving Aether or Primal in half - and offering free transfers, 'cause what the hell Square - it would most likely be fine.

This is, of course, also assuming some method of having both Aether and Primal accessible from both server locations isn't feasible. Which given the usual gist of interviews of late is a resounding "benderlaugh.gif," but who knows.

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Originally Posted by Luna-M

Moving a datacenter cost lot of money. It don't make sense from a business perspective and rest of us in EU and JP don't want another 24-48 hr maintence cause a miniority of NA players have slightly higher ping now, it's unfortunate but SE can't please everyone. At least until they add more datacenters (not ingame datacentre) in a big continent like NA.

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There is more of a minority and just like you when you were experiencing issues when it was moved and you were having issues prior to the move it's the same thing. If it were a higher ping that would be one thing but to be unplayable where I can literally hit something for a heal or whatever it is I am trying to do and it takes 3-5 seconds is unreal. You guys act like it's ok for part of the people to have to battle through it just because yours is ok. It's about everyone playing just not you guys specifically and there are still way too many posts of issue than just a "minority" of people. We could have said that when you guys were having problems but we didn't and it wasn't right for you guys either, so don't go saying oh it's ok now too because it's not us!

They need East and West cost to make people on each cost happy. Sorry they can't make everyone happy. I would sooner not have down time again for another move.

It's not so much -where- they are located it is that NTT US is dirt. Their routers are overcrowded and they give two craps about it. /endrant.

I live on the east coast in WV on a mountain and I've not noticed any issues with the new location, or the old location. My internet is Comcast Blast, I get about 250mbps down and a 30ms ping. My game connection is great 95% of the time. The 5% when it's not is because I'm downloading something, or someone is watching 4k Netflix in my living room.

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Originally Posted by Ryios

I live on the east coast in WV on a mountain and I've not noticed any issues with the new location, or the old location. My internet is Comcast Blast, I get about 250mbps down and a 30ms ping. My game connection is great 95% of the time. The 5% when it's not is because I'm downloading something, or someone is watching 4k Netflix in my living room.

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The problem is not everyone is like this. While I have zero issues aside from the occasional random disconnect I have no issues with my route most of the time. But I have friends in other areas of the country some closer and some farther from the servers that encounter a ton of issues. And it all stems from problems with NTT. We all had less issues when it was in the old location. While splitting the servers may a harsh solution, just picking a more central location, and not NTT, would've been better for everyone.

I wouldn't want to change servers just to get onto an East Coast server. The previous location was, I believe, further away from me than it currently is, but my ping is worse now than before. Would I like the servers to be right next door to me? For sure I would, but that isn't what I'm asking for, at least not specifically. I don't know what I'm asking for, I just want it improved.

I seem to recall a TON of issues in the old location.

Anyone remember 2.0 Titan HM runs.... So many people lagged so bad they couldn't do the encounter without being knocked off the platform. So 6 geared people with good connections just started selling it. Canada isn't exactly a good location for the servers either.

It's probably just a routing problem, not the location. They just need to work on the route. They could have old legacy equipment at the old location that's still being talked to. Might get better with time.