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

[RainbowMcFuzzy]

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.

Fellow Mainer Here! I've yet to have noticeable issues so far, but I am interested to see how the move will affect us.

[RLofOBFL]

Seeing as I live in FL, Montreal(1400miles) was actually quite a large bit closer than Sacramento(2900 miles)...

This is concerning. I don't really understand this whole ping thing but my input connection was already pretty bad prior to this

[Eothas]

...

So true, I don't want to complain about my ping/latency before the servers are live, but if it's true that the servers are in Sacramento, well, that would be extremely stupid. Square basically screwed EC players a bit, EU players playing on NA, SA players (specifically Brazil) playing on NA and some Canadians perhaps? Like... wtf. Square should see how RIOT/Tencent (one of, if not the most, sucessful gaming company) handled their NA servers for League of Legends.

Riot chose Chicago as the new home for their game servers because its solid infrastructure and a more centralized location. They feel the new location will enable them to bring every North American player's ping under 80ms. More than half of the LoL players in the region are currently above that mark.

Source

Yes, LoL ≠ FFXIV but that's not the point. So yeah, why not choose a centralized location? zzzzz. Don't forget that even if some of you are happy with the new location, you will find players in DF/PF that have been negatively affected by it and guess what? You will have to play with them (if they don't unsub), so don't complain about wipes or poor performance, that's on S.E.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Seeing as I live in FL, Montreal(1400miles) was actually quite a large bit closer than Sacramento(2900 miles)...

This is concerning. I don't really understand this whole ping thing but my input connection was already pretty bad prior to this

Basically, ping is how long it takes for the game to read your signal and register actions in the game, be it abilities or loading areas. If you've played Ninja before their more recent patches, did you ever have trouble with Mudras delays? That's caused by ping as the game isn't able to progress the button input as fast as you're pressing it. The further away from the servers you are, the longer it takes for everything to register. In most cases, it's a negligible difference but far enough away (coast to coast, for example) and you will notice that difference depending how good a connection you have.

[Bjond]

I think SE could fix a lot of the concerns by offering a free transfer window for anyone to move to or from the NA data centre.

Transfers don't cost them anything other than a bit of server time. Their only legitimate concern would be for the potential overloading of one server, which really could happen if entire FCs decide to move to the viable (ie. high-population) servers.

Until the MB is shared across all servers at least within the same data-center, overloading is a very real concern. Low-population servers have non-viable MBs right now. Playing on one is a mistake. I was forced to transfer my alt off Bryn because I detest crafting; it was either be an omnicrafter, punt the character, move, or give up on the relic.

[Random0]

Can someone explain to the laymen out here what exactly is considered in a ping? I am in Indiana, play on aether, and I just speedtested to Sacramento and I was at 79 ping? I would have thought it would be a lot worse than that??

it's how long it takes for a packet of data to get from you to the server and back. but being in indiana you are probably close to the chicago backbone which is a big chunk of fibre basically that moves it to Cali pretty fast.

I think this needs to be something to consider. A little research brings up that the former hosts of the NA data center was Ormuco near Montreal, a hosting company that manages data for many different companies and it seems like Level 3 Communications was the Tier 1 network provider most traffic passed through.

If the evidence suggesting that the XIV NA servers have moved to one of NTT's Sacramento data centers turns out to be correct, then we have to factor in the fact that NTT is itself one of the Tier 1 network providers. They don't connect to the internet backbone - they ARE one of the internet backbones. This is like SE moving their shop from one of the town's back alleys to a new location right on Main Street.

So even if the 'shop' is further away for some people, the road leading to it is much more direct and can handle a lot more traffic than before. We may have to wait until things go live to see how routing tables resolve to determine just what changes to everyone's connections will be.

[Rilasha]

So, I'm Australian (ADSL hype) and can confirm that routing is really important in latency issues. My own ISP routes data to the US before going to Japan so that I'm forced to use WTFast to force a better route (220ms off, 160ms on). I currently had 260ms average to the Montreal servers (with my alt on Middy server) and the 100ms gap between servers is significant enough to notice a change in gameplay. There's much more time to dodge AoEs and the like.

A change for the east coast people will have an adverse effect on latency no matter where they put it, as they will have to adjust for the higher latency on their packets. Although this is not a game that purely relies on latency to affect gameplay (like FPSes), it will still take a while for players to get used to the increase or decrease.

That being said, I wish everyone all the best in their situations after the servers go online. I'll be glad to have the ~200ms latency that I usually have to games hosted around there instead of 260.

(Also, about what Riot did about the LoL servers, people from the Oceanic region used to be on the NA server, but we got a new server specially for us in Sydney. So when we moved out of there, it was a good idea for them to move it now that the laggy Oceanic people aren't there anymore. We who play FFXIV will not get our own Oceanic server.)

[RLofOBFL]

Basically, ping is how long it takes for the game to read your signal and register actions in the game, be it abilities or loading areas. If you've played Ninja before their more recent patches, did you ever have trouble with Mudras delays? That's caused by ping as the game isn't able to progress the button input as fast as you're pressing it. The further away from the servers you are, the longer it takes for everything to register. In most cases, it's a negligible difference but far enough away (coast to coast, for example) and you will notice a difference depending how good a connection you have.

Oh jeez, Ricochet already delays my next GCD regardless of how much I spam the button. And even just using Fuma Shuriken has a lag. Suddenly not looking forward to this very much :l

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Oh jeez, Ricochet already delays my next GCD regardless of how much I spam the button. And even just using Fuma Shuriken has a lag. Suddenly not looking forward to this very much :l

You said you're living in Montreal, yes? Depending how bad things are, you may want to consider transferring to NA servers. Another option is WTFast or Battleping. Both are VPNs that force your connection down a more stable route. Rilasha posted the difference she saw just above.

[Derio]

If it is in Sacramento then my latency will increase by 3.8milliseconds. I can live with that