Server Lag (not due to routing!)

[CommissarRage]

Hey guys! Bought the game a couple of days ago, been able to log into Ultros pretty consistently, but have been plagued by the omnipresent lag to the point of unplayability. In game, my outbound latency is generally less than 100ms, but inbound is either zero or five digits. It's impossible to interact with any npcs, enemies, etc for a few minutes until I error 90k DC.

I've performed several tracerts to the montreal datacenter (though not to the specific world server), and notice packets consistently drop at 38.122.42.34 (whois identifies this as a cogent server). However, if I VPN to an exit location elsewhere in the country (I live in texas), or in another country I bypass this node entirely and no packets are dropped--- but I'm still horribly laggy in game. To me, this indicates that it's likely not a routing issue, no?

To complicate matters, my younger brother lives with me and has had no trouble connecting to or playing on his server, Phoenix. He reports that the inbound and outbound latencies can read somewhat high in game, but that it has little to no discernible effect on actual gameplay.

To cover all the other bases--- I'm on a 30 down/5 up cable connection, confirmed with a speedtest, and pingtest shows 20ms latency, zero packets lost and zero jitter to a nearby server. As above, using VPN I drop no packets when pinging the montreal datacenter. Does anyone have any suggestions, or can I chalk this up to server side mischief? Thanks.

Edit: I played in beta and never had any trouble. I'm also subscribed to two other mmos and never have any trouble.