AT 08:00 in the morning I have what u describe. But as the day goes and more and more ppl start using the server (and other servers on the internett, bottle necks show up and you get lagg from your route to the server, and the server is overloaded. So we have a nice mix of FF servers overloaded and bottle necks on our way to the server. And here SE could make an vpn connection tunnel, like for example WTFast and other programs do, to make it a little better).
And no matter what u say when you are in EU no matter country ISP your ping is higher then our fellow US CA and JP players. You have a handicap. If you can play with or not is something other. And we that can play with it are "better" then the ones that arnt playing with it. We all walk back and forth to the server. The longer the road is the slower it goes.
So servers in EU is the solution.