Unplayable lag

[Sarnen508]

I cannot play between about 4 pm or so (depending) and like 8 pm or so (PST) on Famfrit. I get 5 second (or more) freezes, terrible rubberbanding.

I paid good money for this game, and I use Verizon FIOS. I am a very unhappy customer becaues despite paying a monthly fee, I cannot even play the game at the hours I get home from work on, despite being a north american player on north american servers.

I used the ping tester tool and got an average of 92ms for America, 136 for europe, and 107 for japan.
Please fix this.

[Neneneee]

Same here, stupid game server.

[codypendant]

Same here. I have tested my connection and have only 10ms latency. I never had any problems with this game until today.

[Sarnen508]

I was debating cancelling my sub, but found this instead http://www.wtfast.com/
so far its worked wonderfully, but really shameful quality control for servers on SE's part.

[Raist]

It's less likely to be serverside and more likely to be along your route. That is why it improved when using a VPN--it allowed you to bypass the problematic routing policy. This has been shown extensively to be the case for Verizon lately---especially where they are peering with Level3 to get people into Montreal (they don't HAVE to use Level3--they also have peering agreements with Cogent, TATA, and their own Business Class peers directly with Ormuco as well, who is SE's ISP). Lots of people have resolved most if not all these problems by using a VPN, and not just Verizon---it is because of the routing problems getting to Montreal (and in some cases Japan as well).

Need to look at your route...likely to find signs of congestion along the way that need to be addressed. If you aren't comfortable/knowledgeable enough to run the tracert and interpret it, lean on your ISP to investigate. Give them the DNS names to the lobby servers in Canada for testing:

neolobby02.ffxiv.com
neolobby04.ffxiv.com
neolobby06.ffxiv.com

(for Japan, they use the odd numbers 01, 03, and 05 in the names)

And 10ms to the servers in Montreal? Do you live down the street? That sounds more like a ping to something local.

[Sarnen508]

It's less likely to be serverside and more likely to be along your route. That is why it improved when using a VPN--it allowed you to bypass the problematic routing policy. This has been shown extensively to be the case for Verizon lately---especially where they are peering with Level3 to get people into Montreal (they don't HAVE to use Level3--they also have peering agreements with Cogent, TATA, and their own Business Class peers directly with Ormuco as well, who is SE's ISP). Lots of people have resolved most if not all these problems by using a VPN, and not just Verizon---it is because of the routing problems getting to Montreal (and in some cases Japan as well).

Need to look at your route...likely to find signs of congestion along the way that need to be addressed. If you aren't comfortable/knowledgeable enough to run the tracert and interpret it, lean on your ISP to investigate. Give them the DNS names to the lobby servers in Canada for testing:

neolobby02.ffxiv.com
neolobby04.ffxiv.com
neolobby06.ffxiv.com

(for Japan, they use the odd numbers 01, 03, and 05 in the names)

And 10ms to the servers in Montreal? Do you live down the street? That sounds more like a ping to something local.

I tried a tracert but nothing really red flag-ish jumped out at me. I have heard that FIOS uses are really suffering lately but I couldn't find a consensus on who was at fault really (some say SE changed something about the servers a few patches ago and thats causing hte problems).

[Raist]

I tried a tracert but nothing really red flag-ish jumped out at me. I have heard that FIOS uses are really suffering lately but I couldn't find a consensus on who was at fault really (some say SE changed something about the servers a few patches ago and thats causing hte problems).

Ormuco had a maintenance that might have made networking changes...not SE. In the past, that has been optimizations though--one of them a while back added Verizon's alter.net/UUNET as a direct peer. Haven't seen any major new ASN's crop up yet from this last maintenance though--was hoping maybe they were adding another big name. They could have been adding more ports at an exchange point...who knows. But so far each one of Ormuco's maintenance cycles has improved things and not hurt them.

What has changed however is the amount of traffic in general and not just for this game. Unfortunately, we are pushed through already heavily trafficed areas--and when usage ramps up it impacts us at specific points. Points around Southern California and Seattle/Vancouver, Austin, Atlanta, Charlotte/Raleigh-Durham, Ashburn/DC, Chicago, several points around Ohio, the Northeast is a hot mess--especially around NY/NJ and even MA and ME. Some other choking points... just escaping me at the moment.

When everyone and their brother is getting crammed through the same exchanges for various content, routing needs to be adjusted on the fly to compensate--some teams just do a better job at it than others. Lately, Verizon seems to be dropping the ball. A while back it was Comcast...before that it may have been Time Warner. It moves around because it is largely dependent on with whom they assign for peering to get to Ormuco.

[Teiren]

The problem is bad routing through the Level 3 node. I don't know why just this game seems to have horrendously bad problems with Verizon because of it. It's been like this since nearly the beginning of the game except for a grace period from February to May. It's great to hear Wtfast works, and it makes sense that it does work because it goes through alternate routing to the game servers. I may have to use it myself.

[Sarnen508]

Not sure, anyway if you have those non-ping related rubber banding issues (related to time played, not to area, I get them out in the ass end of nowhere if its past 5 pm, or in the middle of a random main scenario, it doesn't matter) and 5+ seconds of just freezing, try that 3rd party program. It's incredibly stupid to have to resort to that, but I guess for now thats all there is to it. Wish SE would implement some kind of hotfix (or whatever ti is the program is doing) in their client.

[VlanaVignette]

Same problem here, Verizon fIOS, Ashburn/DC, ridiculous lag in the evenings - makes this subscription game UNPLAYABLE - I have NO problem with any other MMO or online service. I really like the game, but if I can't play it the way it's meant to be played, I don't want to pay for it, and I really don't want to have to resort to paying a fee to another service just to be able to enjoy one game.

So, from what you guys are saying, there's really nothing SE can do? Or do they have some control over this Level 3 thing? I'm not at all technical.