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

[Ryuko]

Guys, let's be real here. Those of us on the East Coast were spoiled. It's going to take time for us to adjust to having a higher latency... but unless you now have over a 150-ish ms ping, you really shouldn't have any issues. (Some people were actively raiding with higher than that and they were fine, but reaction times will vary.) We just need to be less greedy with our timing. Every AoE is avoidable, but we just have less leeway -- less time to be a little extra greedy. We just need some time to adjust.

I *do* feel bad for the EU players who are now experiencing unplayable ping, though. I'm in the camp that thinks they should be offered a free transfer. Still, I can understand and appreciate the frustration of having to choose between leaving their friends behind and playing with an acceptable ping. Back in 1.x days, I played on a server that was eventually designated as a JP server (Aegis). Seeing as most of the people in my LS were ex-FFXI players, we had known each other for years and were very close. Many of us were international players, so the decision was made to stay on the JP datacenter when ARR went live. I knew my latency issues... I knew how I struggled to beat Ifrit Ex simply because of lag... but I still wanted to play with them. So, I leveled two characters during the open beta -- one on the NA datacenter and one on the JP datacenter. It became readily apparent to me that playing on the JP datacenter would be a huge sacrifice for me... I wouldn't be able to reliably dodge. I made the hard decision to leave the server and to go to an NA datacenter. Many of my friends were upset with me, and the leadership of the previous LS even said to me... "Don't come crawling back when you can't get anything done." I left all of my friends behind, but I had no choice... If I didn't leave, FFXIV would become nothing more than a glorified chat program for me. So, the situation is difficult enough for EU players. Please don't make it harder on them by telling them they deserve this situation because they didn't move earlier or should just be 'okay' with how things have played out. There's always going to be people who are placed at a disadvantage when a huge datacenter relocation is made, but let's try to be a little more understanding of their situation?

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

We are, but what can we really do?
There is still no word on a free transfer option.

Except there literally is word on the lodestone and its been posted in the forums as well.

[Exiled_Tonberry]

Guys, most international players play perfectly well with pings of 200 and higher. The game is designed to be playable at 200 ping. If it wasn't it wouldn't have any oceanic players.

The EU servers are opening up because the player base is growing in EU and they need new servers to deal with the growth. The free transfers are for distributing population across the EU servers.

If you want to play at your absolute worst it's playable, yes. Big difference between a "playable" experience, and a enjoyable experience.

[Tahlaera]

You're being very unreasonable here and making assumptions and generalizations. I for one will not be taking advantage of any free transfer. If the game is unplayable on my current server it will be goodbye for me.

Same goes for most likely me and any of my EU-based friends. I'm not inclined to swapping servers, especially when I've played on NA servers since somewhere in ARR, gotten my own house, have a lot of friends on NA servers, while I know absolutely noone on EU servers anymore. (The ones I knew at first also moved to NA for various reasons, in part some similar to mine)

Also, to be clear, at ARR's beta/release, the 'EU servers' were actually based in NA, meaning it made no difference what-so-fucking-ever until they moved the EU ones sometime later. And on top of that, as someone already pointed out, the 'EU server' designation is terrible as the EU isn't like NA, most countries have their own primary language. With just 'EU' tagging, for example, Moogle ended up being flooded with French players who had among themselves decided that was going to be their server, of whom a good portion subsequently went to quite some effort at the time to make the portion of the server that didn't speak (fluent/primarily/any) French feel unwelcome.

I ended up choosing to go NA side because I didn't feel like more of the above, as well as the lack of difference in any lag at the time(before they moved the EU servers), a good portion of friends from other MMO's and games, and the ability to find RP and the likes.

[Kyouki]

You do know that the EU datacenter was created long after ARR right? You do know that EU players had no other choice than playing on NA servers, right? Yes of course we could have left when they opened up the EU datacenter. But leaving friends, gil and houses that we build up for years? What for? For having 10 different languages in the game? No thanks. I prefer english only even though i am german. I refuse to speak german in this game, hell i refuse to set it to german because everything just sounds wrong.

I never had any problems with my old ping with an av. 110ms and you should be fine with that. I am now playing with ~170ms and to be honest: So far i haven't noticed any real difference. That might chance during EU prime time. And yes i am upset too but i doubt that SE is going to revert their move.

[cakesphere]

Yeah, slidecasting is canceling my casts now. Any ideas on how to mitigate this?

[KittenMittens]

I'm getting basically the same ping now on NA as well as EU from the East Coast, with it being slightly lower on EU. The move is a bit disappointing to say the least; hopefully we'll get East Coast servers again one day? There's two NA data centers, after all.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Yeah, slidecasting is canceling my casts now. Any ideas on how to mitigate this?

Get used to the new ping and try again? I had no issues at 90+, or double weaving or anything people say is impossible at ping over 50 lol

[Akari_Theron]

So did a test now that servers are live and I have gone from 107ms to 24ms avg. I am so happy, sadly though there will be others who will get the opposite and get huge increases.

[MistakeNot]

Ping on the east coast is borderline unplayable even with a VPN. Why on EARTH did they move it to west coast rather than central? I thought for sure it was going to end up in Chicago

Went from approx. 50ms using WTFast to 89ms. Without WTFast I'd be over 100ms. Thanks for nothing SE. Guess I won't be playing BRD anytime soon.

100ms ping is actually quite good, so I don't see what you are complaining about. (50 ms is very good.)

Packet travel time from US east coast to west coast (based on distance alone and ignoring routing delays) is approximately 14ms.
Placing the servers in between would thus change latency by a whole 7ms.

Most people will of course see bigger differences in latency, but that is not due to geographic location, but is all due to how ISPs and carriers handle and route the packets.