Since SE is giving us regional servers I think we can assume the jp button did exist and did for long time. They can and do craft, mine, and battle faster then we do in the US. I have seen them out mine me 3 to 1 at times during high latency. I do ping and troubleshoot my network daily. That is what I do for a living. I have been in contact with SE and Comcast on numerous occasions only to find they aggree with the argument that the ping times and latency is too high for US to compete with JP in this game. Server structure certainly does not help. Since Yoshi-P is giving us Regional Servers we can and should understand that him along with many others do understand the differences a ping can make and for now SE is willing to help when 2.0 comes out. In the mean time there is nothing we can do about it. Anyone who says they are living in say TN or IL or anywhere else in the US and has a better latency and ping time then JP in Japan are full of it.

Incidently My ping on hop 15 to IP Address 202.67.52.81 was 208ms. My ping to default gateway in house is <1ms and my ping to my nearest node is under 2ms. My ping to a SE website to the coast in the US stays around 23ms. My ping does not go up or get worse till I live the continental US. By which from what you can see @208 is considerably higher.