Lag spikes in instances but no latency increase?

[Ayuhra]

If I remember what Yoshi said correctly, the instance servers are separate physical servers from the world servers and all worlds on a DC share the same instance servers. What you're describing is latency on the instance server due to high load and not lag from internet traffic. I think all NA DCs are going through similar growing pains so I wouldn't be confident in saying switching DCs will solve the issue but if you have any flexibility in your schedule, try to play off peak hours. That may help the issue you're seeing.

Ultimately, this isn't a problem you can solve, its purely in SE's hands. They are trying to get new hardware but the last update we had on that is it will be late in EW or into the next expansion before it happens. Its not that they're dragging their feet but properly upgrading the hardware is a time consuming process, made more so with the pandemic.

I have definitely noticed lag spikes in instances, worse at the beginning of a pull, more frequent on weekends.

Unfortunately for OP I am on the least populated Data Center. All DCs are standard world only right now, no preferred so we have lots of people everywhere.

Good for the game, not great for the instance servers.