Please relocate NA servers - - Unplayable in Asia after moving

[sauceboss.3254]

Recently it was revealed(I can't find the link anymore) that the NA servers were relocated to the US east coast. They were previously stationed in the central area, Dallas(this is the city I remember).

 

I have played the game in the USA for several years and now I play in Asia and for several months the servers were fine. With the release of POF and the server relocation, my ping has been significantly affected in a way that generally makes the game unplayable. My ping is affected by an average of 40-80 points. These results are similar to those shown by other regional players I have discussed this issue with.

 

The reason for the move was stated as, in summary, there are more players on the east coast. This is a poorly veiled indication of cost cutting measures that are very negatively affecting a major portion of the player base that reside outside of the US.

 

In a recent test on discord, a relocation of server from the US east coast to the US west coast presented a 40% reduction in ping. Numbers averaged around 250 ping on the US east coast and around 150 ping on the west coast. The central and US east coast numbers closely resemble ping numbers in GW2. This difference is extremely significant in terms of user experience and in game feedback. The east coast is very unplayable while the west coast is very smooth.

 

Further at issue, the benefit granted to east coast players by this move is insignificant at best. Having played the servers prior configuration for many years I know first hand that the in game experience was very smooth. There is not realistic reason for this move and the servers SHOULD be moved to the west coast. This would grant a quality user experience to all of the continental US and also to the players in Asia and Australia.

 

PS - If anyone has a link to the reddit(?) thread detailing the movement of servers please link below.

[Ojimaru.8970]

Gonna play devil's advocate here.

 

> @"sauceboss.3254"

> My ping is affected by an average of 40-80 points.

 

For clarity, we are talking about 40-80 _milli_seconds, or 0.04 to 0.08 seconds. Having played Guild Wars 2, and a variety of online reaction-heavy games at 250 - 350 ms latency for many years, adding 40 more milliseconds may be noticeable, but won't make Guild Wars 2, in particular, "unplayable."

 

> @"sauceboss.3254" said:

> There is not realistic reason for this move...

>

> but @"sauceboss.3254" also said:

> ...indication of cost cutting measures...

 

In other words, there _is_ a very valid for ArenaNet to move their servers, according to you.

 

> @"sauceboss.3254" said:

> ...very negatively affecting a major portion of the player base that reside outside the of the US.

 

I can empathize, but that doesn't necessarily equate to a financial benefit to moving their servers _again_ (which will no doubt incur far more costs) to cater for the Asia Pacific region. Are there more players spending more money there that care about the ping? Hard to say.

 

 

[Menadena.7482]

Um, if you are outside of the US maybe the best solution would be not to play on US servers?

[mercury ranique.2170]

Location isnt what counts for the ping or the performance. When it is a non-generic issue (so more people have this, but there is also a significant part of the community that has no issues), it most often has to do with routing. The route from A to B on the internet is determined by your internet service provider (it is what you actually pay for). The further away the hops on route are, the less responsable the ISP will be (but the more will suffer from this issue). There are many reasons why routes and speeds differ per provider for a specific destination. Some are economic, some are even political (I know the chinese ISP's are sometimes forced by the government to give bad pings to certain services on the internet to protect Chinese services that are simular). Bottom line is that it isnt something Arenanet can do a lot about. Complaining at your ISP often proofs useless. Changing ISP can be a good option (but pretty drastic).

 

Also reverting any change will be hard as well. The old servers are dismantled and the ip-adresses recycled. So even when they go back, it will lead to simular issues for people. How many and if it is an improvement or not remains to be seen.

[Healix.5819]

> @sauceboss.3254 said:

> The reason for the move was stated as, in summary, there are more players on the east coast. This is a poorly veiled indication of cost cutting measures that are very negatively affecting a major portion of the player base that reside outside of the US.

 

They didn't give a specific reason for actually switching to Amazon, only that Amazon's servers were better; obviously Amazon has a lot more resources. ArenaNet's probably not saving money by renting servers over using their own parent company's servers. When it comes to actually choosing the east coast however, that's because the only options were the east and west coast since that's where Amazon is, and a majority is apparently closer to the east coast. That's not really surprising however considering the east coast is where most of the overseas countries are coming in, whereas Southeast Asia is routed through the west coast.

 

 

If you want to compare pings for Amazon's datacenters, ping:

dynamodb.us-west-1.amazonaws.com

dynamodb.us-east-1.amazonaws.com

dynamodb.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com

[CedarDog.9723]

> @Menadena.7482 said:

> Um, if you are outside of the US maybe the best solution would be not to play on US servers?

 

The problem is, there are only servers in NA and EU (and maybe China?)... By your suggestion, would leave them with the choice of EU (since I think China is its own thing) and who's to say they'll get better ping to EU. So I think what you meant to say is: "You're not near any servers so stop playing."

[Menadena.7482]

> @Healix.5819 said:

> > @sauceboss.3254 said:

> > The reason for the move was stated as, in summary, there are more players on the east coast. This is a poorly veiled indication of cost cutting measures that are very negatively affecting a major portion of the player base that reside outside of the US.

>

> They didn't give a specific reason for actually switching to Amazon, only that Amazon's servers were better; obviously Amazon has a lot more resources. ArenaNet's probably not saving money by renting servers over using their own parent company's servers. When it comes to actually choosing the east coast however, that's because the only options were the east and west coast since that's where Amazon is, and a majority is apparently closer to the east coast. That's not really surprising however considering the east coast is where most of the overseas countries are coming in, whereas Southeast Asia is routed through the west coast.

>

>

>

>

> If you want to compare pings for Amazon's datacenters, ping:

> dynamodb.us-west-1.amazonaws.com

> dynamodb.us-east-1.amazonaws.com

> dynamodb.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com

 

Actually, there is a big movement to go from specific datacenters to hosting on the cloud (amazon, google, and so on). There are multiple reasons for it but the days of every company in town having their own datacenter is swiftly becoming something akin to legacy applications.

[Menadena.7482]

> @CedarDog.9723 said:

> > @Menadena.7482 said:

> > Um, if you are outside of the US maybe the best solution would be not to play on US servers?

>

> The problem is, there are only servers in NA and EU (and maybe China?)... By your suggestion, would leave them with the choice of EU (since I think China is its own thing) and who's to say they'll get better ping to EU. So I think what you meant to say is: "You're not near any servers so stop playing."

 

No, what I meant was those are called the NA servers. If you are not in NA you use them at your own risk as their location is not optimal for you. If I created an account on the EU servers (I am on the east coast of the US) I could hardly complain about where in the EU those servers were.

 

A cloud in Asia is a valid topic but the solution to it is not to move everything in another region.

[SkyShroud.2865]

Yes, I have more ping. Used to be 230ms, now 280ms. Life is already hard with high ping, now you have to go and make it higher.

[CedarDog.9723]

> @Menadena.7482 said:

> > @CedarDog.9723 said:

> > > @Menadena.7482 said:

> > > Um, if you are outside of the US maybe the best solution would be not to play on US servers?

> >

> > The problem is, there are only servers in NA and EU (and maybe China?)... By your suggestion, would leave them with the choice of EU (since I think China is its own thing) and who's to say they'll get better ping to EU. So I think what you meant to say is: "You're not near any servers so stop playing."

>

> No, what I meant was those are called the NA servers. If you are not in NA you use them at your own risk as their location is not optimal for you. If I created an account on the EU servers (I am on the east coast of the US) I could hardly complain about where in the EU those servers were.

>

> A cloud in Asia is a valid topic but the solution to it is not to move everything in another region.

 

Yeah, though they should've found some servers central in the U.S. so that the two population centers in NA (namely east and west coast) have relatively equal ping (assuming the backbones between the coasts are relatively similar).... If they moved it to the east coast because there are a lot of people coming in from EU (as suggested by another poster), then that also would not be a reason to not centralize since people from EU shouldn't matter to placement in NA.

 

But anyhow, people outside of NA (and EU) have no choice but to complain if they're impacted since ANet doesn't seem to be jumping at the opportunity to open up servers outside of those two locales.

[CedarDog.9723]

> @SkyShroud.2865 said:

> Yes, I have more ping. Used to be 230ms, now 280ms. Life is already hard with high ping, now you have to go and make it higher.

 

Yeah, my ping used to be great, in the 50-60s. Now it's typically 90+. Skill lag also has become more of an issue, so I'm sure my ping must be spiking way above 90.

[Inso.2195]

> @Menadena.7482 said:

> No, what I meant was those are called the NA servers. If you are not in NA you use them at your own risk

 

I will accept that **risk** IF Anet use those server since the release of the game, screwing their OCX/SEA customers 5 yrs later after tons of time/money investment is unacceptable

 

 

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

First, make sure you use pingplotter or something similar to see where your signal is getting lost. It might have little to do with ANet's choice of servers. Second, contact support with that data and work with them to see what suggestion they have to improve your latency (and they will have some).

 

According to ANet's connectivity guru, average latency measured across all players (and weighted by things like time of day, hours played, etc) are better since swapping data centers. Of course, some people are going to see things get worse, but equally for some people, things are now better (at least according to ANet's data).

 

I hope people can agree that it's the right business decision to make things better for the greater number, even if that inconveniences some folks.

[Healix.5819]

> @Menadena.7482 said:

> No, what I meant was those are called the NA servers. If you are not in NA you use them at your own risk as their location is not optimal for you.

 

It's actually the opposite. EU had a specified region whereas NA was for everyone else.

 

The plus with using Amazon is that they've shown that they're capable of hosting a single region between multiple datacenters. If they wanted to, they could host maps at any of the other Amazon locations, such as the west coast or Australia, though they need to first change how megaservers work.

[Menadena.7482]

> @CedarDog.9723 said:

> > @Menadena.7482 said:

> > > @CedarDog.9723 said:

> > > > @Menadena.7482 said:

> > > > Um, if you are outside of the US maybe the best solution would be not to play on US servers?

> > >

> > > The problem is, there are only servers in NA and EU (and maybe China?)... By your suggestion, would leave them with the choice of EU (since I think China is its own thing) and who's to say they'll get better ping to EU. So I think what you meant to say is: "You're not near any servers so stop playing."

> >

> > No, what I meant was those are called the NA servers. If you are not in NA you use them at your own risk as their location is not optimal for you. If I created an account on the EU servers (I am on the east coast of the US) I could hardly complain about where in the EU those servers were.

> >

> > A cloud in Asia is a valid topic but the solution to it is not to move everything in another region.

>

> Yeah, though they should've found some servers central in the U.S. so that the two population centers in NA (namely east and west coast) have relatively equal ping (assuming the backbones between the coasts are relatively similar).... If they moved it to the east coast because there are a lot of people coming in from EU (as suggested by another poster), then that also would not be a reason to not centralize since people from EU shouldn't matter to placement in NA.

>

> But anyhow, people outside of NA (and EU) have no choice but to complain if they're impacted since ANet doesn't seem to be jumping at the opportunity to open up servers outside of those two locales.

 

While my company went with amazon I went to a presentation of the google cloud and they are probably similar. All the servers are virtual and can be co-located to another geographical google location. I am guessing anet is running stats and determining the optimal physical location and for some reason they chose the east coast.

 

As was pointed out by someone earlier though, the geographical location is not 100% of the story. Your ping is dependent on your path. Someone on the other side of the country who happens to have a direct fiber to a computer on the other side of my city (for some reason) would have a faster connection than me having to route through various servers that are the cyber equivalent of local roads. Even though I could walk to that other server faster than they could take a jet to it.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

For those who didn't read all the posts in the link(s) above, this may be informational:

 

**DrStephenCWStudio Tech Director**

As I said in another response, it's hard to judge distances on a World Map, because it's a somewhat arbitrary projection of a sphere onto a flat service, but the distance change from Singapore to Dallas vs. Singapore to Virginia seems quite small. If you're having ping issues (and I believe you are), it's from some other cause than distance.

 

Possible solutions are: Use of a VPN and/or working with the Tech CS Team.

 

Good luck.

[Menadena.7482]

> @Inso.2195 said:

> > @Menadena.7482 said:

> > No, what I meant was those are called the NA servers. If you are not in NA you use them at your own risk

>

> I will accept that **risk** IF Anet use those server since the release of the game, screwing their OCX/SEA customers 5 yrs later after tons of time/money investment is unacceptable

>

>

 

They went from their own servers to cloud servers. That is the way the whole IT industry is moving. It is not something they up and did one morning to mess with gamers in Asia. Assuming the amazon cloud works like google's cloud the servers can move based on traffic .... which means there is not a valid case for moving them west, sorry.

 

 

 

[PopeUrban.2578]

The entire point of having regional servers is to serve players in that region.

 

The intent of the NA servers is for NA users, the same way the intent of EU servers is for EU users, and Chinese servers is for that market.

 

Your particular use case here is outside all of the intended goals of the game's server structures. I don't see any clear reason to request changing the US servers in a way that makes them better performers for Asian users.

 

You may be better off using the EU cluster, or if you really want to petition Anet for a better use case for non-Chinese users, maybe trying to get a SE Asia/AUS server specifically targeting those users would be a better deal. This is a lot easier for Anet to do now that they've moved their server architecture to a third party cloud solution than when they had to maintain their own physical servers.

 

I hate to say it, but you're not the target market for the servers you're playing on, so I seriously doubt improving your ping is on anyone's list of priorities.

[Leablo.2651]

> @"PopeUrban.2578" said:

> The entire point of having regional servers is to serve players in that region.

>

> The intent of the NA servers is for NA users, the same way the intent of EU servers is for EU users, and Chinese servers is for that market.

>

> Your particular use case here is outside all of the intended goals of the game's server structures. I don't see any clear reason to request changing the US servers in a way that makes them better performers for Asian users.

 

That is incorrrect. https://help.guildwars2.com/hc/en-us/articles/201862738-Game-Regions

 

> There will be 3 major regional designations for the release of Guild Wars 2:

> Europe: Defined as Western Europe and Eastern Europe. Players in these regions connect to the European datacenter.

> North America: Defined as Canada, Mexico, and the United States. Players in these regions connect to the North American datacenter.

> Other: Players in countries not listed above will connect to the North American datacenter.

 

The page also has a list of dozens of such "other" countries explicitly indicating they are, or were, supported. They were absolutely not told that their region was "outside the intended goals" of the game service, that is a fabrication invented by you. A change 5 years after the fact that undermines their ability to play the game is clearly not in line with the reassurances they were given to encourage them to spend money on the game.

[Khisanth.2948]

On the flip side the servers have moved closer to me but I have not seen any improvement to my ping and fortunately it hasn't gotten any worse.

 

I guess a more likely culprit is a routing change.

[Shikigami.4013]

Has it ever occured to those who have a worse ping now, that there may be just as many people who have a better ping now? They moved the servers, and it is worse for some. Asking to move them back is -in my eyes- ridiculous.

 

And I fully agree with some other posters here that 40-80 ms higher ping will not change GW2 to be unplayable. Just like the streets are filled with more and more cars, the internet is filled with more and more traffic. While not many new streets can be built or made wider, the net infrastructure is being expanded all the time, so maybe in a month there will be a new backbone set in service which lowers the ping again - and in 6 months it may be filled and as slow as today. Nobody has a god-given right to a perfect connection when the traffic has to go halfway around the world.

[sephiroth.4217]

> @"Menadena.7482" said:

> Um, if you are outside of the US maybe the best solution would be not to play on US servers?

 

Mind pointing me to the Australian servers then?

 

Not that I noticed a difference in ping, it's still about 280-320 and has been since I started this game 5 years ago. So I laugh when 80 is "unplayable".


 

 

[Zedek.8932]

The amount of nodes (or routes) is what actually kills ping. I had a big lag issue once and after tracing my packages I lost 99% after random nodes in Scandinavia. That was not only an odd way for my packages to take, but also apparently there was a problem with huge backbones at the time. It also just lasted a few hours.

 

I contacted the support and they wanted me to use a tool by ArenaNet, which is actually just a bunch of Windows tools (tracer, ping, flushdns (?)) so you might want to find out which server connects you the best (less nodes / no slow node in between).

 

Excelsior.

[Gator.5729]

Its also not always about ping. Its also about the quality of the connection and the speed of the connection. Someone with a ping of 200ms with 0% packet loss will have a better experience than someone with a 75ms ping and a 25% packet loss. Skill lag is almost always attributed to packet loss,. When you combine packet loss with a high ping things really get bad.

 

The hardest thing for people to understand is that there is alot more to your connection than just "your end" and Anet and why youtube and netflix works fine and GW2 doesn't. There was a good post from someone that summed it up nicely. The internet is like driving to work. You drive the same route to work everyday. This morning there is an accident at an intersection half way there. Traffic is now slowed down or possible even stopped. You have two choices at that point, either wait for someone to fix the problem or find a different route. Your employer is not responsible for the accident or responsible for towing the cars away. Would you blame them? What if they are repaving the main road that you use everyday? What if the road was flooded or a power line was down. All the nodes your connection passes through between your house and Anet are exactly like that, there are lots of reasons why there could be a problem and its not Anet's fault or responsibility to fix. However, if you research and figure out where the problem is and provide that information to Anet support, they will try and help you the best they can, why? Because they truly do care about our playing experience.

[Khisanth.2948]

On the flip side the servers have moved closer to me but I have not seen any improvement to my ping and fortunately it hasn't gotten any worse.

 

I guess a more likely culprit is a routing change. > @"Healix.5819" said:

> > @sauceboss.3254 said:

> > The reason for the move was stated as, in summary, there are more players on the east coast. This is a poorly veiled indication of cost cutting measures that are very negatively affecting a major portion of the player base that reside outside of the US.

>

> They didn't give a specific reason for actually switching to Amazon, only that Amazon's servers were better; obviously Amazon has a lot more resources. ArenaNet's probably not saving money by renting servers over using their own parent company's servers. When it comes to actually choosing the east coast however, that's because the only options were the east and west coast since that's where Amazon is, and a majority is apparently closer to the east coast. That's not really surprising however considering the east coast is where most of the overseas countries are coming in, whereas Southeast Asia is routed through the west coast.

>

>

>

>

> If you want to compare pings for Amazon's datacenters, ping:

> dynamodb.us-west-1.amazonaws.com

> dynamodb.us-east-1.amazonaws.com

> dynamodb.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com

 

There is also much greater flexibility. They can increase capacity around releases and lower it back down after demand goes down.