Does your physical location affect your server world ping?

[Eight O Eight.8257]

I live in Minnesota, USA. My game world is Tarnished Coast. If I transferred to a different server would it shorten my ping distance? (I know server affects WvW, this has nothing to do with that.)

[infrequentia.3465]

no it would not.

all servers are basicly just in name only they all connect to the same server.

 

only different regions would affect the ping like changing to EU from NA or vice versa

[GDchiaScrub.3241]

> @"infrequentia.3465" said:

> no it would not.

> all servers are basicly just in name only they all connect to the same server.

>

> only different regions would affect the ping like changing to EU from NA or vice versa

 

Thumbs up this guy. Changing Server Region affects ping the most. I get 50-70ish on NA servers, while my EU account gets 100-200ish (For PvE it's not noticeable to me even at 300 some days). Your service provider is what matters for you of course.

[starlinvf.1358]

> @"GDchiaScrub.3241" said:

> > @"infrequentia.3465" said:

> > no it would not.

> > all servers are basicly just in name only they all connect to the same server.

> >

> > only different regions would affect the ping like changing to EU from NA or vice versa

>

> Thumbs up this guy. Changing Server Region affects ping the most. I get 50-70ish on NA servers, while my EU account gets 100-200ish (For PvE it's not noticeable to me even at 300 some days). Your service provider is what matters for you of course.

 

Its not "most", its the only differing factor beyond server software issues. Realm names are just labels, even under the old system, that dictate how the game manages your connections. Since all the "servers" in NA are out of the same Data center in the Eastern US, theres not much you can do to improve that beyond physically moving to Ohio, getting dedicated fiber to Amazon's back haul network, or inventing a technology that allows for faster then light data transmission.

 

Its also worth noting they switched hosting to Amazon's AWS cloud late last year..... and unfortunately Amazon's infrastructure still hasn't caught up to the mass influx of MMOs and game hosting demand that flared up on their platform over the last 3 years or so. This problem is more noticeable during prime time hours, because their service network is joint hosting the Video service, their Web hosting service, Amazon's store front, several sizable US MMOs, a lot of smaller instanced based MP games, and a slew of IP integrated services they're pushing for Alexia. And this isn't even accounting for the EC2's normal cloud services, which all the other services ride on top of.

 

Most of the Ping Issues in WvW and PvP (where its the least tolerant for it) is caused by processing delays with the server itself. This amplifies any network latency, or can even over shadow it when there are spikes in activity in a small area with a lot of players present. But even with the high error tolerance you can get away with on PvE, there are still random spikes in delay caused by routing issues either on the AWS edge nodes, or metro level problems in your ISP.