NA East Coast Server
When General discussion was closed someone copied all the Riot posts and made a new one on GD now that you can't search for anything in GD I can't seem to find the post anymore and it has likely been deleted but I made sure I saved everything that was in the initial post in case something happened. This is not my words but a copy but I cannot remember the name of the person that posted it on GD.
I believe that people should be accountable for their words. I also believe that paying customers should be at the very least, respected.
Riot has has recognized East coast latency as unfair, sectioning the competitive University league into regions, and agreeing to fly contestants to the west coast to play in the final.
Although it had been raised previously, the request for an east coast server gained incredible momentum in this (http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=2277789&page=2 ) thread, starting in June of 2012. Since then, over 1000 pages (100,000 posts, enough to break the topic thread) have been generated by users with a common, simple request. A fair playing field amongst their peers.
Riot did respond to the outcry 6 months after it originated.
12-26-2013 (Riot Foro - Network Engineer) "This is something definitely on our radar, and has been a talking point in our various teams at Riot for quite some time now."
12-28-2013 (Riot Foro - Network Engineer) "~100ms to the NA servers from the East Coast is something we can improve." "Latency buffs are coming. " "Further improvements are being discussed,"
A month later, they commented to reassure us that this was a focus, and that they were investing to resolve it.
01-28-2014 (Riot Foro - Network Engineer) "This isn't something we're ignoring - but it's not something that is going to happen overnight either. Can't divulge any plans right now but we're working on improving latency for everyone in North America"
Finally, after over 3500 posts, the issue escalated, and a VP committed to investing resource to improve the experience for their East coast customers.
02-24-2014 (sonicdeathmonk - Vice President of Operations) "Not promising East Coast game servers but I am committing to lower ping time for East Coast players"
Four months later, country manager (not a North American one, but a country manager nonetheless) even chimed in to verify that the issue was a priority.
06-07-2014 (Cedriel - Country Manager Chile) "We recognize that East Coast players are not getting the same quality of service that West Coast players do—and we're committed to doing something about that. Wiser heads than mine are working on this"
On September 4, 2014 a response finally came from Riot President himself, Marc Merill. In this post. Although he refused to note specifically that East coast latency is the key issue, he did inform us that he would have his staff provide an update.
"sorry if we've been radio silent.Will ping our team for an update since latency (driven by external factors) is on our radar."
It's been almost a month since then, and no response has been communicated to his customers (His staff must be on the east coast or something?).
I encourage you to continue this discussion, as well as help Riot prioritize the issue by tweeting @RiotSupport.
Red.
For those interested in the full transcript from which the excerpts were obtained.
Originally Posted by Riot Foro Hey guys.
This is something definitely on our radar, and has been a talking point in our various teams at Riot for quite some time now.
We're currently working on ways to make matchmaking more intelligent so this can be possible. The last thing we want to do is make NA East and West servers and change things up, so there's a lot of design decisions to take into account.
In the meantime, we're working at optimising the connectivity from the East Coast to our servers on the West. This stuff does take time - but I promise we're constantly working in ALL of our regions on making it the best experience for everybody.
tl;dr - Stick tight Summoners! Working on it
Originally Posted by Riot Foro It appears my post has made a few waves around Reddit etc and has raised quite a bit of speculation. To summarise:
~100ms to the NA servers from the East Coast is something we can improve.
Latency buffs are coming. We're working closely with the major Internet Service Providers (not just in NA, but in all regions) to have you connecting to LoL as optimally as possible. Time moves slow in Internet land as there's a lot of moving parts involved, but the aforementioned works are already underway.
Further improvements are being discussed, including the possibility of distributing game servers in other locations than the West Coast. < This scenario would be a huge shakeup - and though we love challenges, we want to make sure that we pick the best solution that is going to improve everyone's experience overall, and get it right the first time.
Hope this clarifies things!
Foro out.
Originally Posted by sonicdeathmonk Not promising East Coast game servers but I am committing to lower ping time for East Coast players and an attempt to balance ping time for most players to a closer range then we see today between the coasts. So more like centrally located servers for the NA player base (USA and Canada) as best as we can manage given the need for bandwidth, data center services, and other complicated issues about working in different parts of the USA. Servers are in hand, location contract is in work, then magic (though we might need some tweaking after the switch is thrown).
-sonicdeathmonk
Originally Posted by Cedriel
We try to be transparent on what we do and why we do it: that's why we're doing things like patch previews, post content ahead of time for feedback on PBE, write dev blogs and interact directly with players in the forums, twitter, reddit and such. Unfortunately, there are things about which we can't say much until we have something to deliver.
For instance, take a project that is still in an early stage and is undergoing a lot of testing and revision. Anything we show you is going to create excitement and set expectations, but what we actually launch might end up being very different, to the disappointment of a great many people who were anticipating something else. Sometimes, we find along the way that what seemed like a great idea turns out to just not to be fun in practice, and simply never release it because it would've been a pretty bad player experience. We messed up bad with Magma Chamber on this one, for instance.
Another example would be projects that are large in scope and technically complex. Sometimes these things change mid-development, or we find out that some problems were more complicated than we anticipated. Particularly when you're doing new things, deadlines can slip. If we promise stuff and fail to deliver, you have a right to be pissed at us. We'd rather under-promise and over-deliver!
Finally, there are projects that we simply have to be vague about for security reasons. Security often plays out like a cat-and-mouse game in which hostile parties come up with creative new vectors for attack and we come up with counter-measures. Spelling out in detail what those counter-measures will be ahead of time amounts to giving these people advance notice, and making them less effective. For instance, we're working on solutions to reduce or eliminate the pain that players feel from DDOS and drophack attacks, but we can't really talk about what or how.
We recognize that East Coast players are not getting the same quality of service that West Coast players do—and we're committed to doing something about that. Wiser heads than mine are working on this. Unfortunately, if their work hits any of those points—and almost any solution will—there's just not much we can say until it's ready or near-ready. It's frustrating to you because it feels like we're not listening, and it's frustrating for us because there's nothing that we want more than to show all the cool stuff we're doing to make League of Legends better—but there are good reasons for it.
In the meantime, all we can do is apologize for not being good enough, thanking you for your patience, and telling you that we're working on it.
I am posting this because I think that we should be aware that we have been wanting lower ping on the east coast for a very long time, now that they have a new infrastructure it could be another year before we ever see lower ping by them moving the server location. I can't believe that after all this time we still could be another year out and its frustrating considering we have been talking about this for so long and we come to find out that they still haven't even decided on a location never mind the actual migration of the servers. Also if the person who originally posted this on GD (not general discussion) lets me know ill make sure you are given the credit for this.
