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The Community's Reaction (TCR) - The NA Server Move

Offended·8/27/2015, 1:31:22 AM·13 votes·7,880 views
http://i.imgur.com/Yncgkis.png

Hey there! I thought it would be fun to put together a little forum event called "The Community's Reaction" or TCR for short. It will talk about a recent event and the community's general reaction. Think of it as a "summary thread" filled with biased sources compiled in an unbiased manner. Now that that's out of the way, lets get onto the topic at hand!

Yesterday, August 25th, Riot moved the location of the NA servers from Portland, Oregon to Chicago, Illinois. While cheers and groans had been heard when the change was first announced, the overall response has amplified tenfold over the past 36 hours. Below is a collection of posts with various takes on the event:

Positive (from the East & South) http://i.imgur.com/umH6Thv.png http://i.imgur.com/hLSnGmA.png http://i.imgur.com/w7k5gW5.png http://i.imgur.com/rbduxy6.png

Positive (from the West) http://i.imgur.com/vE3EEWL.png

While these comments are pretty encouraging to see, it has also become apparent that there is a large number of people who are pretty upset by the changes.

Negative (from the East & South) http://i.imgur.com/iKo6dJv.png

Negative (from the West) http://i.imgur.com/BYapHlM.png http://i.imgur.com/F0o1TDY.png http://i.imgur.com/TZwmlQN.png http://i.imgur.com/X718nXt.png http://i.imgur.com/LkOJxZl.png

The dismissive ones (mostly from the East) http://i.imgur.com/58gnWv6.png http://i.imgur.com/lSxbqjg.png http://i.imgur.com/pGgpEiX.png

The mediator(s) http://i.imgur.com/hr7q5VU.png

The constructive ones http://i.imgur.com/RCJVTxC.png http://i.imgur.com/Hc33lht.png http://i.imgur.com/fr7npsK.png http://i.imgur.com/PyfM9x3.png (and my personal favorite) http://i.imgur.com/xAv3q3K.png

I really suggest reading through a few of the constructive comments, as they are pretty great alternatives to the current situation. I also decided to make a spreadsheet of all the reported ping changes I could find and then make a visual map. (I'm not the best in Illustrator, but I tried)

The current ping situation looks a lot more like this: http://i.imgur.com/Yncgkis.png

instead of this: http://i.imgur.com/W9J5Xyn.gifv

BIASED OPINION INCOMING: I suppose it's time for me to fess up. I live on the West Coast (actually, I lived about a mile from the old servers), but my ping has increased to about 85. Personally, I find this still playable, but I do pay $140 per month for business class internet and my buddy who doesn't is getting 150ms+. For months (you can look at my old posts) I have been making posts and commenting about the need for an East Coast server as an addition, not a replacement. I find that a two server solution with ping prioritization OR a two server solution with completely separate networks would please nearly everyone. Why Riot refuses this approach is beyond me.

Please put your current ping and location in the comments below and I'll do my best to update the map accordingly. If you have any thoughts/ideas/feedback/feelings/personal stories also feel free to share below. I have included a poll but I'm much more interested in your actual responses. (Rather than just numbers on a poll)

Thanks, Offended

67 Comments

AsphodelNext8/27/2015, 4:16:03 AM7 votes

Something you have to consider when you read these maps: area is not proportional to population.

Alaska population: 736,732 Hawaii population: 1.42 million vs. New Jersey population: 8.938 million New York population: EDIT: 19.75 million (I knew that seemed low...) Pennsylvania population: 12.79 million

Certainly, a lot of people are affected very negatively. And I'm not gonna argue the whole population count for the entire continent and more, cause we'll get bogged down in details like proportions of people who play League and whether we should weight by magnitude of effect on ping. But it should be pretty clear that Alaskans and Hawaiians make up a relatively small proportion of the playerbase, compared to even a fraction of the East Coast.

Overall, I think most people were positively affected by the server move. Essentially, League moved the ~80ms circle of people who can play without noticeable lag to better cover the whole US, at the cost of making the game nearly unplayable for Alaska and Hawaii.

Other statistics: The center(weighted location average) of United States population is in Wright County, Missouri. That's about 300 miles from Chicago, but about 800 miles from Portland. If the US were 3 equal population states Population graph by state

cdcspoon8/27/2015, 1:41:50 AM5 votes

I live in Santa Barbara, California, an hour and a half north of LA. My ping went from 35-40 to 100-130. First, congrats on the most well put together post I have ever seen on the forums. Second, I'd like to say I don't think this ping is "unplayable" but rather limits the champions I can effectively play, and removes the sense of fun I had playing. I could still find a certain degree of success with low difficulty champions, but it isn't worth it for me personally to play like that.

Raid Boss Morde8/27/2015, 5:10:19 AM5 votes

Southern CA

From 40 ping to 75-110.

Swollwonder8/27/2015, 2:13:54 AM5 votes

To me, a two server solution makes sense. I don't really care if I play with random people on the internet. I like playing with my real life friends. And my real life friends are probably going to live on the same side of the entire United States. The two servers makes more sense to me.

That being said I can respect riot for attempting to NOT split up internet friends. I played on 120-150 ping despite being in Central (cheap internet op) with spikes of up to 215 or even 300 when my family streams. Its not undoable. You can play at 120, you can survive at 200, and you can try to split push at 300, not that those are fun but 120 is fine enough to play.

P.S. as far as riot making more money from LCS in your favorite post I believe they actually lose money from the events themselves (they see a return in the fact more people play their game or purchase LCS champ skins but other than that the events themselves lose money I believe)

Angry Monster8/27/2015, 6:54:27 AM4 votes

Look at those no votes, with people that can not even back up their vote. All the east coast players are doing is trying to stick it to someone else. They made a choice to play when they always had bad ping and screamed their heads off so they could flip the tables.

You did a good job with this data and picture. I was in class tonight thinking about doing a shity ms paint job to show what riots server map looked like. I personally think that their needs to be an added color for people with sub 30 to show how tilted the map actually is. A new deep blue for the graph.

I would love to see riot respond to this, but they were to busy trying to figure out what went wrong ( like the whole concept). Though a few rioters did post in a bash the western player threads to make jokes. Glad they are highlighting those threads with their time considering how many people are pissed off.

I Freebird I8/27/2015, 7:30:01 AM4 votes

{quoted}

The current ping situation looks a lot more like this: http://i.imgur.com/Yncgkis.png

instead of this: http://i.imgur.com/W9J5Xyn.gifv

THANK YOU for posting this. Riot is trying to make it out like it's totally k now and np, dun worry, but it's totally a problem now for a lot of people, myself included, this map removes the sugar-coating on it. Your post is well written, it covers all the bases, and has an extremely useful poll in it, I really hope this gets a red in it, because until further changes have been made addressing the new ping issues, I'm done showing my support for Riot.

Loli no Chikan8/27/2015, 3:52:31 PM3 votes

Montréal

Old ping: 72ms New ping: 26-28ms

TacoTheKitten8/27/2015, 2:05:49 AM3 votes

I actually live in massachusetts and the my range was 112-85.... it was very playable, and i honestly feel really bad for the players on the west coast, in japan, alaska, and hawaii. I do have faith that riot is working to improve the coverage overall, as it has only been a day since the move. NA is a huge region, and two servers would be a great option, just as there's two eu servers. I personally think that chicago is too far east of a location; denver, pierre, or even Lincoln are much more centralized.

Ralantha8/27/2015, 11:06:19 PM3 votes

Phx, Arizona- went from 32 to 65 on Cox cable.

Ironclad Dragon8/27/2015, 2:22:50 AM3 votes

Reading the numbers, all I see is that East and West have essentially traded places but more people are worse off, since there's a lot more people living in the West (Mexico, Alaska and Hawaii).

Angry Monster8/27/2015, 11:18:39 PM2 votes

i feel bad for the Northern Canadian animals, no connection to riot at all it seems.

Captain Aishi8/27/2015, 2:38:04 AM2 votes

my friend from colombia had his ping go down to 120 from a constant 200+ on the old server... things just seem really odd at the moment

Slamurai Jack8/27/2015, 7:17:41 PM2 votes

A lot of numbers on the new map are definitely exaggerated but Riot's projections were also extremely optimistic. I have a friend playing from Alaska and he's getting 110 ping, which while still bad, is hardly 170+. I'm playing from Arizona and I'm getting 72, and my routing is still fucked up too which Riot is working on. I do think the move was good as a whole but a lot of people got fucked way, way harder than they were supposed to because IP's in this country are terrible.

Gandalf0108128/27/2015, 7:53:59 PM2 votes

Went from 95-100 ping to 45 ping, I am in FL.

Aviously8/27/2015, 9:20:01 PM2 votes

I would really love the two sever idea except for one problem, I have friends that I love playing with on the east coast, and I (living in california) don't mind the slightly higher ping (60-110). It's too bad for Hawaii and Alaska tho.

Maratsune8/27/2015, 9:08:49 AM2 votes

The moose made me giggle. I have nothing to say but how happy I am about the server fix. From playing at a constant 110-ish ping (that didn't even seem that bad at the time) to now playing at 35ish, it's great not having to worry about my ping shooting up to unplayable any more. Then again, I live a little south of Toronto, so I'm definitely on the better side of things.

Alljoy8/27/2015, 2:18:33 AM2 votes

I play from SEA and I used to have about.. 380 ping, now I've got around 320 but I've been having spikes often, I do hope it's something temporary in light of the network route optimization that's going on.

Or else I'd probably have to leave, and I really have nowhere else to go.

Maximum Morde8/27/2015, 2:09:20 AM2 votes

TX here and my ping went from being variable 80-120ish down to consistently in the 30's. At least for my experience, Riot's map is more accurate by far. The other map would suggest that my ping wouldn't change, or would get worse, which is clearly not the case.

AMYS GRAVE8/27/2015, 7:07:44 AM2 votes

Geneva switzerland to NA servers- 110