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

Offended··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

AsphodelNext7 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

AMYS GRAVE2 votes

New York population: 8.406 million

New York state population 19.75 million. 8.4 is only NYC.

Offended3 votes

Wow! Thank you for this really well written reply. I totally understand that population wise, more people were likely benefited. However, I still don't see how a two server solution could cause any harm and would only help those who got the shorter end of the stick. Thanks again tho! :D

cdcspoon1 votes

California's population is 38.8 million

Total United States Population 318.9 million Total Canada Population 35.2 million with about 2/3 on the east and 1/3 on the west Total Mexico Population 122.3 million

(I thought that these were some fairly significant numbers to add when weighing the pros and cons of this move)

stealthfox941 votes

Just going to put this here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Metropolitan_Statistical_Areas

AsphodelNext1 votes

I was considering <80ms as playable, thus I didn't consider California that harshly affected. It's certainly higher, but it has nowhere close to the impact that 130+ ping does.

What proportion of Mexico plays League, as compared to the US? Also Population graph of Mexico Mexico's population is centered in the east(at the same longitude as Nebraska), putting it closer to Chicago.

cdcspoon5 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.

Offended1 votes

I definitely agree that a lot of champions were taken off the table for West Coast players when this change was made, especially ones that depend on skillshots. I'll factor your ping into the average for the California region and update the map accordingly. Thanks! +1

Biffolo3 votes

To be fair, those champs were off the table for east coast players as well. Not saying it's right per se, but there was no empathy when the shoe was on the other foot. It was always "just play low mechanics champs". Not saying everyone was like that, it was just the general consensus.

GroundRuleDouble2 votes

This doesn't take any champs off the table. Don't be ridiculous.

Arcade Andrew2 votes

San bernardino mountains: lake arrowhead california from 60-120 to 120-300

fuck the new servers tbh

BakedLotion2 votes

{quoted}

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.

100-130? LOL. Limits champions you can play? How fucking spoiled can you get? I played with 110 ping for 3 years. I have never found one single champion that is "effectively unplayable"

60 ms isnt going to make a champion from perfectly playable to almost unplayable. That's literally a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a second.

I went down 70 ping i dont notice a single difference. I couldn't care less if it went back to 110. With 110 ping, i could play riven. I could play yasuo. I could play zed. I could do the ali combo every single time. How is 100-130 gonna make anything unplayable

cdcspoon1 votes

My most played champion is Yasuo, his e goes to a .1 second cd which is in many case lower than my ping would be. Maybe you are just significantly better at the game, but with my reflexes it is difficult to dodge fast moving projectiles, or pull of really quick combos (i.e. Talon). I could still choose these champions, but not play them to the same degree I used to. I don't want anyone to have to play with that kind of latency. I think the game is much more fun at low ping and if we had an East (Chicago) and West (Portland or LA) server, 90% of players could have ping less than 100. Most large online games (CS:GO and DoTA 2) have multiple servers for North America so people can play closer to real time and more reactionary game. Even if they wanted to keep one server for NA, I think Chicago was a sub-optimal choice. It is pretty much in the NorthEast, and while for the continental United States it was better than Portland, it ruins the game for some places (Alaska, Hawaii and a lot of Canada and Mexico), and worsens the game for anyone West of Montana (this is jus an assumption based of geography, I can't say where it really gets worse.)

In short, I definitely feel tripled ping, but I am also here to help articulate the problems of regions worse off, and suggest solutions to the problem that has been raised as a result of this change.

Trylobyte1 votes

{quoted}

Even if they wanted to keep one server for NA, I think Chicago was a sub-optimal choice. It is pretty much in the NorthEast, and while for the continental United States it was better than Portland, it ruins the game for some places (Alaska, Hawaii and a lot of Canada and Mexico), and worsens the game for anyone West of Montana (this is jus an assumption based of geography, I can't say where it really gets worse.)

I feel the need to mention that Chicago is infinitely better than Portland for the central NA server. West Coasters might feel increased ping, but they represent only about 15-20% of the NA population - The other 80-85% have seen a significant reduction. Chicago is also the primary hub of the US internet backbone, which means most major ISPs have huge direct pipelines going to that city. It was a very good choice when you factor those things into account! I understand it is inconvenient for West Coasters, but it's better for everyone else.

cdcspoon1 votes

It isn't just the West Cost states (which is ~16.5%) but all the states further from Chicago than Portland make up ~23.5%. My recommendation for the servers would have been Colorado. They have the 3rd largest (by concentration of population) tech industry and are much closer to the geographic center of the United States (which is somewhere in Northern Kansas). EDIT: I am not trying to say that Colorado is better Suited to hosting than Chicago in general, just that they are both qualified and Colorado is more geographically neutral.

Swollwonder5 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)

Raid Boss Morde5 votes

Southern CA

From 40 ping to 75-110.

Angry Monster4 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.

DrCyanide1 votes

I live in the Rocky Mountain region. I have friends in what would be the "West" and "East" regions. I don't think it's unreasonable for me to want to keep that going.

I also think that the ping numbers are higher and more fluctuation prone right now that they will be in the long run. I've got a friend who's ping was ~80 before the change. After the change he went down to 50, and back up to over 120 over the course of a few games in the same location. That speaks of network issues, not issues with the server location itself. I'd give it a month before we decide if it was a success or failure.

Angry Monster1 votes

See the problem is that you can choose to play on the east coast server if the servers split. You would have a choice just like when the players in the east could play on LAN.

So we should not have 2 different servers because you either do not understand choice or cause the ping is working for you so you do not care about anyone else.

I do not like your position at this time and realistically it is a bad position to take.

DrCyanide1 votes

And just like those who went to LAN have my account stuck there until the next free transfer or I decide to pay the ransom transfer fee to get it back? No thank you.

Preempting the "Just make another account" argument:

  • I'd have to play on the new account for quite a while to get my MMR and content roughly the same on both
  • It'd make customers in general less likely to purchase RP, since they're not sure how often they'll even use the skins/rune pages/champions/whatever else they buy, which is bad for Riot as a business.

There was a player from EU posting on a thread like this who mentioned that having two EU servers wasn't the magical cure-all everyone clambering for two NA servers seems to think it would be. For starters, the two EU servers are hosted in the same location, so saying there's an example of multiple servers being used in the same region to reduce ping isn't true. Second, he mentioned that the server split caused a huge population decline in one of the servers. Basically, one server was seen as the "competitive" server because of it's perceived talent pool (this would likely be NA-West), causing any decent player to try and transfer there.

Now, you can argue that it's the player's choice to transfer there, but is it really a choice or is it a necessity for Gold+? If you can't find decent opponents on your server, why have that server at all?

At the end of the day, the fact remains that the Chicago servers have been live for 2 days. That's not enough time for any ISP issues to be ironed out, that's barely enough time to tackle any issues that might be on Riot's side. You have not played on the optimized Chicago Server setup yet, so why rule it out before you've played it? If, in a months time, you still think the quality is so bad that it'd be better if there were two servers, then more people will be willing to listen to you.

Angry Monster1 votes

So instead of you having choices the west should suffer higher ping. Worse argument ever.

The only difference between a west and east is that you would have to choose friends over ping. Right now you are not having to make a choice so life is better for you.

You are not worth my ping and if your internet relationships are worth more than your ping you can stay east.

There was a player from EU posting on............

shortened for space

That is cause they are in the same damn building. It was addressing the issue of max player capabilities not ping and does not apply to this topic. Anyone that tells you that riot made a eu west and east cause of ping need to have their head checked out.

DrCyanide1 votes

You assume I'm East to begin with. I'm West, with friends West and East. Not internet friends, real life friends. I've moved around a lot and I'm not done yet. Your ping and my ping are nothing in value compared to playing with friends, which is why Riot made the decision they did.

If you're going to pull the "choice" argument out, it's worth pointing out that you have choices to. You can choose to compare ISP's to see if one has a more direct connection to Chicago. After Riot gets things settled and if your connection still isn't good enough you could choose to contact your existing ISP and see if they can create a PoP with Riot to get your connection improved. You could choose to move to an area with more direct access to the ISP's router, thus cutting down your ping. You could choose to move to Chicago. You could choose to stop playing League. You've got a plethora of choices that are on you that don't come at the cost of anyone else.

Isn't it a little ignorant to assume that a change that was months (years?) in planning and executing is completely wrong because of your own experience over 2 days? 2 days that are expected to have issues? What Riot has done with the PoPs is bigger than anything any gaming company I've ever heard of has done for connecting it's customers. They made a bigger financial investment setting this up than what it would cost to set up two servers. You don't nullify that kind of investment over some hiccups in one phase.

I Freebird I4 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.

TacoTheKitten3 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.

Ironclad Dragon3 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).

SeargentAnus2 votes

{quoted}

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).

Good thing Mexico has their own server. I guess Riot decided the amount of players jumping a high amount of ping in Hawaii, and Alaska was worth dropping the ping for the entire east coast. If I was in their position I would agree.

ZenBudS5 votes

And you live on the east coast right... They have the ability to create 2 servers... all this does is create a distaste for east coasters because you are all acting like childish new yorkers right now telling us to shuttup just because you had to live with it for a while. Thats like dodging the gas chambers and laughing at the man that had to take your place. you east coasters are sick people... new servers please I dont even want to talk to an east coaster the way they are acting right now. DAMN EASTIES WITH NO DAMN EMPATHY.

stealthfox941 votes

I've been saying this East coast has a denser population than the west coast has.

Loli no Chikan3 votes

Montréal

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

Ralantha3 votes

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

Maximum Morde2 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.

cdcspoon3 votes

This map is built off of what people are reporting, not necessarily an accurate case for everyone. A large reason people are seeing such negative changes is because of ISPs. If you are not having issues, you probably have an ISP with better infrastructure for Chicago based servers. Most of the west half of the country routes fairly well to Portland (one of Portland's largest companies is Intel, which makes me believe they have decent server infrastructure there.) Hopefully with in a couple of months they will either decide to split the region, or ping for the West will normalize.

Right now many people are experiencing better ping, and many worse. I am glad you ended up on the good side of things.

Maximum Morde2 votes

Hmm a decent effort then, but the statistics are going to be heavily biased. People are significantly more likely to report a negative than a positive. That is one of the major design flaws in a survey that rely on people voluntarily seeking out the data collector to give input. That's why most surveys try to go out and randomly find people to ask rather than having people come to them. I'm not saying it didn't get worse for some people. I'm saying I strongly doubt that the data is remotely representative of the situation as a whole.

Offended2 votes

Definitely true! Thanks Maximum Morde. I've been using a distribution graph to get the ranges and factored in (to the best of my ability) the fact that more negatives will be reported than positives. :)

Alljoy2 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.

Offended1 votes

I'm assuming you're referring to Seattle with SEA (the airport code), so I'll put that into the spreadsheet. I'm curious however.. Do you mind sharing what ISP you have?

Alljoy1 votes

No, SEA as in.. South East Asia.

Alot of us play on NA too you know, and alot of us get fucked over by default, and this screws us over even more.

Offended1 votes

Oh, duh. Unfortunately you don't fit onto my map, but I'll keep you on the spreadsheet for the "total avg ping" statistic. :)

Alljoy2 votes

Yeah, I figured the more numbers, the better.

Not like I expect anything to actually be done about my problem since I'm not in NA, Riot probably thinks I can go fuck myself, which is what I pretty much got a polite PR equivalent of in a Support ticket once.

Captain Aishi2 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

AMYS GRAVE2 votes

Geneva switzerland to NA servers- 110

Maratsune2 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.

Slamurai Jack2 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.

Offended2 votes

Totally agree that ISP's in the US are absolute shit. (With the exception of Google Fiber) To get the ranges I used on the map I used a normal distribution graph, collected enough data to form a bell, and then comprised the range from the 35th to 65th percentile

EDIT: I also calculated for outliers

Gandalf0108122 votes

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

Aviously2 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.

GroundRuleDouble2 votes

A Japanese server has been confirmed for a while. Alaska and Hawaii might have a better fit playing on it.

Offended2 votes

DOTA has a two server solution where East Coast and West Coast can play/party together. It just decides "who gets better ping where", does a two second math calculation, and chooses which server they'll play on. :) It doesn't HAVE to be one or the other. Riot just thinks so.

Angry Monster2 votes

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

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