ANZ (Oceanic) Server announcement from ZOS.

qbkitsune

I’m also in Japan and the lag kills my game when I want to do anything other than overland solo questing.

It’s my understanding that most of the folks asking for a server in Asia/Oceania (myself included) are doing so in response to lag and also the maintenance times that are often during our prime game-playing hours after work, making that entire day a waste for those who only get to play during those few hours each night. If ZOS could just fix the lag and maybe have a rotating maintenance schedule where we don’t constantly get the short end of the stick, I think the folks asking for a server wouldn’t continue asking for it. We’re just desperate to be able to play and get treated like we matter.

Undefwun

Maybe we are going about this the wrong way...

ZOS should artificially inflate everyone's ping to at least 350-400.

Espcially in PvP, no one can complain then. We've been dealing with it for years, and all those players that think they good cos they beat you with a 4 to 5 times faster response time, they're super pvp skills will adapt fast. I mean them beating you has nothing to do with that, we jus didn't 'git gud' enough and they are that gud.

Win win for everyone.

Billdor

Undefwun wrote: »

Maybe we are going about this the wrong way...

ZOS should artificially inflate everyone's ping to at least 350-400.

Espcially in PvP, no one can complain then. We've been dealing with it for years, and all those players that think they good cos they beat you with a 4 to 5 times faster response time, they're super pvp skills will adapt fast. I mean them beating you has nothing to do with that, we jus didn't 'git gud' enough and they are that gud.

Win win for everyone.

No thank you, why should my gameplay suffer-due to a very minimal minority of the playerbase (that doesn't understand IT/Business) whining about ping?

Digiman

Socialism?

But seriously those affected are really larger then you think also... ZoS always listens to the vocal minority.... murkmire persay

IzzyStardust

Morgul667 wrote: »

If you dont do an oceanic server, can you do an asian server ? ;-D

DAMMIT! Agree and awesome having a fight!

Acrolas

Don't blame Akamai or ZOS using Akamai. It's not an ideal situation, but blame the people who make that kind of security necessarily. Australia is still considered a growing source of DDoS attacks (third in the world as of Q3 2018) and Asian countries keep rotating through the top 10, including a massive lead by China for the highest number of attacks.

Developers cannot change that reality. They can only defend their products, and that defense is going to impact some players more severely than others. But it's a necessary defense.

IzzyStardust

MattT1988 wrote: »

I think anyone with at least half a brain knew that getting an OCE server was a long shot. But they definitely need to think of a way to improve the game’s performance in this part of the world. I’m sick of being of not being able to do trials, I’m sick of Vet Maelstrom being damn near unplayable, im sick of being at a disadvantage in PvP just because of where I live, a place mind you, where ZOS has an office and advertised the game heavily, so they have a responsibility to make sure it’s a stable experience because that’s what we paid for.

First, the issue is Akamai routing.

Secondly, If more people VOTED WITH THEIR WALLETS - maybe ZOS would see just how much they’d lose, if all OCE/AU/NZ players packed up.

They legit just said YOU DON'T MATTER in fancy words.

Ackwalan

disintegr8 wrote: »

I think they are underestimating the number of players who would use it.

A conspiracy theorist could say that they like the fact that by keeping us on the other servers, we are propping up those server populations while the local players get some sleep. If they gave us our own server, the EU/NA servers would be pretty empty for 8-12 hours of every day.

No, it is much simpler then that. There are not enough paying customers in that area to have a server there.

Gnozo

We designed this game to Host a large number of players.....

While the server completly struggles when 10 players fight each other. Nice.

jcm2606

They completely missed the point of us complaining.

We're not complaining about the servers being located across the ocean. 200-300 ping is perfectly playable in this game, once you get used to it, and this game actually feels alright with that ping. Additionally, even if the performance would be stellar, and the Oceanic community was large enough to keep the servers busy, I sincerely doubt many people would give up all the friends they've made on the NA/EU servers, not to mention the progress they've made over the up to 4-5 years the game has been out for.

What we're complaining about is the frankly atrocious management and routing going on over at Akamai, causing our latency to quite literally double for absolutely no reason, and the fact that Zenimax just sweeps it under the rug, whistles, and walks away like nothing happened. When you have to pay for a third-party VPN to have the same ping you had 2-3 years ago, ***'s ***.

This post is also a monumental slap in the face when you think about it, too. The real crux of the problem is Akamai, but Zenimax doesn't seem to have the balls to deal with them. But nah, sweep it under the rug, talk about *** everybody knows won't come to fruition, and the problem is gonna sort itself out.

It's going to sort itself out by having most of the Oceanic playerbase leave the game, if you're not careful, Zenimax. I'm already at the point where I'm almost completely done with the game, and I can guarantee a good portion of the Oceanic playerbase feel the exact same.

jcm2606

Acrolas wrote: »

Don't blame Akamai or ZOS using Akamai. It's not an ideal situation, but blame the people who make that kind of security necessarily. Australia is still considered a growing source of DDoS attacks (third in the world as of Q3 2018) and Asian countries keep rotating through the top 10, including a massive lead by China for the highest number of attacks.

Developers cannot change that reality. They can only defend their products, and that defense is going to impact some players more severely than others. But it's a necessary defense.

I'm absolutely going to blame Akamai when they're being complete idiots. The quickest route for my traffic to the NA servers is straight across the Pacific to the US. Why is my traffic not just being dumped into the US, and treated by the US Akamai network? Instead, it's going across through Asia, through Europe, into some random data center in the Netherlands, then back through Europe, finally to the US.

This is supported by the fact that I can use Mudfish to take my traffic from Sydney, dump it into the Mudfish network, where my traffic is sent straight across the Pacific to the US, and it's treated as any old US traffic. Doing so, my ping literally gets halved from what it is now (400-600, for the record).

Why should I have to pay for a third-party VPN, just to fix the *** routing from Akamai? Why isn't Zenimax arranging a meeting with Akamai to figure out why this is happening? Instead, they're just ignoring it, hoping it goes away, why?

This isn't just a minority of users, either. We're talking an entire region being affected to varying degrees. ***, I'm friends with a fellow Australian who lives on the other side of the bloody country, and we both have the same ping issues, issues which disappear when we're using Mudfish. I'm friends with somebody in Singapore who's experienced a gradual rise in latency in the past few years, just like my other friend and I experienced. When your DDOS protection is literally doubling the ping for an entire region, you better get whoever you use for it on the phone ASAP, and sort it out.

Undefwun

Billdor wrote: »

No thank you, why should my gameplay suffer-due to a very minimal minority of the playerbase (that doesn't understand IT/Business) whining about ping?

I doubt you understand IT or Business either, since simple sarcasm just went straight over your head.

As much fun as it would be to torture you personally with extra ping, I would never seriously suggest making the game worse for the majority of the player base.

KMarble

Sylvermynx wrote: »

Seems to me that a server in OCE would also serve SEA and JPN though. Perhaps also China? Surely that would be a decent population combined?

Maybe the reason why there aren't (now) enough players in OCE is because the lag they experience is enough to make them quit. Maybe, by giving them a server, the better performance would bring back some players and add new players to the server.

mook-eb16_ESO

people in europe have poor performance when connected at 100ms, the game is just generally unplayable.

Nova Sky

ZOS misspelled Cyrodiil as "Cyrodill" in its announcement. Too funny. Well, sort of, I guess.

Matchimus

PVP map of our real world. This FFS or FFIV turf amongst others. Occasionally ZOS comes over and grabs the odd scroll but then leaves.

Never cared for a server. Just fix ping. This announcement just allows the issue to be ignored forever.

Yvarhna

I had a steady ping of 458ms yesterday while doing vMA. Suffice to say, it was incredibly painful.

I know having an Oceanic server would of course give us great ping, but it won't work for us and you guys know it. We don't have the numbers, and we would complain in the end.

Honestly, all I want is a way for us to have something done to make our ping that much easier to do content. I mean, do we really need to go through China?

LadyLethalla

I swear I am the only Australasian player on EU, for the past 6 months anyway since the few people in my region whom I did know, quit. And hence why I'm on hiatus.

Bhaal5

That post is another slap in the face also another "we dont care for anyone else".

If they want to refuse to help, then as a community should refuse to pay the sub and boycott crown crates. As the money is not going towards helping us.

Performance in eso is terrible, yet other mmo's can provide the performance their sea/ocx community demands.
In saying that, you can tell aswell. Other mmos are very well populated in ocx time compared to eso.

disintegr8

Billdor wrote: »

Undefwun wrote: »

Maybe we are going about this the wrong way...

ZOS should artificially inflate everyone's ping to at least 350-400.

Espcially in PvP, no one can complain then. We've been dealing with it for years, and all those players that think they good cos they beat you with a 4 to 5 times faster response time, they're super pvp skills will adapt fast. I mean them beating you has nothing to do with that, we jus didn't 'git gud' enough and they are that gud.

Win win for everyone.

No thank you, why should my gameplay suffer-due to a very minimal minority of the playerbase (that doesn't understand IT/Business) whining about ping?

Maybe it is our lag and slow internet that is making a lot of PVPers think they are good - when you die because you have been hit 10 times before the game responds to your input.

Any PVPer who wants easy kills, just look for an Aussie.

Zavijah

It's super insulting.

They just need to close their australian office if there is not going to be adequate support because it is misleading to advertise a product that does not perform as advertised. By having trade presence and operating in our territory they agree to follow the consumer laws as outlined in the following :

Australian Competition & Consumer Commission

https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/misleading-claims-advertising/false-or-misleading-claims

* the quality, style, model or history of a product or service
* the sponsorship, performance characteristics, accessories, benefits or use of products and services
* any exclusions on the goods and services.

I've lodged a file with them based on the above, and keeping tabs that this post is not deleted so as not to be interpreted as obscuring general consumer rights information. We wouldn't want that, would we.

Tandor

A lot of players here are talking about the addition of "a server", when in fact it would mean the addition of three servers. ZOS can't merge the platforms, nor can they realistically add an Oceanic server for less than all the platforms. So whatever the overall playerbase is in the region, only a third of it will play on each server. ZOS may need to agree any new server locations with Sony and Microsoft, and those companies might have their own views on the practical viability of new servers for their customers who they would not want to drive away because of inferior gaming experiences resulting from inadequate player numbers.

NoMoreChillies

pack up and leave my fellow [snip]

this ones over. ZOS dont care about OCE

[Edited to remove profanity]

Seri

Tandor wrote: »

A lot of players here are talking about the addition of "a server", when in fact it would mean the addition of three servers.

And there's a lot of players in here who also don't care for that extra server - we just want to use an NA based Akamai node rather than up Asia.

Acrolas wrote: »

Don't blame Akamai or ZOS using Akamai. It's not an ideal situation, but blame the people who make that kind of security necessarily. Australia is still considered a growing source of DDoS attacks (third in the world as of Q3 2018) and Asian countries keep rotating through the top 10, including a massive lead by China for the highest number of attacks.

The source of the attacks shouldn't change anything - there's still no reason that all traffic from ANZ should go up into Asia first, adding 50% extra to the latency because it has to travel so many thousand km extra. Even after Akamai protection was added, there was a period of time where game traffic was routed to USA prior to going through the Akamai network (and funnily enough the game lag was barely changed at this point).

Oddly, doing a traceroute to the EU game servers doesn't give me any hostnames with Akamai in them, and also heads straight to the US, and then over to Europe. Meanwhile, NA goes from Sydney, backwards over to Perth and then up to Singapore and Honk Kong (because that's the shorter path to that Akamai node), before heading (via an undisclosed route) to NA. Without using VPN, the latency to both servers is the same, but using a VPN with NA exit point provides ~120ms lower in-game latency to NA, and leaves EU latency basically unchanged.

Elong

I don't want an Oceanic server, I want them to stop degrading my US connection. It's gone from 220 on release day to 380 today.

Unacceptable.

MattT1988

Couldn’t do vet pledges tonight, dungeons were literally unplayable, no skills were going off, nothing. Thanks for looking out for us OCE players ZOS. Feeling the love here......

MrGarlic

I just wanted to add a visual representation of how my connection to ESO has degraded over time.

Dec 2016

Dec 2017

Dec 2018

Mar 2019 (Current)


It highlights very well why I am not happy with changes at Akamai.

Pings of 240-250 are reasonable due to my geographic location in New Zealand. It's what I get from other games based in the USA. The ~350ms pings started after September 2108 when Akamai (allegedly) made changes to routing via it's Hong Kong Prolexic DDoS scrubber.

1. The images are from in-game screenshots of mine.
2. My ISP and connection type did not change during this time frame.

I don't care that we are not getting a local server, ever. I do however, object to a degradation of performance.

Matchimus

I hear rumoured there was a fancy post on FB? I do not use FB so it never happened. So when are we getting our own server? Ha...just kidding! When will we get a response about our ping issues? Ha...not kidding!

boxanata

The irony of it is, the majority of players from AUS & NZ play during the day when the US & EU are fast asleep, meaning that the game already has the empty atmosphere feeling.
What's even more ironic is that, a lot of people refuse to play the game because you don't support our region. They take one look at the ping & leave to find another MMO with developers that aren't as tight as ZOS.

The truth of it is, it's just another ***-poor excuse from ZOS to not have to invest any more money into the game than the bare minimum. The lack of performance & large QoL updates over the games life is proof enough.

The fact that it even took you this long to reply is just a slap in the face to every AUS & NZ player that puts up with your ***.

malchior

Such backwards thinking and a major cop out. I'm playing less and less and the reason? High ping. Build it and they will come.

This is just a crap excuse really.

Edit: They can give away a million USD but cannot put a server for ANZ/SEA. 1 million USD can run a server for quite some time and get some return back. Idiots.