Time to reroll from PC-EU to PC-NA?

Major_Lag · March 2020

I had a crazy idea today:
Considering how often PC-EU has serious issues while PC-NA seldom does, maybe I'm being stupid and wasting my time playing on the wrong server (PCEU).

Before U25 I would not have even considered that, because I usually had ~100-120 ping on PC-EU (in PvE) and switching to PC-NA would have made that significantly worse.
But since U25 launched I have consistently very high ping (300-600) - which makes me suspect that playing on PC-NA would make no real difference, or even improve things.

What do you think - would it be worthwhile to abandon this sinking ship that is PC-EU, and reroll on the PC-NA server which still kinda works?

Coppes · March 2020

If you have lower ping on PCNA then obviously switch, it’s just good sense.

Ydrisselle · March 2020

It was already a good idea a couple months ago.

Lysette · March 2020

Your collection will not transfer though - you have a new collection set on the other server.

Gythral · March 2020

If the ping is more stable on PC-NA, as long as it's not too high at 'base' then yes, else no
but you'll have very little as much is server based (collections, DLC, etc)

Kadoin · March 2020

Do it when there is an exp event...I am sure many players will help you with gear and stuff

Major_Lag · March 2020

TBH at this point I'm not even sure if it's a good idea to invest any more time into ESO, considering the upcoming combat changes.
My main grievance isn't even with the specifics of the changes, it's about the gross lack of any kind of stability - you'd think that in a 6 year old game, the core combat mechanics would be more or less set in stone by now. Logic????

Lysette wrote: »

Your collection will not transfer though - you have a new collection set on the other server.

Don't care about that. What good does my existing PC-EU "collection" do when I can't even play the game properly?

Ydrisselle wrote: »

It was already a good idea a couple months ago.

Now we need everyone to switch, and then the PC-NA server will be regularly on fire instead

RefLiberty · March 2020

The problem is then, that the NA will start crashing.

Bexy · March 2020

I wanted to do this but then I realized I don't want to lose 3 years of work and start from scratch (characters, CP, motifs, houses, etc). If we ever get a server transfer I will pay for it but otherwise I'll just play my other MMO while PC/EU is down, lol.

Sir_Valk · March 2020

I should test my ping on that server, thinking about that too

Xarc · March 2020

for me
80-100+ms on EU
120-200+ms on NA

Vyvrhel · March 2020

Major_Lag wrote: »

I had a crazy idea today:
Considering how often PC-EU has serious issues while PC-NA seldom does, maybe I'm being stupid and wasting my time playing on the wrong server (PCEU).

What I find rather disgusting is the fact that on NA I do not have any DLC's I bought on EU. Just the Summerset chapter. Not talking about that latency.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO · March 2020

Been telling ppl to reroll for over 3y now ...

parpin · March 2020

on EU i get 150-170ms
on NA i get 230-250ms
its not too bad on NA but man doing everything all over again, i do not know man.

Major_Lag · April 2020

I've made some characters on PC-NA to test things.
Only played for a few hours so far; I did get 1 character to almost lvl15 but didn't try the PvP yet.

Playing on NA from the EU is certainly a rather different experience:

1. Ping is about the same for me on both servers, ~200-300.
This is not even slightly surprising at this point - considering how bad the PC-EU ping is, even at the best of times.

2. Lag spikes are less frequent on NA, ping seems generally a lot more stable there - but when desyncs do happen, they seem to be more severe.

On NA, a few times I got hit by snares/stuns from NPCs whom I have already killed a few seconds earlier (!) - which is something that I've never seen happen on EU yet.

3. Despite the ping being about equal, PvE combat feels a lot more fluid on NA.
Casting abilities feels much more responsive and reliable, no need to button mash to get anything to fire off.

4. The timezone difference means that the NA primetime (meaning: the worst overcrowding and lag) happens when I usually sleep. Good riddance

5. Issues with excessively slow loading of buildings/players/NPCs seem to be about as bad on NA as they are on EU.

Random loadscreens in the middle of major towns happen about equally frequently on both servers.
However, the loadscreens on NA do seem to be shorter than on EU.

6. (Re)starting everything from scratch is tedious, but in the long run it doesn't matter too much: the upcoming "proposed" PTS LA/HA changes will render most of my accumulated PC-EU gear and builds completely worthless, so it's not like that makes a lot of a difference in terms of the end result.
However, on NA I do miss not having my Doom Wolf mount from EU

7. The NA server has historically much better uptime than EU - after all, there is no "R.I.P. PC-NA" thread on the forums (yet...)

Universe · April 2020

If you live outside of North America, like Europe then expect major lag...

caperb · April 2020

Currently leveling a character there. A lot of my friends doing the same.

Downsides:
- There is some lag the to the fact that I live in the EU. But, this lag is stable and I didn't have had slideshows, which I daily had on the EU server (on a gaming pc).
- Zone chat is much less mature. A lot of children screaming random *** and less mature conversations. This seriously irritated me, because on PC EU /zone is good! Also haven't seen a good troll in the zone chat in the couple of hours I was there (unfortunately).
- PvP is one big zergfest. I won't say I am the player to 1vX you all (because I am not, though I do like combat in smaller groups more than in zergs), but on PC NA we've only seen big group vs big group.
- You have to level everything again apart from the usual stuff (guilds, skyshards etc.). Everything. Champion points, fill your craftbag, crafting skills, gather money, just everything you never had to do when starting a new alt on PC EU.

Benefits:
- You will be able to play PvP again
- No random disconnects for half the server at one location
- You will be able to play PvP again
- No 15+ seconds desyncs
- You will be able to play PvP again
- Skills will be working again
- You will be able to play PvP again
- No slideshows when a group bigger than 10 persons shows up
- You will be able to play PvP again
- Everything else that is bad about PC EU cyro performance is gone

caperb · April 2020

Universe wrote: »

If you live outside of North America, like Europe then expect major lag...

The lag is there, but much better than not be able to use skills at all!

thunder23 · April 2020

I'm on NA and starting 2 days ago, my game has become unplayable. 999+ latency, disconnects, can't change bars, skills not working. Did all the troubleshooting and no help. No ticket reply yet.

Universe · April 2020

caperb wrote: »

Currently leveling a character there. A lot of my friends doing the same.

Downsides:
- There is some lag the to the fact that I live in the EU. But, this lag is stable and I didn't have had slideshows, which I daily had on the EU server (on a gaming pc).
- Zone chat is much less mature. A lot of children screaming random *** and less mature conversations. This seriously irritated me, because on PC EU /zone is good! Also haven't seen a good troll in the zone chat in the couple of hours I was there (unfortunately).
- PvP is one big zergfest. I won't say I am the player to 1vX you all (because I am not, though I do like combat in smaller groups more than in zergs), but on PC NA we've only seen big group vs big group.
- You have to level everything again apart from the usual stuff (guilds, skyshards etc.). Everything. Champion points, fill your craftbag, crafting skills, gather money, just everything you never had to do when starting a new alt on PC EU.

Benefits:
- You will be able to play PvP again
- No random disconnects for half the server at one location
- You will be able to play PvP again
- No 15+ seconds desyncs
- You will be able to play PvP again
- Skills will be working again
- You will be able to play PvP again
- No slideshows when a group bigger than 10 persons shows up
- You will be able to play PvP again
- Everything else that is bad about PC EU cyro performance is gone

caperb wrote: »

Universe wrote: »

If you live outside of North America, like Europe then expect major lag...

The lag is there, but much better than not be able to use skills at all!

I guess it just proves that the PC EU server's data center which is based in Germany is not exactly in top condition...
Something is seriously wrong with it...Either the server's network routing and/or the infrastructure or both.

ZOS_RogerJ · April 2020

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Major_Lag · April 2020

Currently trying to get one character to lvl50 and start farming CP.

So I thought I would do some stress-testing by farming the Alik'r dolmens.
Ugh... how do people even deal with that mess? Even though I have only 2% mount speed + Rapids, no enemies ever load (become visible) before they are killed. Only the "final boss" sometimes becomes visible for about a second.
I was running in circles and spamming jabs left and right to try and hit the invisible enemies, but that worked about as well as one might expect. Ended up with a lot of loot from the chests, but very little EXP gain despite being in a group.
Looks like it would be more efficient (and faster) to just do some old school, stack-and-burn grinding

After about an hour of this disaster, I was already experiencing severe FPS drops - even after porting away to a quiet zone with hardly anyone around. Probably the old "client memory leak" bug.

Other than that... I'll be needing over 10k crowns to buy the bare essentials, which means paying for a few months of ESO+ again.
Which is rather unfortunate - not because I can't afford it (I can), but because I'm still getting effectively ripped off by paying (again) to play an increasingly broken game.

caperb wrote: »

Benefits:
- You will be able to play PvP again
(...)
- Everything else that is bad about PC EU cyro performance is gone

Good.

I ended up leaving my Cyro PvP guild on PC-EU earlier this year, purely because of the horrible performance issues.
Constant disconnects/crashes. Perma stuck in combat. Abilities not working. Huge desyncs.
We usually played in a group of 5-10, never more than 12.
Frequently we were up against 2-3 times our numbers - which was great while it worked, but eventually we were inevitably overwhelmed by extreme lag, causing the whole group to wipe in seconds.

And as much as it is fun to play in a small group (6 or less) in Cyro, I found that it usually interacts quite poorly with the overall population/group dynamics, at least on PC-EU.
All too often such gameplay would either devolve to AP farming or "pug stomping" (which is about as fun as fighting PvE NPC trashmobs... yawn) - or, if you got the enemy faction(s) sufficiently angry, eventually huge faction stacks would show up and wipe you with the massive lag they bring with them.

Mancombe_Nosehair · April 2020

Remember that crown rates are much cheaper on the n.a. server than the EU server. I have got a tonne of stuff from gifting.

The biggest shortage for me was the lack of gold, especially needing quite a large amount to max out the bank and character slots.

Recent · April 2020

Xarcus wrote: »

for me
80-100+ms on EU
120-200+ms on NA

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

Curious_Death · April 2020

no dlc that i have got WITH GAME EDITION works in NA....
in NA which is far far away from my home i have better performance in THEIR PRIMETIME! than in EU morning...

evoniee · April 2020

yeah im recommending anybody who's not in eu/cis should use NA server, despite the time difference a little bit awkward, pc eu is abomination

Curious_Death wrote: »

no dlc that i have got WITH GAME EDITION works in NA....
in NA which is far far away from my home i have better performance in THEIR PRIMETIME! than in EU morning...

damn, you killed it...

Universe · April 2020

I'm leveling my newly created character on PC NA server.
"The Magic"

So far the performance of PC NA server is way better than PC EU server.
I just need to get used to the additional 100-120ms latency.

Mancombe_Nosehair · April 2020

@evoniee
@Curious_Death
@Universe

Send me a friend invite on the n.a. server, and I shall invite you to the EU refugee guild.
@luton0watford4

Universe · April 2020

Mancombe_Nosehair wrote: »

@evoniee
@Curious_Death
@Universe

Send me a friend invite on the n.a. server, and I shall invite you to the EU refugee guild.
@luton0watford4

Thanks for the offer.
Sure, when I will login later today I will be happy to join

Phoebe · April 2020

I'm playing on both servers since about Mai 2018 (only EU before). NA is a lot more stable generally speaking, but tends to have some nasty ping spikes for me sometimes. Also, since Update 25, some problems are the same.

Personally, I recommend playing on both servers. Playing on EU whenever it is fine and you want to play with your old guild members and friends, and switching to NA whenever you feel like it. But having a grown-up character on PC-NA to go to when EU is down again can never be wrong. I'm spending most of my solo time on NA at th moment, mostly at EU server off-hours, having a CP 460 char, a well-skilled crafter, a lot of crown stuff bought from Twitch crown gems, and a nice house. Even one of my EU guild members is on NA, too, which is really nice. But whenever my friends want to play on PC EU I'm there.

There's also another guild on NA I can recommend for EU players: EU Server Refugee Shelter. I don't know whether it's bigger or smaller than the other EU Refugee guild though. We exist since October 2019.

Mancombe_Nosehair · April 2020

Phoebe wrote: »

I'm playing on both servers since about Mai 2018 (only EU before). NA is a lot more stable generally speaking, but tends to have some nasty ping spikes for me sometimes. Also, since Update 25, some problems are the same.

Personally, I recommend playing on both servers. Playing on EU whenever it is fine and you want to play with your old guild members and friends, and switching to NA whenever you feel like it. But having a grown-up character on PC-NA to go to when EU is down again can never be wrong. I'm spending most of my solo time on NA at th moment, mostly at EU server off-hours, having a CP 460 char, a well-skilled crafter, a lot of crown stuff bought from Twitch crown gems, and a nice house. Even one of my EU guild members is on NA, too, which is really nice. But whenever my friends want to play on PC EU I'm there.

There's also another guild on NA I can recommend for EU players: EU Server Refugee Shelter. I don't know whether it's bigger or smaller than the other EU Refugee guild though. We exist since October 2019.

Thanks Phoebe. There are currently about 25 players in the guild we are in (I am not the GM). Might be best if we merge.