Is geographic, physical proximity to the Zenimax servers a huge factor?

goldCoaster · April 2020

I've been playing ESO on PS4 for close to 5 years, and I still see many threads and posts that constantly bring up "lag" and performance issues.

I've never had this issue. When I first started playing, I lived in Wiesbaden Germany (DoD civilian employee) and played on the EU server on my PS4. My PSN/ESO ID was komodozermike (damn that seemed liked a thousand years ago!!), and I read that the Zenimax servers were located in Frankfurt, which was only 20 miles away. I now live in Arlington, Virginia and I imagine the ESO servers for North America are inside the beltway around Bethesda.

Is physical proximity to the servers a factor? Will lag and performance greatly suffer if, say, I lived in Arizona and tried playing on the NA server that was over 2000 miles away?

Hippie4927 · April 2020

Their headquarters are in Maryland (Bethesda) but I think the servers are in Texas.

Alinhbo_Tyaka · April 2020

Physical proximity doesn't guarantee a shorter route to get to the server. Depending upon your ISP and the backbone providers you could go halfway across the country and back before getting to the server. Likewise someone on the other side of the country could be on a route that takes them through a backbone directly into the ZOS network. So in a nutshell it's a great big maybe, maybe not.

James-Wayne · April 2020

Try living in Australia... Its a massive deal!

Elsonso · April 2020

James-Wayne wrote: »

Try living in Australia... Its a massive deal!

Everything is a massive deal in Australia, though...

Sylvermynx · April 2020

A great deal of it can depend on your available connection options. Only connect I have is HughesNet satellite - so my ping is always sky-high. As a result, I don't inflict my ping on groups for that content.

Major_Lag · April 2020

goldCoaster wrote: »

Is physical proximity to the servers a factor?

Yes, but not in the way you would expect.

How else do you explain that I have much smoother gameplay and much better latency playing on the NA server from the EU, as opposed to playing on the EU server (which would intuitively make a lot more sense)?
Of course it does not help that the EU server is horribly broken in general - a year ago that was not the case, and playing on the EU from EU was definitely BiS.

MrGarlic · April 2020

It makes a big difference if you have high ping, such as always in the red, compared to low ping. It's very noticeable.

HumbleThaumaturge · April 2020

Hippie4927 wrote: »

Their headquarters are in Maryland (Bethesda) but I think the servers are in Texas.

I seem to recall that the log-on servers are in Bethesda, Maryland and the game servers are in Texas. I suppose one could "ping" and find out.

xenowarrior92eb17_ESO · April 2020

not having cross server is the biggest mistake...I mean no tbh having the game for console was the biggest mistake but the 2nd one is splitting eu and na...they should had allowed cross servers.

HumbleThaumaturge · April 2020

Major_Lag wrote: »

goldCoaster wrote: »

Is physical proximity to the servers a factor?

Yes, but not in the way you would expect.

How else do you explain that I have much smoother gameplay and much better latency playing on the NA server from the EU, as opposed to playing on the EU server (which would intuitively make a lot more sense)?
Of course it does not help that the EU server is horribly broken in general - a year ago that was not the case, and playing on the EU from EU was definitely BiS.

I used to play mostly on the EU server (while living in NA). My EU guildmates used to tell me that they were getting a latency of 40 milliseconds or less, while I was getting over 200 milliseconds. So, yes, it matters how you routed to get to the server, and it matters how fast the networks are in everywhere along the path. Since I have never heard anyone claim to have 40 millisecond latency in on the NA server playing in the NA, I might conclude that the EU networks are better?