So, some updates here. [snip], I provided them with logs of lags at akamai and I did all the tests and measures suggested by the support to exclude the possibility of it being on my side. In particular, I tested the tracert from 3 largest ISPs around my area (Tokyo), all of which have sufficient hardware or software to do the job, as well as geographically different points of access. Anyway, having been presented with the arguments this is what you get from the support:

Message 1:

[i]"Greetings!
 
Thank you for contacting the Bethesda Customer Service Team, my name is Justin and I will be trying to help you with your ticket!
 
Thank you for getting us that extra information and your history of attempts connecting. Due to the nuances of your issue, and your in depth explanations, I am sending your ticket information and account data to my superiors for review and assistance. They should be reaching out to you about this shortly.
 
Thank you for your continued interest and support, if you have further questions or concerns, please contact us back. I hope you have a wonderful day!
 
Warm Regards,
Bethesda Customer Support"[/i]

Message 2:

[i]"Greetings!

My name is --- and I would be happy to assist you today!
 
We appreciate you bringing these issues to our attention. Please keep in mind that, we here at customer support, are here to do our best to help the players resolve their issues and get back to gaming through troubleshooting steps. We do not assist in the creation, maintenance, or stabilization of the game. This job is left to our developers, as they are the ones with the power to fix these types of issues. As a result, I will be passing this information along.

I do apologize for the not having an immediate fix as I can definitely understand how frustrating these issues must be. I can assure you that our developers are always looking for ways to improve our servers and the overall gaming experience. With that said, I will be passing your concerns along for the relevant team to review.

If you have any further questions or concerns in the meantime, please let us know and we would be happy to assist you!
 
Thank you for your continued interest and support!

Warm Regards,
---
The Elder Scrolls Online Team"[/i]

The two messages were subsequent with a gap of two days. They basically prompt a few conclusions:

[snip]
1. They do not even mention akamai. [snip] Instead, however, they will be asking you to contact your ISP to check if the latter can do anything. [snip]

[snip]

P.S. would appreciate if anyone more familiar with ZOS representatives to tag them as I am a relatively new forum user and am unaware who of ZOS is responsible for giving replies on behalf of the company.

[Edited to remove Bashing]

And again tiny update, probably the last from me for this topic for now.

I was contacted by the support. [snip] From the result we can invoke some meaningful (probably) things we can do to alleviate the lag in the future, if we ever going to see that future in our lifetime.

The response:

Greetings!

Thank you for your reply. I do apologize that our service has not been to your satisfaction. Please understand that our development is also able to look into issue such as lag and high ping if there is something on our end that can be adjusted to prevent it. I talk of the development team as a whole, but there are several different departments. Please be assured that your concerns will be able to make it to the correct team to review the issue.

I also highly encourage you to submit feedback tickets in game going forward as they are also forwarded to the correct teams for review. The more reports we receive on a certain issue, the more we are able to prioritize the issue.

If you have any further questions or concerns in the meantime, please let us know and we would be happy to assist you!

Thank you,
---
The Elder Scrolls Online Team

ZOS support never mentioned Akamai themselves. Probably, some policy. Anyway, they do not address Akamai at all although all tests indicate drastic increase of ping from Akamai even for people geographically close to the server. They won't contact Akamai on our behalf and we can't request Akamai to investigate the issue because we are not their direct clients (previously in this topic it has been discussed). This is a no-go.

What we can do, however, is keep addressing this issue lest it is forgotten, both on forums and as it stems from the reply - in-game. So if you are not indifferent to ping issues in ESO - please, care to submit feedback/tickers regarding the ping.

On a side note, ZOS quickly reacts to ESO reviews on steam, especially those not praising their product. I won't say that my review got a meaningful reply, just another corporate template with "we have a plan to reduce the lags", namely the speech of ZOS director on ESO improvement roadmap, notifications on [snip] PvP CD tests in Cyrodiil, and a link to basic steps on forward routing (same stuff that the support sends you first). Still, the reply was very fast and obviously is one of the ways to draw the attention of the company to the issue. [snip]

I hope people continue the marathon of addressing the issue of ping in this topic. It is really sad that a game with such a potential becomes unplayable due to simple technical performance.

[edited for bashing/discussion of disciplinary actions]

And so there was rolled out a horrendous patch that shifted the PvP balance for group fights to prompt "behaviour changes" and spread out people (failed) and reduce lags by reducing healing calculations.

Just now, I was playing Grey Host, NA, and the ping was awful even outside of large groups of players. Instead of my normal 230-260 I had stable 500-530 with regular spikes of 999+. Moreover, should I go out of Cyro, the lag persists in PvE areas although with lesser degree of spiking. In addition, BGs are also lagging horrendously. Is it really "The Fix" that you are implementing, ZOS? Will you even care to investigate your lagging? I am fairly sure it is on your side as other network-related games and programmes are not lagging on my side.

Whether I forward the ports (although using IPv6 that generally ignores all this port forwarding) or using direct ethernet connection (that doesn't care about ports at all) - it still lags. And from a brief textual analysis of the recent threads in PvP section, many PC users are experiencing the same or even worse degree of lags following the changes. This time, however, you drove off a significant number of players by prompting "behavioural changes". Will you ever do your stuff or at least reply to the concerns of those lagging WITHOUT suggesting useless basic troubleshooting like forwarding ports or restarting routers? Thank you.

P.S. contact Akamai at last, [snip]
[edited for profanity bypass]