Greetings from Finland! Previously my connection was an enjoyable 130-180ms. Currently I seem to be in the 240-320ms range, so about +120ms on average. There also seems to be LOTS of jitter currently, which I hope means the current state of affairs is temporary as it often does, although not always. I propose moving the server to the center of the earth to level the playing field for everyone.
I don't think I understand this. It sounds mainly like you or Telamon know that command prompt numbers looks lower so that's the only number you want to hear. People are trying to communicate their experience. Some of them played fine before and are playing fine now. It sounds like a lot of them were fine before and are no longer going to find this server playable. And the only frame of reference they have is the -ping command in razor and a comparison to how they felt before the move. To say that the -ping command is not relevant because of other factors is not a useful argument. There are and always will be other factors. Saying that communication with this server is fine until you try to play on it is not helpful to players. When players read about this server and become interested enough to download the client you've got a potential player. But the first thing he will do when he logs in is type -ping. In his head is a reasonable range. For a US player on a US server he is probably expecting 35-75. When he sees 200 he will say this isn't the server for me. Likewise when a European player logs in expecting 75-150 and sees 300 they will do the same. If you decide you need to buy new shoes and the shoe salesman has you step into some that are less comfortable and you can barely walk in them you'll say "no, not this shoe." And if he replies that this shoe is great, your foot is the problem, that's not going to compel you that the shoe is a good fit. This server is not meant for people that play from europe, and possibly the east coast as well. Not unless they are fine with reliving their dial up experience. Some portion of players that have been here for years are going to leave. This is a fact. It doesn't matter if they used the command prompt. Perhaps the server will replace them with people closer to the server. Like asian or australian players. But I would think a more central location would be ideal for a US based english speaking server.
I don't disagree with the statement that the server location should probably be more centralized... but people on the east coast claiming the server is now "unplayable" are kidding themselves. (Most likely) The entire time I've played this server was on 120-150 ping from the command line. Not counting running/moving in Razor... and I was plenty competitive. Now... there is NO DENYING that there is a difference. I feel incredibly fast now (30-50 ping) ... But unplayable? ... come on. It seems to me people who's ping went up feel shafted (understandably so) without understanding other people have felt that way all along.
Hmm I guess this really depends on your definition of playable and what constitutes playing. For some people just remaining connected is good enough. Some people want to be able to move at the same speed as others for pvp, and moving to the 200+ ping range is not going to be conducive to that. I was an east coaster playing a west coast server my entire UO career, nearly twenty years ago, and had half the ping time then than I do now. Most of the accounts of east coasters sound like they're now in a position where they are borderline. Some canadians sound pretty unplayable. I'm sure we can both agree that europeans (of which we have quite a few) now in the 250-400 range aren't going to be able to play. And chances are that players shopping for servers are going to keep looking until they find servers with under 100ms. It's not the Dawson's Creek era anymore and people have begun to expect more reasonable ping times.
I don't want to wait for our pings to be better, I want to know right now what will it beeeee. I don't want to wait for our pings to be better, Will it be yes or will it be sorrrrrrrrrryyyy? Sorry, couldn't resist after the Dawson's Creek reference.
One of the most prominent PvPers I know from a former shard, connected there from New Zealand and consistently did well with 200+ ms ping. This is just the nature of the beast of networking. You either learn to cope with your latency, or you do other things. He rolled with folks with significantly better ping and did not seem to have a problem synching his drops either. At least on me and everyone I saw them light up. lol
I was the #2 5x duelist on the shard for a long time (a style of gameplay that is probably more reliant on ping than most others) with 250ms-300ms consistently while running in razor. So ya... I am pretty much completely unsure what you consider "unplayable".
I ping 140-170 for the longest time here then it went down to 90-110 with the last move now I am 35-65
Don't be surprised when people go with option #2. I'm giving it about a week to improve and then I'm putting my shit into cold storage and waiting for a time at which the server is more playable.
I can't deny I'm mainly back because my ping improved. So what about all the people that are in the opposite boat of you? ... they just don't matter? Or they're just not as vocal, because they're too busy enjoying their new ping
People act like West Coast/Hawaii/Japanese players haven't been dealing with the same issues. I've played at 100-180 the entire time I've played here. It's more than playable. I do in fact feel for the European players, but the east coasters complaining need to get off pedestal.
Obviously a world where everyone has around the same ping is ideal, but whatever ping other people may have doesn't really figure in to my analysis as to whether the server is too laggy for me to play or not. I am somewhat amazed that I have 200 ping to a server in California, my ping to servers in Cali should be 90-100 which is a playable number. 200 is not a playable number, and I can see that I am moving slow when I run in game. Hence, not playable. I'm not really complaining or flaming anyone here: it's just the simple fact that while I enjoy playing not-laggy UO, there are lots of things I'd rather do than play laggy UO. I was faster than this on dialup in 1998.
So people's PINGPOCALYPSE 2016 OMG reactions range from: "Cool, it's better" "Eh, who cares" or: MY PING IS 20 ABOVE WHAT IT USED TO BE! I CANT PLAY LIKE THIS!
