This issue has been ongoing for 2 years now but AUS players have resigned to this being the norm so they dont mention it.
About 1/5 games of all AUS players get placed into GSG servers instead of SYD, creating an incredibly unenjoyable experience on 130+ ping instead of <40.
I encourage any AU players who are experiencing the same to chime in here too so the devs can see that its a common experience.
Unfortunately, Blizzard support won’t be able to change how you are routed by your ISP, or contact them on your behalf. This information has been consistent since the issue originally started. A VPN might help avoid the routing issue in the meantime to prevent incorrect server assignment.
Maybe they can. Bring up a prompt “Game found, join game?” and it shows which region/server you’re going to join then have a button that says “Accept” or “Decline”. OR just set a preference AUS ONLY servers. Simple. They’re just putting players into games to reduce wait time.
You already know this is not a routing problem, you’ve replied in this other post about Aus players going into GSG or Singapore servers.
Why are you suggesting a VPN. WHy not help suggest a server selector or something that displays which server you’re going to join and have the option to choose?
It’s a long-requested feature, but I have not seen any language that suggests they’ll add one since the game launched. Considering we’ve already seen 6v6 come back and there is still no server selector, I don’t think we’ll see one added. Happy to be proved wrong.
It could be a routing problem if you’re being matched to a server that isn’t your normal one and being routed closer to Singapore than Sydney. Routing is the responsibility of your ISP.
Not sure why you’re taking issue with me offering a temporary solution.
Plus, it would not make sense to use my reply to suggest a server picker feature in the troubleshooting forum because developers don’t field feedback here. It’s solely a troubleshooting area. I’m not against a server picker, and I’ve suggested it through the proper channels. That has nothing to do with this forum.
It’s not a routing ISP issue. It’s blizzard placing players into games as fast as possible to help reduce queue times. They know Hulio & ZephA are both from Aus (or OCE) servers, so they should get placed in OCE server games but instead to help with queues, they’re placed in SEA (or GSG) servers. It’s not based on their routing. That’s just silly. As it does affect more than 1 player from OCE servers and there are players who mention that in the linked thread you were apart of.
And because you don’t work for blizzard, I’m not sure how reliable your information about routing issues vs what you said before in that thread holds any grounds for tech support.
Nope. The server uses the last hop as a means for discovering your location and places you where you will have the best ping. Players in regions with 2 servers are going to have queue time taken into account (NA and EU).
You’re entitled to your opinion, but I got my forum title after solving hundreds of tech support issues in several of Blizzard’s game title forums — and I’ve solved thousands since they granted it to me.
And I don’t have to guess at this stuff or make anything up. This information was detailed in this forum by previous tech support staff (Blues), game developers, and a previous MVP who is now the Community Manager for Overwatch.
I’m fairly confident this isn’t the case, and that it is in fact a server resourcing issue. The issue seems to occur frequently just after a major patch or event releases, and then ceases to occur almost entirely a while afterwards.
I also don’t understand how a routing issue could place me on a SEA server instead of OCE when any path to SEA from New Zealand would pass through Sydney.
Back when I was still bothering to test this issue I didn’t see a single tracert to a Sydney game server that didn’t take the direct route to Sydney. Admittedly I don’t know how representative of routing a tracert is though.
Assuming routing is the issue, is there a reason the SEA1 lobbies I land in are always full of OCE players from across both New Zealand and Australia using a range of ISPs? And could a routing issue cause a player in the heart of Sydney to somehow be routed to SEA1 instead of the server they practically live next to?
Also would you indulge me an explanation of how Overwatch and ISP routing determines the server? I’m assuming it’s not as simple as pinging every server from the client and checking which one responded fastest.
Can blizzard at least add an “accept” or “decline” game button and show which server you’re going to join?
I am saddened to see this occurring again in OCE.
We have time and time again attempted to resolve this issue over the years.
Initially Blizzard and the community thought it may be an ISP routing issue, however, if that were the case, it would mean every single ISP in Australia was being affected which simply wouldn’t make sense.
Once the ISP routing was eliminated as a possible cause, over various similar forum posts we had landed on the cause being resource availability and eventually had confirmation from a Blizzard support employee, as well as confirmation that they were sourcing more server capacity to ease the rate of occurrence. Lo and behold, IT WORKED!
For a long period of time, we had few occurrences of GSG server connection but in recent time it has been occurring more and more often until today. Today every single game I played was relegated to GSG. Even most of the custom games I played while in queue were, despite showing 3 bars green latency, were also over 100ms on GSG.
We know this is not an issue we can resolve ourselves, or with our ISPs. We know this is simply a problem of Blizzard’s willingness to give its Oceanic players a good experience.
I fear if Blizzard does not make any changes, Overwatch in OCE will go down the same route as PUBG, where without proper functioning OCE servers and the company’s unwillingness to listen to the local players, the community will abandon the game and move on to the next best thing. This is particularly concerning with the release of Marvel Rivals, which despite the frankly absurd balancing and gameplay, continues to rein in overwatch players AND with a server selector nonetheless.
So I beg of you Blizzard, look at the data we know you have and make positive change before the entire OCE player base leaves for greener pastures.
Has anyone noticed that occasionally the game will place training mode on another server, even when regular games are functioning fine? It’s almost like it’s sending lower priority lobbies to other servers to free up OCE capacity for actual matches.
Just had a game where I was placed into a SEA server. This sucks. I hope Blizzard fixes this.
Out of protest, I left the game and took on the SR loss and penalty time.
And another game 
I left that game out of protest too. I’ll go wait out my suspension playing Marvel Rivals.
It’s impossible to answer that without knowing a lot of details that I don’t have access to. Things like time of day, mode, ranks of those players, whether they are grouped, the ranks of people they are grouped with, etc.
It is absurd, but it IS possible. For instance, my ISP was routing me 4.5hours south and then north to Chicago servers. That happened because the route between my location and the state north of me (Georgia) was broken, so they had to route me through DC (on the east coast) and then into Chicago.
I’ve been looking for the post where the staff wrote an explanation so you don’t have to take my word, but I haven’t found it yet. It might have been on the old forums before they converted to this Discourse version, which would mean it’s gone except possibly in the Internet Archive. I can look more after the holidays. I already set a reminder.
Edit to address this too:
I think this is when they completely switched hosting companies from Amazon to Google. There were a couple of servers in Australia at that time (as noted in the old thread about this issue), but that was only temporary during the relocation. We had the same situation in the U.S. when they swapped Amazon → Google, and a lot of players want the DC area server back, but I don’t think we’ll ever see it as a permanent option.
Just had a few games in a row placed on Singapore server. Had a good mix of players with different ISPs from New South Wales, Queensland, plus myself in New Zealand (from the ones who responded to my questioning). A few players left in each match due to the ping and were backfilled with more OCE players.
I fail to understand why this is an ISP routing issue. Just set a location for the player and keep it at that. The player will always join their expected server.
I play DOTA and WOW and I’ve NEVER had ISP routing issues where my games are laggy. In Tekken 8 it shows me that I’m up against a console or PC player if they’re playing on wifi or wired connection, connection strength AND the location of our match before accepting.
I think I just hit the jackpot.
While queueing I just went to the custom game browser and found gun game no cd with 4 bars on the ping! Got in the game and I’m on 250 ping! Connected to ORD1 in CHICAGO.
I am impressed Blizzard has the gall to tell me that’s good ping when decade old games like CS allowed me to set a ping limit for regular games and for custom games, actually view the ping before joining.
You have been disproven of this point many times, stop repeating that blatant misinformation.
Nobody is being routed to a server with 120-200 ping instead of a server with 20-40 ping because it is “closer”.