Servers, when playing with friends from other countries?

General Discussion
1

I’m from the UK and regularly play with a friend from the US (east coast). In OW1 and for the first few months in OW2, it seemed random whether we’d be placed on a UK/EU server or an east coast US one, which I was fine with.

In the last few weeks, when we play we are always placed on a UK/EU server, so my ping is always OK (30-40 ms), and my friend’s ping always sucks (120-140 ms).

This happens no matter what game mode we play.

Has anyone else in a similar situation - playing with people where there’s a fairly big time zone difference - noticed the same thing?

2

I (NA) occasionally play with a friend (EU) but haven’t noticed any pattern in terms of where we end up playing. It does seem to prefer EU more often imo, but I think it’s just rng which region we’ll actually get.

3

It generally depends on the routing the players can do. Many ISP change this every 2-4 weeks so if the game finds you would get horrible ping on US, it will choose the “lesser” of 2 evils.

With your current routing from your ISP you would probably go to 180ms