Now i’ve got to change to US East every time I want to login, and it’s going to be a constant reminder i’m on a less optimal server for connection. RIP.
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Not as bad as you think. They don’t have an east coast data center for wow servers as far as I know. So, worst case scenario is your server is housed in Chicago, smack dab in the middle of NA, right on a major network hub where it gets minimum latency to as much of NA as possible.
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That isn’t the physical location of the server hardware. Just the timezone the server is set to. The hardware tends to be either in LA or Chicago.
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So… roughly. East, or West? Got it.
I believe you mean West or Central. There is no East.
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CHICAGO EAST COAST REPRESENT.
s
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So like… if not West. I would go in a particular direction from that server. Markedly… East? Got it.
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What Time Zone is Chicago in?
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Central Time Zone
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Central (10 chars)
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Chicago master race
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Arizona is east of LA. Would you characterize a server hosted in Arizona as an East Coast server.
lol
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Except we’re not talking about time zones. We’re talking about intended audience. You know, the whole “West” and “East” labeling system in use by Battle Net since its inception pre-WoW?
If they change labeling to include “Coast”, then I agree it wouldn’t make sense. But, by use of a close eye, we can see it doesn’t include “Coast”.
Blizzard has always treated the US as a binary region. West and East. The naming scheme describe their intended audience. Not “East Coast” and “West Coast”.
It makes perfect sense. I can see why Chicagoans might feel marginalized and start a #centralmatters campaign, though.
I believe that they use a new centralized tech. I’ve tried various servers of all time zones, and retail (Legion) servers that are supposedly hosted in separate data centers. I seem to get 19-23ms pings no matter where I’m connected to. I don’t think it actually makes much difference with today’s 1-2gb fiber home connections, and the enhanced backbones servers sit on these days.
Even under that framework, Blizzard has both East and West servers hosted in Chicago.
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It does still matter a little bit. Signals can only travel on a line at a set maximum speed. Physical distance determines minimum latency possible. Then you add in the minor overhead of each piece of hardware between the end user and server.
For most applications, since we are talking in the tens of milisecond range of difference, its irrelevant. For a few things it does though.
Little ui/ux time-wasters can have an impact on usage.
Maybe that’s the plan?
Yeah, but I was speaking in terms of WoW only. Any difference would be negligible and most wouldn’t even notice, from a gameplay standpoint. This is given optimal conditions though, like having fiber, low amount of node hops, little or no signal loss, no packet duplication, etc…
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There used to be data centers all over the US. Back in the day, they had em in LA, Seattle, Chicago, Boston, and I think Dallas. Most have been closed down however and consolidated years ago.
The reality is, your ping times are not based nearly so much on distance to or from the server, but rather by the number of hops your connection goes through. There are backbone trunks that cross from one coast to the other with no intermediaries. So it is in theory possible to connect a PC in Boston to one in LA with only like 1-2 hops.
Server times in the login area are based on the timezone the servers are set to. Basically, Blizzard dropped to the bottom right of the Operating System and changed the timezone they want the server to track, rather than be based on location. Anyone can do that on their own PC.
Yep. My original server was housed in Dallas back in the day. I live in that area and I got like 7-12ms ping. It was glorious.
Gone now though. R.I.P. Dallas datacenter.