I wonder...

[longshot]

Just how bad the lag from here and all the way to Japan is going to be? Anybody got a server IP or something that I can try and ping? While the game looks interesting enough, I'm veeeery iffy about this whole Japanese server thing.

 

[-Nxs-]

USA beta testers reported no lag at all in playing on the existing server farm in japan. Square arn't silly if the amount of new US players starts to generate game lag then they will have to increase bandwidth or move/create servers in the USA otheriwse players will quit.

 

[longshot]

When I ping an east coast server, I tend to get a ping time of about 115ms on average. When I ping a west coast server it sorta doubles to 230ms or so. When I ping web sites in Japan (since I don't have anything better to carry out my tests on), it hits around 330-360ms. I have done numerous trace routes and they all go through the US before ending up in Japan.

Okay, let's crunch some numbers. They're saying that people in the US will be fine playing on Japanese servers. Their ping time if we simplify things by subtracting the 115ms it takes my signal to get to the US, should then be in the 100-245ms range, which is about what I can expect when playing... say US EQ, DAOC or SWG. People do that all the time and are doing okay with that, so no wonder why they say that the US players will be ok as well.

We in Europe on the other hand, will get the transatlantic hop on top of that, along with increase risk of packet loss etc. and I know from the old days with modem and west coast EQ servers that it gets quite sluggish when you hit the 400ms range, which could easily happen in FFXI, which is why I'm a bit concerned.

 

[-Nxs-]

Will be very interesting to see what the first UK players say - bearing in mind i dont think anyone has managed to take delivery of the import yet.

 

[spathi]

lag really depends on how fast your connection is :\

i was making up to 26 hops to servers in america and ping usually between 300-500 on 56k modem

but with broadband its more like 80-180

 

[Lamia Acerbus]

Yes, will be interesting to see...as I have had no troubles with EQ and SWG but I have never really tried anything hosted in Japan appart from the odd website while trying to red FF in Japanese.

Still have no idea if they were saying yes, this is out now or would you like fish with that?

 

[Hyuga Hinata]

Well, i played in the Korean Lineage2 beta, lag wasn't much worse than daoc on days with no router trouble.

So I don't think FFXI will be very different.

 

[-Nxs-]

Maybe I will move over to the euro servers when/if they arrive - but I just want to play now, so will suffer any lag from the USA

 

[lairiodd]

Played lineage and the lag was bad ... or maybe that was just the useless movement system.