Why I always play East Coast servers

Was_Ash_Emerald · 2012-05-05, 08:21 PM

Being in Austin, my ping is about the same to each coast, but I prefer the East Coast servers for all games for the following reasons:

1. 75% of the US/Canada population lives in the East and Central time zones. While servers are often full in the early months of any popular game, over time they dwindle and if the game becomes lower populated overall, the "lead" East Coast servers will become significantly more populated than the "lead" West Coast servers almost all the time.

2. Euros. European players who like to play overnight will often make an alt character on East Coast USA servers in order to be in bigger battles. Ping penalties aren't that severe from West and Central Europe.

3. Latin American players. A trend that's somewhat recent, but there are a lot of gamers these days from Brazil especially. Internet routing comes up through Miami, and thus favors EC servers.

4. Maturity. I don't what it is, but East Coast players are somewhat less juvenile that West Coast players. I don't know why that is, but I've observed this trend in numerous games going back to Ultima Online.

NCLynx · 2012-05-05, 09:01 PM

I've actually never seen someone explain differences they've seen between the two types of servers. Kind of interesting, I guess it's not to surprising that they would be noticeably different.

WiteBeam · 2012-05-05, 09:12 PM

1, 2, and 3 all make perfect sense.
No one can argue with number 4.

Atheosim · 2012-05-05, 09:24 PM

Don't really understand 4, but 123 seems reasonable. I live on the furthest reaches of the west coast so I'm sort of doomed to stay here in terms of server choice.

WorldOfForms · 2012-05-05, 09:40 PM

I played for years on Markov and Emerald (from beginning of PS through the merge) and I saw no difference between maturity levels.

There's a phenomenon called confirmation bias. Once you believe a certain group of people is a certain way, you'll cherry pick all behaviors that support that belief and conveniently forget anything that challenges the belief. Everybody does it, no one will admit to it.

SKYeXile · 2012-05-05, 09:35 PM

You missed the points that Mexicans get a better ping to west coaster servers along with Oceanic players or was the point to leave them out? Also Eruo's are irreverent, they're given their own servers, they don't like it, they can find a better job, that also goes for anybody in the military complaining about not been able to play.

Was_Ash_Emerald · 2012-05-05, 10:41 PM

Originally Posted by SKYeXile

You missed the points that Mexicans get a better ping to west coaster servers along with Oceanic players or was the point to leave them out? Also Eruo's are irreverent, they're given their own servers, they don't like it, they can find a better job, that also goes for anybody in the military complaining about not been able to play.

I've not notice many Mexicans playing online games; Oceanic still gives 200ms+ solid pings, so, while they can "play" on the West Coast USA server, it's not great. Pings from UK to Washington DC are usually under 100ms.

SKYeXile · 2012-05-05, 10:46 PM

Originally Posted by Was_Ash_Emerald

I've not notice many Mexicans playing online games; Oceanic still gives 200ms+ solid pings, so, while they can "play" on the West Coast USA server, it's not great. Pings from UK to Washington DC are usually under 100ms.

Cool, so then the UKs can ping 150 to US west(OR JUST PLAY ON THEIR OWN SERVERS) instead of Oceanics pinging 250 to US east.

Reginald · 2012-05-05, 10:59 PM

Why I will only play on west coast servers.
1. That's where I live.

headcrab13 · 2012-05-06, 10:53 AM

Originally Posted by Reginald

Why I will only play on west coast servers.
1. That's where I live.

Exactly. I like certain aspects of other server zones, but latency trumps all.

Flaropri · 2012-07-12, 03:40 PM

Originally Posted by SKYeXile

Also Eruo's are irreverent, they're given their own servers, they don't like it, they can find a better job, that also goes for anybody in the military complaining about not been able to play.

Because everyone in the military has loads of options for changing employment at will.

OutlawDr · 2012-07-12, 03:51 PM

I live in Houston, and I find people from Austin are weirder then people from other parts of Texas. I don't know why that is, but I've observed this trend in the 20+ years I've lived in Texas.

Brusi · 2012-05-05, 09:45 PM

^this

There are complete fuckwits on both.

Baneblade · 2012-05-05, 09:48 PM

I don't think the maturity thing is correct. West Coasters just aren't as pretentious. We grew up throwing punches in lieu of arguing.

Infektion · 2012-05-06, 09:17 PM

Originally Posted by Sobekeus

I don't think the maturity thing is correct. West Coasters just aren't as pretentious. We grew up throwing punches in lieu of arguing.

lol LA ain't that hard dude, I live in Miami and when I hit up LA with my boy Danny and Raul, we walked up and down Crenshaw, partied all over the place at night and met all kinds of peeps, and to be honest, I've never seen so many idiots per square foot, than in LA.