I live on the west coast, but people are saying choose NA East because it’ll be more popular. Just curious as to why that is? Are there more people playing who live in the East or something, how would we know this? Is it because there are some big name streamers going East?
Also any guesses as if ping will have that much of a difference if I choose West or East?
Because the cities are closer together. The West is super spread out. Also: New York City.
I would prefer to have a good ping.
Check your ping to Amazon servers there. West is said to be in Oregon, and I dunno about East, whether it’s Virginia or Ohio. East will have more players because more people live in the Eastern US. Personally I’m just sticking to where my ping is best since I plan to do a lot of PvP.
I’m sort of confused on what this has to do with it? Better ping between players who live in big cities I suppose?
Wow thanks for the link, there’s a ping difference of about 50 between West and East for me. It makes me want to go West, but I worry about the player population if majority is going East.
You can check out my post where we go over the reason for that in detail (Split Regions and Plans For The Future), but ultimately the decision is up to you. The issue is needlessly complicated.
And what Marshmallow_Kiss linked to get a rough estimate of your ping. I believe the East servers are in Virginia.
Both regions will be healthy if the game succeeds and you should go with latency over population concerns.
Thanks I’ll check it out
According to the link provided above, my ping in the West is around 20-30, in the East it’s around 80-90.
I don’t think 80-90 is that horrible is it?
No problem.
Also, 80-90 is easily playable (I had minimal issues playing RU servers with 200+ ping), but you’ll definitely notice the difference.
I read your thread and seems like majority just want to go East for the population and longevity of the game. Sadly I think I will too, I don’t think 80-90 ping is horrible it’s a good sacrifice to be with the popular region.
They’re both perfectly playable play with your friends over server response time below ~90, but there are plenty of people out there that disagree. I don’t think either server will ever be as empty as RU is combined and you still see ample people.
Down the line if they ever have a fix, it’s safer to be on a more stable “region”, unfortunately. Hopefully we’ll get some insight to their thought process or plans before launch so we can adjust accordingly.
Also how many servers per region? In the beta there were two servers per West or East region I believe.
If there’s two servers per region at launch, that’s only going to split up the playerbase even more isn’t it?
They will announce a server list for each region before launch. It won’t be the two servers per region.
Hope not, there should only be one server in the West and one server in the East.
The distribution of the gamer population indicates that East usually gets 3x the amount of players that West does. Due to the nature of Lost Ark gearing, the auction house is essentially required unless you want to rely on RNG for the exact drops you need (this may not be an issue if the West population is significantly large, but even if it is, the market will be more saturated on East, so prices will be lower). Other than the auction house, the party finder is region locked, so people on East will not be able to play with people on West. The auction house and party finder are the primary reason people are saying to play East because both of those functions are cross-server but not cross-region.
With all that being said, if all your friends are going to play on West, play West. The region lock issue is not that large for T1/T2 content. The only caveat to playing West early on is that none of your achievements, unlockables, shop purchases, or progression will carry over if you decide to switch regions in T3 for the better auction house.
TL;DR - East and West will essentially be separate games with completely separate ecosystems, so play where you think is best. If your friends pick one, just go play on that one. If you are solo, I would suggest East for the larger playerbase. If you are just trying the game out, pick whatever, but if you are planning to play long term, choose wisely.
This thread does bring up a lot of good points. I always assumed people played on the server region they lived in. I am in New York so I always pick East Coast servers but if I lived in California I would certainly play on West Coast region servers.
I’ll be on West Coast for sure. I’ve been there with all games I’ve played and never had any population issues at all.
West coast servers nowadays actually hold really chunky numbers due to big streamers etc being on them, so I don’t forsee any issues with that tbh.
It would be cool to have the ability to queue up with east coast for raids and stuff, much like FF does the cross server interactions.
Anything below 100ms is great mate… Your are considered lucky to get that low ping/latency. Some of us playing from OCE get average 200-250ms and the best option for us is joining NA West for “best” connection. Too bad There’s no OCE SERVER at launch. But NA West will be my default option until further notice
I mean I don’t expect West to be a ghost town or anything, but as people have mentioned it’ll have 1/3 the playerbase of East. This will cause longer que times, higher AH prices, and stuff people have mentioned.