lf a new realm...

[fadedmind]

I'm looking for a high pop pvp server hosted by new york data centers using eastern time zones ( not sure if the time zone effects latency as much as the location of blizzards datacenter hosting realms). Have been having latency issues recently w/ mine (sargeras) and realized its hosted by a Chicago data center and figured its causing my latency issues. alliance to horde ratio I would prefer to be as close to even as possible.

[BeastmasterGuardian]

I would try Wowprogress.com to check out ratios and activity. Will also show you timezones.

[fadedmind]

Would picking a realm on a new york data center using central time effect latency?

[judgementofantonidas]

Would picking a realm on a new york data center using central time effect latency?

I have had the occasion to roll a one on a number of servers to do a little recruiting and the majority of servers are at roughly 94 ms some farther away 130 for me with the exception of the new york hub which ran 50ms so yes there is always going to be some difference based on how far your signal needs to travel.

[philefluxx]

Would picking a realm on a new york data center using central time effect latency?

Negative. Time means nothing in terms of what your seeing. Yes NTP (network time protocol) is important for data transmission, but as long as its correct to GMT, "time zone" means nothing. Distance does make a difference, but technically you could experience trouble to a data center in your home city and not across the country depending on the routes your ISP takes. So you cannot assume, at least in the US, that farther will always be an issue.

[Gurbz]

I'm looking for a high pop pvp server hosted by new york data centers using eastern time zones ( not sure if the time zone effects latency as much as the location of blizzards datacenter hosting realms). Have been having latency issues recently w/ mine (sargeras) and realized its hosted by a Chicago data center and figured its causing my latency issues. alliance to horde ratio I would prefer to be as close to even as possible.

Distance matters very little when it comes to latency in WoW. Yes, there will be a difference and generally the closer you are the better, but we are talking about a difference between, for example, 100ms vs 50 ms. Which in actual gameplay terms might as well be the same. You will not be able to tell the difference at all. What would be more likely to cause issues would be something off in one of the hubs you have to jump through to get to that data center, in which case it is technically possible that the closer data center would actually give you a higher latency than the farther one.

As an example, I live in California and have played on EU servers a few times. My latency was only a couple hundred ms slower, which is noticeable at times but did not affect my gameplay in any significant way. And that was travelling across an entire continent plus an ocean.

In direct response to your question, there are not any servers that really fit your requirements.

Would picking a realm on a new york data center using central time effect latency?

No. The only thing the Timezone affects is what timezone the server clock is set to. Which even that doesn't matter anymore since they standardized what times all the lockouts and such happen. But it has nothing to do with latency.


Seriously, if you are experiencing latency issues, especially if it only started recently, it is far more likely to be an issue with your ISP, or something else on the route between your location and the data center that causes it than for it to be related to the distance between you and the server.

[Chief Brouhaha]

Time zone of the realm doesnt effect latency. Also chicago is pretty close to est, but maybe it will help you a little

[dacoolist]

Also want to point out that: Even people that were very close to Lothar back in the day when they had TERRRRRIBLE server hardware (tons of people left the server because of it), that actually has a significant amount to do with it too.. Although all of the new servers from Blizz should be solid since mid Cata.

[Z3ROR]

Check these two websites:

- http://www.wowwiki.com/US_realm_list_by_datacenter

- http://wow.realmpop.com/us.html

Good luck searching!

[Rowlga]

OP, have you heard anyone else complaining about latency on the Chicago servers? For the past month or two I've been having similar problems (Bloodhoof, also Chicago) with lag that's getting to the point of unplayability. Haven't tried other datacenters yet, but have definitely narrowed it down to a WoW-only issue, the rest of my interwebs (even other Blizzard games) running fine. Disappointing because Chicago happens to be the datacenter with the fewest hops from me.

Browsing thru the links Zeror gave & trying to match them up quick, it looks like you may be out of luck OP. The evenly-balanced NY EST PvP realms look low-pop, with population increasing with faction imbalance. May just have to find a mid-pop realm that favors your faction but not too much.