As mentioned, the issue isn't the difference between 60-80 ping, its that us in WA get 100 ping during peak hours compared to 30 ping that many players get.
I play just fine at 100 ping, however it does limit what I can do. I miss manual blocks sheerly because of ping difference sometimes (sometimes I just miss obviously). Also, chambering is pretty much non-existent for me (though I've been practicing it a lot lately to try to get used to the timing).
Anyway..
Tonight at 11:00pm PST: There were 71 players on North America cRPG (Hospitaller), 31 players on NA cRPG (ATS), around 40 in seige. This is not primetime, as on East coast it is 2am, and 1am CST. That's still plenty players at that time of night on a _weekday_.
Are these players East coast players? I doubt it, they are probably West Coast players. Even if only half of them were West Coast, that's still around 50 battle players (ignoring the seige players) which would likely be playing on a West Coast server instead. Again, this is Tuesday night; not prime-time.
Its obvious that if there were a West Coast server, it would have a population. That's like back when there was only a 100 man EU and then a smaller NA server, saying we don't need a 100 man NA server because there isn't enough population to warrant an NA server (which is how it used to be). But guess what? The first NA server thrived and all of us that used to play on the 200+ ping EU server quickly switched to NA once it was a 100 player server.
As any game, Counterstrike, TF2, etc... players flock to their regional servers and the population will flow from one to the other. Early in the evening, the East/Central servers are populated because the West Coast is still at work. As it gets later in the evening, the West Coast server would fill up while the East/Central servers would drop.
It doesn't work like that right now because they are all Chicago servers. There is no regional variance.
I understand the costs related to setting up a server. In fact, not providing my own rack would cost $150/mo to be able to support 100 players (providing my own rack would be about $50/mo). But guess what? We don't have the chance to set up a server because only people trusted by chadz in the community are allowed to tie it to the stat tracking, leveling, item system that is cRPG. And this is fine! That's how it should be to keep things fair. But if people are willing to donate resources, server racks, etc. to at least give it a shot; why not give it a shot?
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