AION 2 lag and high ping in Europe: causes and fixes

AION 2's global launch brought servers to Europe, and with them the questions every MMO launch brings: why the ping jumps in sieges, why skills fire late in a dungeon, and whether it's your connection or the game. Here's how to tell, and what helps.

Where AION 2 is played

The global release has its own European servers, listed as pairs of an Elyos and an Asmodian server, and Europe has the most of any region. NCSoft has said it chose local hosting for lower latency, but it hasn't published which cities the European servers are in or who hosts them. So the honest answer to "where are the servers" is: in Europe, at addresses players' connections show but the publisher hasn't listed.

Your ping is the distance to those servers plus the road your provider takes to reach them. If players near you on another provider play smoother, the road is the difference, not your PC.

Seeing your connection

AION 2 doesn't show your ping in its own interface, so measure it from outside the game. What causes ping spikes shows a ten-minute test that tells your home, your provider and the route apart. Do it once at a quiet time and once when the game feels bad, and compare.

• Steady but high: distance, or a long road. Skills feel a little late all the time.
• Normal with jumps: queueing on the way, often your own line or Wi-Fi, sometimes your provider in the evening.
• Calm figures, but the game stutters in big fights: the server or your PC, not the network.

Why an MMO lags in big fights

In a siege or a crowded field boss, the server has to tell you about everyone around you, many times a second, and work out every skill they use. When it falls behind, everyone there lags together, however good their connection is. Your PC has more to draw at the same moment, so the frame rate drops too, and that feels like lag. Separate the two: if your ping stays calm while the game stutters, look at the server's load or your frame rate. Windows settings for FPS helps with the second.

What helps

1. Play on a European server if you're in Europe: another region adds its whole distance to every skill.
2. Use a cable. Wi-Fi's spikes turn into skills that hang. Wi-Fi or Ethernet explains why.
3. Keep the line quiet during raids and sieges: uploads, downloads and streams elsewhere in the home.
4. Note when it happens. Every evening at the same time points at your provider's busy hours.
5. Change the route when your ping is higher than the distance to the European servers explains.

Where NoSpike fits

NoSpike's AION 2 entry is a beta: the European servers aren't published, so NoSpike is mapping them from what players' apps report, and it may not carry all of the game's traffic yet. While you play, AION 2's page in the app says what it carries.

Where it does carry the game, it measures your own route and the routes through its relays in Europe, side by side, and routes AION 2 only when a relay is faster. It checks again every minute and won't move a session that's running unless the route fails, because a moved connection is a disconnect.