Right. Select the server near you to determine your *local* network congestion and latency. Then select the Seattle one to get an idea of how fast you'll hit Tera's servers.

Apologies for not clarifying.

Quote: Luxamar on 2012-02-05 02:52:27 UTC

After doing the speed test a few times I get a ping that shifts between 94 and 200

Not terrible. Keep in mind this is just a baseline benchmark server you're hitting. We won't know for sure until we know the IP or domain name of the game server(s).

Quote: Luxamar on 2012-02-05 03:09:50 UTC

But is it unusual for it to flux like that?

Try pinging these.

emeo-cdn3.enmasse-game.com
download.enmasse.com

First one is their web host I believe, and second is the patch server. The login server does not accept pings.

so their servers are in seattle.

Yes but I get faster latency times from these than the Seattle servers for www.speedtest.net.
Distance does not always matter.

Distance always matters.

Then perhaps you could explain to me how I'm getting the same ping times from emeo-cdn3.enmasse-game.com as I am from a local speedtest.net server?

Remember, electricity travels at the speed of light. Latency is not a measure of distance, but of travel time, PLUS machine delay. The more nodes a packet has to hop, the longer it will take to go from host to destination and back. The slower the nodes are to respond, the longer it will take as well, so the amount of nodes itself is also not an absolute determining factor. Network traffic speed is determined by the slowest pipe/node (aka. "the bottleneck") and increased latency from hops in the routing table.

Layman's version: The path to emeo-cdn3.enmasse-game.com is looking pretty good. If they use that framework for the game servers, we should be seeing zippy performance even on the East Coast.

Quote: Luxamar on 2012-02-05 02:41:30 UTC

For fighting games or fps, which are really the epitome of action games, 100ms is a pretty significant delay. You can easily tell the difference between a 100ms game and a 25-30ms game. It might not matter for Tera, but just saying it is a noticeable delay.

19ms ping to download.enmasse.com =D