[2021] US West Server Talk

Interested to see what everyone's take is on the new servers. I believe they have created more questions for me than answers and they kind of feel like a giant band-aid.

The new west coast servers have been something that I have been heavily monitoring since hearing about them becoming a thing. For starters I live in Illinois and have a friend that moved to California. We were always used to playing together before on 60 or 70 ping. But now since he's moved its been more like me at 60 and him at 120... not nearly as fun to say the least. We have been waiting for this day ever since we heard that there was a chance of him getting some lower ping servers.

After playing on the west coast servers I have to say I'm not nearly as excited as I was leading up to it and it's created a lot of questions for us:

1. It seems as if the new servers are located in California which pretty much just reverses our ping problem when we play on them; Mine is high and his is low. Why can't they be more mid-west say Colorado for example?
2. Why are east and west servers even a thing? In a game like Smite that is much like a shooter, stable ping is such a necessity. Why can't there be a set of more central servers in order to satisfy more people?
3. While queueing west coast servers today we played a conquest game where we were put onto the east coast I think. My ping was more of what I was used to and his was high. Is it possible to load into east coast games while queuing west coast servers? If so how are you supposed to even know what to expect?
4. Why split the US player base in half? Why not theoretically have a central US server to play on where all players could have AT LEAST under 100 ping for pretty much the entire country? (I'm sure some totally unbiased Chicago servers could achieve that)

Overall, the new west coast servers are great for the future of Smite I'm just not sure if it was all done the right way. It seems as if they are going to create more problems than solutions for all players and it seems as if it was done as a band-aid. I love this game and really want to see it succeed as season 8 has reinvigorated my passion for Smite that hasn't been there since season 3. Hopefully someone close to Hi-Rez can shine some light on these questions.