The advantage of local servers is in not having to wait for your data to go from one corner of the planet to the next. So seeing an Australian-based server in Demon’s Souls was a welcome sight. Unfortunately, things only got worse from there.
It’s common for all sorts of games to have launch issues, especially when you’re a) one of the few proper next-gen games coming out in b) one of the most anticipated years ever for a video game console and c) you’re a goddamn Demon’s Souls remake.
So, understandably, the servers are having a bit of a day. In practical terms, that translates to a server in Sydney which should have a latency of about 10 to 20 millseconds being … slower than servers located in Hong Kong. Or California. Or … Ohio???
Here was the servers yesterday when Demon’s Souls launched. Things were, uh, not great.
And here were the servers about half an hour ago, when things were still, well, less than optimal. The pings ranged from very bad to still kind of bad, since there’s really no kind of physics or math that can somehow make Ohio closer to my house than the city I live 15 minutes away from.
Things will undoubtedly calm down over the coming days once everyone stops patching, well, everything. Although Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is out today, so God only knows how much that’s going to cripple our national infrastructure.
It’s worth noting: if you don’t care about invading other people’s games and being a shit, or you’re not into helping others beat bosses, then you can still play Demon’s Souls just fine. It’s just when those multiplayer connections come into play that you’ll hit a snag.
Until the servers calm down, anyway. Demon’s Souls is still probably the best of the next-gen games right now. It’s also still astonishingly hard, too. But hey, it’s a Souls game. What did you expect?
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