I didn't get any help on the forum last time but hey, who knows. Miracles are known to happen. Not sure if this is even trying to get help, more like whining-feedback, as the title mentions.
I live in Finland, I say this only because of timezone differences. I need to get up in the morning (this isn't the problem really, though) early if I want to play with a friend of mine who lives only a couple of miles away. It seems that the game works from around 10am to around 7-6pm and then boom, the lag gets so bad I can't pick up items, my actions register after 10-30 seconds and chat messages send minutes after I've actually sent them. I'm assuming there's a flood of players after people in the US get on, because I'm fairly sure most of DST players are from the US - I've experienced this in other multiplayers too, clock strikes six and bam, people everywhere. (And considering most of them for the past few months have been discussing a certain political topic I think it's safe to assume where they're from.)
Now what salts my apples is the fact that there's a 7-8 hour timelimit when I can actually play without teleporting all over the map and getting my butt kicked by monsters 5 miles away from me and finally dying to Charlie because it took the game full 30 seconds to register the log I put in the fire. The game feels more like a demo that lets me play only for a small while daily and I think that's rather unfair.
Yes, yes, we've tried practically every single "solution". Disabling mods, ping balancing, disabling movement prediction, turning off every single other app from the background, disabling tumbleweeds and rain, making small maps, deleting minimaps, fiddling with practically every single file in existence and meddling with values, murdering a crow at midnight on top of a hill during full moon...you name it, we've most likely tried it. So far nothing seems to make it better or worse.
Also, we live like 2 miles apart, our internet's fine and great and our computers are able to run stuff in general just fine. The game works like magic with our computers and internet within that time limit and then everything goes to poop.
I know running servers isn't cheap and I'm no gaming professor who knows how everything works, but for the love of dogs, someone please try to do something about this lag. It's nice that we're getting lots of new content to explore, but, you know, it'd be nice to actually be able to see all the cool content added. I hate to throw the "I PAID FOR THIS I SHOULD GET IT" card here, but I payed for the full game, not a timelimited version. I don't think moving together and paying for sonic speed internet and investing in a super computer should be a requirement to enjoy the game at all times.
I'm sorry if I got a tad pissy, I just love this game and I want to enjoy it with my friend, but, alas.