The new Fortnite NA Central Servers are set to level the playing field for Fortnite players throughout North America.
High ping is the bane of every Fortnite player’s existence, wreaking havoc on gameplay and making it almost impossible to succeed in critical moments. It creates frustrating delays and lag that can ruin the gaming experience.
However, this new central server will balance the ping for most players on both the east and west coasts, creating a more level playing field
Related: All the Details About Fortnite Chapter 4 Season 2 Competitive
What is Ping in Gaming?
Simply put, ping is a method of determining latency or the amount of time it takes for data to travel between two devices or across a network.
As communication latency decreases, communication effectiveness improves. The measurement unit used in calculating ping is typically milliseconds or ms
A low ping time is especially critical in First Person Shooter (FPS) games. For these FPS types of games, the timely delivery of data is essential for an action to happen quickly.
These types of actions in Fortnite relate to placing your builds or “taking walls” from your opponents. To achieve low ping, players need to consider a variety of factors. Some of these include networking equipment, computer processing speed, wifi versus wired routers, and network provider download/upload speeds.
How Does Location Affect Ping?
But the most critical factor for most players is location. There is no getting around it. Proximity to the game server has a huge effect on ping.
In North America, Fortnite has historically had its servers located on the West Coast (California) and the East Coast (Virginia). Serious competitive Fortnite players often choose to relocate to an area close to the Fortnite servers so that they can improve their gameplay.
By doing so, they would be able to achieve the lowest ping possible. This, in turn, could give that extra competitive advantage to place higher in major tournaments.
An Example of Using Fortnite’s NA-Central Server
Here is an example of ping results for a player based in California. Note that the NA-West Server provides the best ping at 23 ms.
However, if this individual decides to play Fortnite with friends on the East coast, then their gameplay would suffer quite a lot. By choosing the NA-East server, this player’s ping would jump to 76 ms.
Fortunately, with the introduction of the NA-Central servers, all the friends can now reach a happy medium. By picking this new server, players located on either coast of the US would hover around a 43 ms ping.
The Effect on Top-Tier Competitive Fortnite Players
Significantly, with the introduction of the NA-Central server in Dallas, Texas, competitive players from the East Coast and the West Coast will have to make some serious adjustments.
Obviously, those who will benefit the most will be Fortnite players living in Texas and other Central region locations.
You can expect a lot more cowboy hat sales as some competitive Fortnite players start moving to Dallas to get as close to “zero-ping” as possible.
With that being said, let’s take a look at Epic Games’ full announcement.
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Epic’s NA Central Server Announcement
Today we’re excited to launch the Fortnite NA Central server region (“matchmaking region”). We’re thrilled to provide lower latency for many players residing in Mexico and the Central United States!
We worked with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to deliver this new server region located in Dallas, Texas, USA.
The NA-Central server region is using AWS Local Zones to provide a low-latency experience for players in Mexico and the Central United States, with the experience being similar to those of players in the NA-East and NA-West server regions.
We will continue to look for improvements where we can to try and provide the best player experience possible.
WHAT DOES THE NA-CENTRAL SERVER REGION MEAN FOR COMPETITIVE EVENTS?
During Battle Royale Chapter 4 Season 1, we may host a few competitive events on the NA-Central server region to test server performance and iron out any bugs, but tournaments in North America will still generally be hosted on the NA-East and NA-West server regions.
However, starting in Chapter 4 Season 2, competitive events will no longer be hosted on the NA-East and NA-West server regions. Instead, tournaments in North America will run on the NA-Central servers.
Players will still be able to view and queue up for upcoming competitive events while set to the NA-East or NA-West server region, but the event will be routed to the NA-Central servers.
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WHAT ABOUT COMPETITIVE PRIZES?
Any prizing for NA-East and NA-West in future Battle Royale Seasons will be combined into one pool for North America.
This includes qualifications through multi-round tournaments such as Victory Cash Cups, FNCS Majors, and the FNCS Global Championship.
North America will have one single champion for all competitive events for the first time.
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