Why I always play East Coast servers

[Was_Ash_Emerald]

Being in Austin, my ping is about the same to each coast, but I prefer the East Coast servers for all games for the following reasons:

1. 75% of the US/Canada population lives in the East and Central time zones. While servers are often full in the early months of any popular game, over time they dwindle and if the game becomes lower populated overall, the "lead" East Coast servers will become significantly more populated than the "lead" West Coast servers almost all the time.

2. Euros. European players who like to play overnight will often make an alt character on East Coast USA servers in order to be in bigger battles. Ping penalties aren't that severe from West and Central Europe.

3. Latin American players. A trend that's somewhat recent, but there are a lot of gamers these days from Brazil especially. Internet routing comes up through Miami, and thus favors EC servers.

4. Maturity. I don't what it is, but East Coast players are somewhat less juvenile that West Coast players. I don't know why that is, but I've observed this trend in numerous games going back to Ultima Online.