I live in Australia but want to keep playing League of Legends on the European West server because my friends are there, and I would prefer to use my existing account rather than change regions. The main issue is the high latency: the game feels delayed when reacting, landing skillshots, dodging abilities, and playing ranked matches. I understand that the distance between Australia and Europe creates a minimum amount of latency, but I'm wondering whether better routing could improve things. What ping do Australian players typically get to EUW? Is Ethernet noticeably better than Wi-Fi, and can a VPN or gaming-routing service such as ExitLag help? If so, are Frankfurt, Amsterdam, London, or another location usually the best choice? Could using a VPN cause problems with the game service? Is EUW realistically playable from Australia, or would OCE be the better option?
3 Answers
A gaming VPN or routing service can occasionally help if your ISP sends traffic through an unnecessarily bad route, such as a detour through another continent. Test a few European endpoints and compare the actual in-game ping and stability rather than assuming one city is always best. If your normal route is already efficient, the improvement may be tiny or nonexistent.
The distance puts a hard limit on the result. Most Australian players should expect roughly 190–250 ms to EUW, even with an excellent connection, so no VPN can turn it into normal low-latency gameplay. A wired connection can reduce local Wi-Fi spikes, but it will not meaningfully lower the Australia-to-Europe baseline.
EUW is probably fine for casual games with friends, but around 200 ms will make ranked play, fast reactions, dodging, and precise abilities frustrating. The practical setup is to keep EUW for playing with friends and use an OCE account or server for ranked and competitive games. A VPN generally does not remove the fundamental latency caused by the physical distance.
That makes sense. I may try a routing service for a month just to see whether my ISP is taking an especially inefficient path, but I won’t expect it to overcome the distance.