How do I get assigned to a game server?
The game, not Haste, decides which server to connect you to.
Does Haste let me choose the server?
Haste does not have a feature to choose or influence the game server you are assigned to.
How does the game decide what server to connect me to?
Each game has different criteria for connecting users to certain servers. These include your latency to their servers, your regional game settings, their server capacity at the time you play, matchmaking pools, etc.
But in Haste Check I can choose a server. Why not for game play?
Haste check checks the ping, jitter and packet loss between your PC and a Haste server which is positioned in the same datacenter as the game server.
The Haste Check is our best estimate of the experience you can expect for that game and city at the time you run the Haste Check. But the actual game company and game server is not involved in Haste Check.
Why doesn’t Haste make a feature that lets me choose the game server I play on?
There is no way for Haste, or any network service, to guarantee you will be connected to a specific game server, this is always up to the game developer who is hosting the servers.
We plan to release a Haste Pro feature in November 2020 that will allow users to attempt to influence which server the game assigns them to. This feature will be more effective for certain titles depending on how those titles assign your game server location.
So using Haste has nothing to do with what game server I am assigned to?
TLDR: yes that is correct, with occasional exceptions. But when Haste does influence game server assignment, Haste always helps.
Sometimes, depending on which game you play, Haste can inadvertently positively influence where the game assigns you to play.
This happens because, when you launch a game, one of Haste’s first steps is creating fast routes to each of that game’s servers, so we are ready for your game to start, no matter which server you are playing on.
Certain titles, including Overwatch and Fortnite, will pick which game server you are assigned to after we make those fast route connections. So it will consider where you are closest including Haste optimization.
This possible inadvertent influence of Haste can only have a positive impact on your ping. Here is an Overwatch example to explain why:
Let's say you live in Texas and you have 35 ping to Los Angeles and 30 ping to Chicago. In that case, Overwatch will generally assign you to Chicago since the ping is lower.
However, let's say you have Haste Pro and your ping goes to 25 milliseconds in Los Angeles and 28 milliseconds in Chicago. In that case, Overwatch will more likely assign you to Los Angeles.