As Demigod connects directly to a player as opposed to a static server you'll find your MS can vary quite a bit. There's not really much advice I can give for lowering your Ping besides ensuring Demigod is the only internet application running on your PC. Playing with other Americans closer to you will help improve your general experience. I myself am an Australian and am forced to play against mostly other Australians to ensure low Pings.

Also, since your using a University Network as opposed to a home connection, try asking around and see if anyone has noticed any problems - if possible, ask the IT People on your campus (assuming your allowed to run online games). The University itself might be having problems, or installed a new Firewall or Router. It's also possibly, as Demigod connects using a Peer-to-Peer connection system, that the University has taken to steps to prevent it's students from using P2P programs - like Limewire - and this merely a side effect of that.

Best of luck!

Thanks guys, I really appreciate your responses.

ZehDon: I do try to only play against other Americans. Also, from other places I read about P2P games on the Internet, I got the impression that P2P games do not "look" like file sharing P2P applications, and thus if bandwidth is restricted for filesharing P2P applications, P2P games should still run okay. That may not be correct, and I might contact our IT department to confirm this. Also, given that I used to be an avid WoW player, we are certainly allowed to run online games.

Spooky: Yeah, do try to connect only to US games. Even when I connect to east coast-only games, the ping is still rediculously high.

Now my ping is around 800 to over 1000 ms!

I looked at Team Fortress 2's servers, and the pings there are low, like 10-35 ms.

I don't have a firewall active, and I don't know what else could be affecting it.

I guess next I'll just try to close every other application...

 yeah, same thing happening to. In the lobby everyone ping is fine, normally <100ms. Then once I get to the game, it jumps up to 1000ms+. I tried a 3v3 and it was unplayable, ppl started leaving and what was left was a 3v1, the ping sorted itself out after that but since it was 3v1 the game sorta collapsed after that.

It is not normal for 6 players to be causing massive lag, my guess would be the larger number of connections is messing up our routers or possibly windows. I know large numbers of connections can mess up windows badly. My connection is fine, low ping etc.. and I have no firewall or antivirus or anything else that is generally anti-gaming.

I have a netopia router and I run windows xp sp2.

On a side not I am kinda unsatisfied with this. Considering this was in beta for so long I feel many of these problems should have been ironed out long ago. After spending an entire day trying to set up my router just to be able to connect to ppl now I have massive lag so am stuck with 1v1 and possibly 2v2. Well short of the potential this game has. On a plus side at least I have unlimited lan so I can at least play 3v3 on lan with my friends, well done on that part guys.

however, this may be remedied by SD's proxy network they are setting up. only time will tell, however.

i too would like to be able to play whilst at uni; the two hours between lectures is potentially many games.

Yes, Game Ranger does use P2P however it's more in the fashion of how the Proxy severs will operate rather than strickly P2P. If Game Ranger is allowing Demigod to work without any issues, I would expect the Proxy Servers Stardock are getting ready to fix your problem - as well as mine.

edit:
Since TF2 uses a server/client model rather than a P2P model I think it's safe to say that the University network limits P2P activity to spare bandwidth. Wait for the new servers to go live.

Another person seeing the exact same results....

I'm on a DSL connection - in the US and seeing this joining only US games.

going through a LinkSys router; seen the problems with both all the ports forwarded properly, as well as DMZ enabled and pointed directly to my gaming machine.