We simply don't know what the bottleneck for the servers were, and people were reporting that the servers were less populated than they used too. That means we have no way of knowing (yet) how much an impact the upgrade was. We don't have enough info to make a fair comparison yet. We do know that "server performance improvement" is something the devs considers an ongoing process through the entire year, according to the roadmap. It is likely that the upgrade already did help, but it is 100% sure, that it is a good start.
I was seeing weird lag earlier this afternoon. Sometimes the recast on my wizard spells was taking way longer than normal. I should be able to cast 2 alternating ethereals with almost zero delay in between but sometimes one would go grey and stay grey for an extra 3 seconds. It kind of looked like the timer did not start right away. edit: this was not in raid but just 2 boxing.
I don't think its possible considering how much spam is generated per raid broken down by class to perform at its peak. Every now and then you get lucky and get a lag free ZD though, not the norm though.
Of the six raids we did this weekend at our normal time, Sunday night 430PST, the only one with any significant lag was the Aten Ha Ra raid. Something about that one specifically causes issues. Golems get stacked up and you have to deal with up to 3 sets at a time.
And to add to that, now we know that the lag on the first day was not caused by everyone doing the same raid at the same time. Lag can hit just whenever it decides to hit.
I believe we've just set a new world record for the number of golems in the Aten Ha Ra raid - FOUR sets of golems up at the same time! Woot! So much for fixing the lag. I'm starting to think that the absence of lag could indeed be related to the greatly reduced number of automated farming crews after the 64-bit update. Now they are back, and so is the lag.
Like others have said in this thread, the raid lag still seems as bad as ever. The first week after the 64bit update, it seemed like things were a bit better, but the raid lag was as bad as ever this past week and it really does sap some of the enjoyment out of raiding when it's difficult to even get abilities to fire correctly. At this point, I just don't think there is going to be a magic fix, I have a feeling it's a hardware/server issue on their end and they simply won't/can't justify the cost to upgrade for a 20+ year old game.
Prior to the 64-bit rollout the lag was hugely variable. Almost crippling at times and then for some events it would mysteriously disappear. Since the 64-bit rollout it seems to me that the worst variability has diminished but that the lag is now like an irritating background noise, ever present, not debilitating, but sickening and soul-killing, nonetheless.
I don't think it is a problem with the server code or that a reset will help. AB doesn't seem to have those lag-problems, it is much more likely it is problem with the hosting itself or the network infrastructure that is somehow unique for the US-servers. Maybe they cram too many virtual servers on too weak physical hardware or something is down-throttled too much?
