"No Compensation for unplayable services"

ChrisK: No, the presentation layer on your computer is where the graphics are kept and the high-bandwidth items (there are really two different kinds of latency - lag from dropped server packets or a poor internet connection, and FPS hindrance due to a poorly-performing computer or graphics card). Our end basically concatenates all of the data from every player (position, spotting, account data, facing, speed, shooting results, health status, etc.), then parses it and passes it all back out to every player, meanwhile checking various factors to prevent intentional or unintentional displacement and account for missing data. The local work is heavy on graphics and presentation, while the server side is heavy on rapid calculation and validation. The packets that go between the two ends of the system are relatively small and few by comparison to the amount of data handled on each end. Which is why when a third-party provider to the backbone (not us!) like Level 3 has hardware issues that drop 10-20% or more of packets, it creates disproportionately enormous amounts of lag.