After reading the forums, and exploring other Official servers and player hosted servers, I have learned some things about Lag.
When my husband and I recently returned to CE for the AoW update, we were on a server that was afflicted by the Floor Bug (where you fall through player made blocks), quite often and it would last quite a while at times. Discussing things with players there, we noticed this would happen for a few minutes every time someone with an exceptionally large base would log in.
When there were at least 10 people online it would happen even more often. When I was researching the bug, I came across posts about the Bars, claiming active bars are the cause of this problem as well. This server we were on had a LOT of them. There was at least 2 by each obelisk, and the more popular Obelisks (Sink Hole, Sulphur Pools, and Mounds) would have more like 4. Plus each player had there own Active bar at their own base. Of course this was all speculation until my Husband and I decided to try a different server, because the lag and floor bug was just horrible.
So, we tried a Siptah map. It was equally populated, but the players were more responsible with their active bars, and they seemed to only be at their main bases. Likely since Siptah does not have Teleport locations for people to easily congregate to. On this server, there was rarely any major lag, and the floor bug happened maybe twice.
Their bases were also smaller, there were only a few colossal builds. After a while, my husband wanted to try a RP server for some PVP stuff. These servers did not allow Bar Tenders, and they implemented Block limits. There was nearly no lag at all unless more than 1 person was doing a Purge, and there were no floor bugs ever.
Despite being against ToS, people continue to build giant bases on Official servers. Not just that, but they will build several. I am currently playing on a server, where at least 3 clans each have about 6 massive bases spread across the map. Some of them are really huge, and cause my game to stop for about 10 to 30 seconds while they load in.
My suggestion is this:
First: Since giant bases are already against the ToS, and can be reported. A block limit should be put in place for Official Servers, say 5000 blocks or something. We made a small to medium base using 2100 blocks, so I think 5000 would be plenty enough to have a decent base, purge base, and outposts. It would also prevent people from building several giant bases all over the map.
Second: After studying 6 different servers, both official and not, active Taverns are definitely contributing to the problem. If you could some how limit CLAN use to ONE Bar Keeper, this would help greatly with lag and floor bugs. This would prevent players from making several active bars. Which mean less NPCs wondering around chewing up resources. This is even more important come your AoH patch, which will bring in even more NPC wondering.
If you want to help with lag, and the floor bug that’s been plaguing the game, and thousands of people are complaining about, you could try implementing those suggestions. This is of course my opinion, and I’m sure some people will object, but it’s what I learned, and think would actually make a difference.