davidns then you must have some problem with your connection, i'm from north europe and have around 400 ping and no problem at all, besides 400 is nothing with this, some play with 700 but when nearing 1000 then there's some problem somewhere, oh and no packetloss from my end usualy.
and the web, the server seems to have some oddeties lately and crash more often now so maybe it's just that or something temporary on your end.