Andrew, by all accounts my HFC connection with Virgin Media is good, certainly about as good as you'll get in the UK. Now either you're saying that even Virgin Media's 'good' HFC plant is dreadful, or you believe this is actually good for gaming.
I can tell the difference between the two blind. You can swap me between the two, and I'll be able to tell you without even looking at ping. Even a simple web page request (Wikipedia) has gone from around 2 seconds to load to about 0.1, literally the time it takes for me to blink - despite my VM connection having a faster line rate downstream. Yes, I can and will prove this with a video if needed. The joys of eliminating DOCSIS bufferbloat and having a better bandwidth-delay product.
Do I notice that my ping is constant to the server, at any time of day? Yes.
Do I notice that my latency to EU has gone from mid 30s to 10ms (~66% reduction)? Yes, because I now get kills against these players more in games with a low time to kill. Latency to London from 20ms to 5ms (75% reduction).
Do I notice that I get much less BS because my "I just shot you in the head" packet didn't randomly get delayed for 200ms resulting in far more consistency? Yeup.
Do I notice that I no longer get 100-200ms latency spikes playing WoW? Yes.
Do I notice that I'm no longer getting 60ms to some EU servers due to LG's sup par routing, and I'm not being kicked from servers after a few hours because latency has shot up above the threshold? Yes.
Do I notice that latency to the US has dropped from about 100ms to 80ms on the East coast, and to mid US has dropped by 30ms to 100ms making an entire server region viable for gaming? Yes.
I played a game of Halo a few months ago against a very skilled player. Our skill levels were mostly even, but he has a 120ms advantage. Which meant that basically every single time he got the kill, I might as well have been shooting at air.
Latency does count for gaming more than you think. The complete jack of jitter certainly does.
And to reiterate, this is on one of the best VM HFC connections in the country, with a BQM I suspect many here would murder for.
Night and day.
Can VM get their network to a state where the differences are academic? Yes. Is that the case now? Not a chance.