I think my splinterlands was not lagging as badly anymore because I was able to collect the chests (my 2nd season end rewards below)
and could see a different ui/notification when I collected my chests. During my 1st season end reward, all I had was just this page whereby I could click claim.
However, I did not know that actually there would also be this page (no big deal but I still want to share it)
In my first season, when I did not collect my chests because of the lag, the words below the chest looked like this
But now that I have claimed my previous chests, it appeared like this.
So fret not! New users of splinterlands, these are some small changes that I noticed and hope that no new user would face the same panic I had when I first joined (especially lagging has caused me a lot of panic).