Battlefield 3 has dedicated servers

By Robert Purchese Published 10 February, 2011

To rent? What about consoles?

Dedicated servers are part of the Battlefield 3 plan, DICE has revealed.

But we don't know whether they extend to console nor whether the dedicated servers require renting as they did in Battlefield: Bad Company 2.

Joystiq's excavation of a Game Informer preview offered no further explanation.

EA has used dedicated servers as a catapult from which to hurl challenges at Activision's Call of Duty dominance in recent years. Famously, Modern Warfare 2 decided not to have dedicated servers on PC - a bullet-point EA leapt on and exploited.

Treyarch's Call of Duty: Black Ops did have dedicated servers on PC, however - but they also required paying for.

On PC, dedicated servers - machines focused only on hosting a match, not participating - are commonplace. But on console they're not. Epic Games will be among the first to buck this trend with Gears of War 3, which will provide Microsoft-hosted dedicated multiplayer servers.

The benefits are no automatic lag advantage for a hosting player, and usually better overall performance, as dedicated servers are beefy machines with industrial-grade net connections.

Battlefield 3 supports 64-player online battles on PC.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds. @Clert on Twitter.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (24) Latest comment 1 year ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • metalangel #1 1 year ago

    Instead, EA force you to connect through their servers, and I'm pretty sure if you wanted a dedicated server for their more recent PC games you had to rent one from one of their "nominated providers".

    As for consoles, they'll just switch the servers off when Battlefield 4 comes out.

  • KevvyMetal79 #2 1 year ago

    The console versions of BF:BC2 & BF 1943 all use dedicated servers anyway. I don't see why it would be any different for the console version of BF3.

  • Anthony_UK #3 1 year ago

    Slightly odd this news story? All the console battlefield games have had dedicated servers anyway?

  • Jonny5Alive7 #4 1 year ago

    Anyone got any ideas about the spec of PC you will need to run it decently? I want to play 64 players!

  • TheLittlestHobo #5 1 year ago

    It has to be dedicated servers on consoles peer to peer for anything over 8 players SUCKS!

  • SFG_Clan #6 1 year ago

    Yeah what the hell?! I thought that all the servers on the console version were dedicated servers
    In fact im sure they are... what the hell?

  • Eraser #7 1 year ago

    This is why Call of Duty is one of the most influential franchises in the world: these days it's actually news worthy when a game has dedicated servers (is not shit).

  • Murton #8 1 year ago

    Dedicated servers not common on consoles your say? But EA close a batch down every 6 months. Curious.

    Pretty much any game with ranked multiplayer will have dedicated servers for both consoles. There's probably more offical dedicated servers in console gaming than PC these days. Robert is just misinformed and his editor didn't check for factual accuracy before signing off the article that is all.

    As for this particular game, both Bad Company games on the consoles this gen were hosted on EA dedicated servers and I suspect that this will be no exception. The only trend that GoW3 is bucking is in actually using MS hosted dedicated servers, something that very few non-MS owned studios do in favour of hosting games themselves or going through a third party like Quazaal, MS simply charge too much for hosting for most publishers to consider it a worthwhile investment.

  • SpaceMidget75 Verified Senior Software Developer, Minerva Computer Services #9 1 year ago

    As a LAN gamer the rented servers of BC2 were as useless to me as just having P2P in MW2. Part of the reason for us playing on a LAN is to avoid the internet. The fact we'd then have to pay monthly for a server on the internet as opposed to using our own local server with no monthly charge meant we avoided BC2 unfortunately. We would even have been fine with paying a one off fee for the dedicated server software.

    We're still playing Steam games like TF2 instead.

  • butler` #10 1 year ago

    BFBC2 servers are embarassing. The stats ones at least (perhaps they're seperate).

    Every time I go on that game I'm back to rank 1 with no weapons.

  • asharkman #11 1 year ago

    So if MS aren't hosting the games does that mean that servers for multi platform games for PS3 and MS are of the same quality?
    And the online experience eg lag, game connectivity are the same?
    I thought that the 40euro a year we pay was getting us a better service?

  • Razz #12 1 year ago

    What apout quests?

  • cianchristopher #13 1 year ago

    I don't wanna be the bad guy here, but I might as well admit that I never had much of a problem enjoying MP on MW2 on the PC. Yeah, sometimes it takes 30 seconds or a minute longer to search for games, but I never had any really bad lag or anything.

    In fact, I had awful lag on BlOps for the first week or two. Awful! And that was on dedicated servers. Go figure.

    But for 64 players in a Battlefield game? You'd need dedicated servers. P2P just wouldn't work. (It's fine for MW2 cos that's 9vs9 anyway, so much less overhead).

  • HL706 #14 1 year ago

    I think some people are confusing matchmaking serves (etc.) with dedicated servers. Most 360/PS3 games are played P2P. L4D is the only 360 game I can think of that has support for dedicated servers and it was amazing fun online. Can't wait for Gears 3 because of it.

    Here's hoping BF3 has dedicated servers for us console players, that would make a great FPS the definitive FPS imo.

  • Murton #15 1 year ago

    asharkman:

    That's correct. Same servers, p2p in many games. Your monthly fee basically allows you to go online and all leaderboards are MS hosted. There's cross game/party chat too, but that's just VOIP p2p, nothing special.

    If all games on the 360 had MS hosted dedicated servers then it would totally worth the 40 euros, but they're not so, in my opinion you understand, it's not worth it at all and represents quite terrible value for the consumer who has already funded the multiplayer by buying their chosen game in the first place.

  • cianchristopher #16 1 year ago

    @Murton:

    Y'know the way EA routinely shut down servers for their old games? I was under the impression that it was becasue they are the only 3rd party on Xbox LIVE with their own dedicated servers for multiplayer in their titles.

    Conversely, does that mean that P2P cannot (or perhaps, will not) be shut down in the same way?

    I was worried that MP in Modern Warfare 2 on the PC could one day be "turned off". Is that possible/likely? Or is the overhead of a matchmaking server so low that it really makes no difference as the workload is borne by the players (ie. me)?

  • TheEarlOfZinger #17 1 year ago

    server browser for consoles
    server browser for consoles
    server browser for consoles
    server browser for consoles

    etc

  • paketep #18 1 year ago

    Of course there are dedicated servers. IWNet demonstrated what a POS P2P is, and we're talking 64 players here. The true question here is: are we going to get public server files?.

    If the answer is no, DICE and GameServers can go fuck themselves. Again.

  • Murton #19 1 year ago

    @cianchristopher

    Good question, I honestly don't know. I can't see the overheads on a p2p matchmaker being excessively high as they don't stream any real time data and mostly receive rather than transmit which is much cheaper. I'm simplying obviously but if that is the case then there'd be no need to ever disable a matchmaking server other than to promote your latest title which fits with EA's actions as most of the EA Sports titles were p2p. So unfortunately yes, you may see matchmaking for MW2 go south at some point, probably to "force" people onto the next iteration.

  • chessboxer #20 1 year ago

    Epic provided dedicated servers for UT3, and they also released server files so people could run their own dedicated servers for hosting PC and PS3 games.

  • CamoChris #21 1 year ago

    When both Bad Company 1 & 2 came out the games were absolutely plagued with lag for ages after release. I hope they've finally learned their lesson and the servers will be up to the job this time.
    Edited by CamoChris at 10/02/11 @ 17:08

  • Murton #22 1 year ago

    @CamoChris

    That's the case with all popular games on dedicated servers. Release weekend brings with it massive demand, not just from us gamers but from reviewers too. A lot of devs also choose the "sooner than later" approach to real world stress tests and carry these out on the launch weekend, which is a pain for us as it can cause lag but good in the long run as it can highlight potential problems early on.

  • king26 #23 1 year ago

    anybody know whether KZ3 has dedicated servers?

  • Bush_Killa-73 #24 1 year ago

    I'm holding off pre-ordering BF3 on PS3 until/if they confirm that they can manage at least 32 players or I'm saving for a new pc. It's a shame as I like many people have built up great friends with Bad Company 2 on my console of choice w/out the technical hassle & expensive demands of a modern day pc.

    If it's a case of having independant servers on console too then let's have them. Whatever it takes to move the franchise forward keeping everyone together & blowing COD & every other online squad based shooter out of the water for good.

    Don't fragment the community by causing a massive split giving one format 64 players & the other 24. If people (like me) see that they've made the effort to get an extra squads worth of players on each side then & only then will people be really happy.

    Anyone who hasn't been complaining about the number of players just hasn't seen bigger scaled Battlefield games with low numbers & they will be directly comparing the pc version when they see clips on youtube when the game is released.

    Please DICE make it work & guys let them know that you don't want a dumbed down low player count version of the mighty Battlefield 3!!
    Edited by Bush_Killa-73 at 10/02/11 @ 20:03