DICE quadruples servers for console versions of Battlefield 3

One of the biggest games to come out last year, Battlefield 3, has been doing very well on the PC. The console version of the game, however, has had some issues with the matchmaking in the multiplayer mode due to shortage of servers. Developer of the game, DICE, has listened to the pleas of console gamers all over the world and is planning on increasing the amount of official DICE servers for console gamers.

According to a post on the Battlefield blog, DICE has increased the amount of servers available to console gamers. The blog states that the number of servers available to console gamers has now been quadrupled. This mostly means that players will be able to get into ranked matches on consoles considerably faster. Though, the post also points out that even with this update, the player will be able to get quick matched into any ranked server, and will have to enter “DICE” as a search term in the manual server browser if they want to specifically play on the official servers.

More servers!

The DLC (downloadable content) train for Battlefield 3 is still going on with the upcoming DLC for the game titled Armored Kill. The upcoming DLC for the game will be focusing mainly on vehicular combat on large sprawling maps. Last month, developers from DICE talked about creating the biggest map the Battlefield series has ever seen. DICE Designer Inge Jøran Holberg said, “Reading a number of posts by these players in our forums, I personally agreed that even with maps like Operation Firestorm, Kharg Island and Caspian Border, Battlefield 3 lacked a couple of extra-large maps with huge distances and lots of capture points that they have experienced in some of the maps in earlier Battlefield titles to complete the range.”

Holberg elaborates  the studio’s inspiration for the map. “Since Iran was a major area of operations in Battlefield 3, it felt natural to get inspiration from there as a first step in creating some maps in “Xpack 3”. Seeing the desert scenery from the real Bandar Desert area, I really got inspired, and immediately knew we could create something really exciting out of it.”

He goes on to state that Bandar Desert supports 64 players and jets. Everything has to be larger and build more on the vehicle gameplay on a grand scale. It also has to be scalable for the consoles versions of the game, which supports fewer players, without it compromising on the PC version’s 64 player support.

The map is also set to be huge. According to the post, ”In Conquest Large, Bandar Desert is stretching as far as 1,900 meters from U.S. to Russian deployment, not counting the airstrip at the very end of the ground forces combat area. This is even longer than Fushe Pass from Battlefield 2. Bandar Desert is about as wide as it is long at the middle flags – it measures 1,900 meters from the mountain base furthest from the sea all the way to the beach at the south edge of the map.”

Battlefield 3: Armored Kill is set to release in September. It is one of the five expansion packs included in Battlefield 3: Premium.