Middle-Eastern servers... where are they? A dedicated community left behind.
I am writing on behalf of a large, dedicated, and long-standing Battlefield community in the Middle East (Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, UAE, ...). Many of our active clans and players have been loyal supporters of this franchise since Battlefield 3 and Battlefield 4 (and some of us, such as myself, even long before then). We played in clans, ran private servers, formed communities on official servers, and were nothing short of a dedicated and hardcore fanbase. Our community includes dads and grandads, old and young players, retired...employed...and students, boys and girls... all united by our love for battlefield. We were incredibly excited to jump into Battlefield 6 (especially after an incredible experience in the BETA), but our community has been left in shock by the state of regional server support.
The game launched with regional servers, but for some reason these servers are no longer available. The Middle East servers (previously hosted in Bahrain) have been completely unavailable or non-functional for months (without official explanation or reasonable justification), creating a severe and unfair gameplay experience for thousands of active players:
Currently...
- We are being pushed into Asian servers where mixed language barriers make squad communication and coordination completely impossible.
- We are forced to play with severe latency issues. Even at a baseline of ~90ms to Asia, the gameplay feels deeply disconnected. To play what feels like a "real" match, many of us are forced to use VPNs to routing hubs in Europe, spiking our ping to 120-160ms+.
- In a game built on precise hit registration, 120ms+ ping means emptying half a magazine just to register a single kill, experiencing buggy/delayed weapon-switching in vehicles, and losing every fair 1v1 gunfight. Competing titles like Call of Duty have recognized this by providing dedicated, low-latency servers (mostly based in Saudi Arabia).
Forcing a loyal, legacy community to play a premier multiplayer game with a massive competitive disadvantage is simply not fair. We are politely and passionately asking those in charge of these decision to address the community regarding what happened to the Middle East server infrastructure... and to re-establish functional, dedicated Middle East servers. We strongly urge EA to look into hosting future servers in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (utilizing regional cloud infrastructure like AWS) to ensure stable, low-latency performance for the entire region.
We love this franchise, and we want to play the game the way it was meant to be experienced. Please don't leave the Middle East community behind.
Yours sincerely,
Hamad Darwish (on behalf or an entire BF community in the Middle-East and North-Africa)
