@PartWelshAdam, do you guys understand the impact of your decision? Let me give you a rundown:
HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN AFRICAN BATTLEFIELD COMMUNITY:
- We have had a very active and passionate South African BF community since BF1942, with it peaking during BF2, BF2142 and BF3 (with many tournaments hosted by MWEB, Telkom and other local providers)
- Part of the reason for this was active lobbying by our community for dedicated hosting, which was finally sponsored by some big name companies from back in 2005 until BF4
- Unfortunately this initial growth of the community was hamstrung by monopolistic local internet service providers and super expensive broadband, so we could not grow as fast as other communities (e.g. Aus and NZ)
- However, once independent ISP's were allowed to compete and broadband costs fell, the community started to grow in earnest
- BF4's launch was extremely rocky, but it shaped up into one of the best Battlefield games ever made.
- There was rarely a night where no less than 10 full servers were up and running (BF3 and BF4)
- Servers were tailormade for hardcore servers, metro only maps, air superiority etc. Some game modes were less popular as Premium divided the community to an extent, but most players spent the cash and bought in.
- Badmins were rare and their servers were shunned if they did not shape up.
BATTLEFIELD 1 - THE END OF THIRD PARTY HOSTING
- With the arrival of the more casual BF1, EA decided to forego the third party hosting aspect. Gone were procon, custom modes and hosting clan matches.
- This was a MASSIVE blow to our community
- However, we held out for the arrival of the Rental Server Program. Hopefully we would get the required tools to keep our community running?
- Then RSP was released, with less settings and modes than procon.
- For us players that loved the hardcore modes in BF4, this was immensely disappointing. Especially as BF1 had a slower TTK than previous games.
- This demolished the community, and a lot of players stayed on BF4 instead of fully migrating to BF1
BATTLEFIELD V
- With BF5 on the horizon, we hoped that the lessons from BF4 and BF1 would carry over. All of us expected the same level of features of BF4, but in a WWII setting. Like a remastered, advanced version of BF1942
- However, the game launched without ZA servers. We had to do a lot of begging around the clock for local servers, which was finally brought to platform hosted by i3D in Johannesburg. Rejoice!
- Firestorm was also on the horison, and we hoped that we could finally try a locally hosted battle royale game (as PUBG or Fortnite does not have SA servers). However, this never happened, and all players were routed onto European servers.
- We all forgot about Firestorm - at least we had local servers for the other game modes
- On 31 March all local servers stopped responding - and we received a post on a random PS4 facebook group that local server hosting was retired.
THE END OF THE BF COMMUNITY
- The reason for the cancellation was that the auto-matchmaker kept on putting ZA players in European servers, and therefore it was assumed that this will be a more cost effective measure for EA to cancel local server hosting and let them connect to EU.
- Our closest servers at the moment are based in Germany, with latencies of 200ms+. This is unplayable on a game that prides itself on its gunplay, as you will always lose out to a skilled player on a 1v1. Not only with regards to latency, but packet loss makes your player jump around erratically degrading the experience.
- Our internet backbone in South Africa is connected to the European mainland by means of two cables - WACS and SEACOM. Which are frequently plagued by outages and repairs. Having local servers removes this issue and allows us to continue to play.
- ZA servers are not only for South Africa, but the whole sub-continent. Players in Namibia, Botswana, Mozam and all the rest prefer to connect to ZA servers for lower lag (around 80-110ms on average)
- We don't have Amazon Web Services (your preferred hosting solution worldwide), and most likely won't in the foreseeable future due to the worldwide economic slowdown. So i3D will remain our only option. If EA doesn't want to continue with them, then we can be assured that we won't have ANY servers for any EA games in the future.
HOW CAN WE SOLVE THIS
- We don't know the real reason at the moment why the servers have been cancelled, but I assume it was a cost-benefit decision. Which means there isn't enough players in the region to offset the costs for hosting by i3D (similarly should apply to the Middle East shutdown as well)
- So how many players do we need to offset this cost? 100 additional players? 1000 players? 10000 players?
- Australia and New Zealand has about the same amount of players as ZA on an average night - but they have the benefit of Amazon Web Services - we don't, and we won't
- So after my long-winded story, my question is this - how many people do we need to sign up on Battlefield 5 for EA to reconsider getting servers for us?
TL;DR Southern Africa does not have enough players, EA are not making enough money through us - so how many do we need to sign up to get our servers back?
