If you only lived by what makes the news, you'd think that when not bashing the competition, EA is trying to emphasize their reputation as the Consumerist's worst company in America by doing thing like forcing online passes, forcing the requirement of Origin to play games, charging players for in-game unlocks and renting out official Battlefield 3 servers to the detriment of players looking for "normal" online matches.
But that's not the whole story. Developer DICE released the massive Battlefield 3 spring update a few weeks ago, hosted the first bonus XP event this weekend, have DLC coming in a few weeks, and over the weekend, announced that they're adding more official servers for players who prefer the unaltered game.
The server problem originated when DICE and EA allowed players to rent BF3 servers, giving them the ability to change game rules so they could customize things like how many tickets teams have in a match, making games last over an hour for instance. In many cases, administrators set their own rules, restricting use of certain weapons, threatening players with bans if they don't oblige.
The servers they rented out were once official servers, meaning the availability of standard game types that follow the game's proper rule set began disappearing as they converted to custom BF3 servers - understandably, the community got rather vocal about this since EA is making even more money at the expense of part of the community (money on top of things like online passes and charging to quickly unlock in-game items).
DICE is listening however, and over the weekend they tweeted to confirm that they're addressing the issue.
"We'll be adding more servers & will reserve a percentage of them for players who prefer DICE servers. Thx for your patience!"
How many servers and what percentage will be saved for default games we do not yet know, but it's a relief that they're quickly responding to community concerns (and the negative buzz shared throughout the media). We wonder what the response from fans will be when EA/DICE implement a subscription service next.
Now, if they just fixed the M26 Dart problem...
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Source: DICE