Published on August 19th, 2011 | by Brandon
2>Battlefield 3 boldly goes where no PC title has gone before…
>I swear, every piece of news that comes out about Battlefield 3 sends me on an emotional rollercoaster. A few days ago, we got to see an amazing gameplay trailer from Gamescom, complete with jet fighters and a bomb-defusing robot. But you know EA is never content to keep the good press rolling, and today, senior gameplay designer Alan Kertz confirmed via Twitter something many of us feared during the alpha: Battlefield 3 will have no in-game server browser for PC–but don’t worry, the game “starts up REAL fast.”
This is a huge gamble for EA, and I think it’s a huge step in the wrong direction. EA’s overzealous focus on “beating” Call of Duty and its upcoming Elite service has blinded them to what is actually important: the user experience. The server browser has one main function: displaying server information and filtering options that allow a player to find the best server to join. This should arguably be the easiest part of the game to get right, but EA insists on trying to fix something that’s not broken, all for the sake of a host of “social features” that most of us don’t even want.
It’s no exaggeration to say that Battlelog was one of the worst parts of my experience with the Battlefield 3 alpha, and offering that as the only means with which to find and join servers amounts to nothing short of a slap in the face from EA. Joining a server in Battlefield 3 will now involve a combination of the Origin client, Battlefield 3 itself, your web browser, and a web browser plugin from EA. Hope you like troubleshooting compatibility issues!
Perhaps the most hilarious twist in all of this is that on Wednesday, DICE GM Karl Magnus confirmed that BF3 will be getting a server browser on consoles. Oh, the sad irony.
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