There were murmers just days ago about a forthcoming announcement for a new type of Battlefield game, and now it's here. EA has now revealed Battlefield Play4Free, and as you have probably guessed by the title, it's based on a play-for-free model. It's due for release next year, supports 32 player games, and is said to combine "the most popular maps from Battlefield 2 with the familiar classes and powerful weapons of Battlefield: Bad Company 2"...

Just in case you thought Battlefield, Heroes and Bad Company wasn't enough broken software for any single franchise, in stellar EA fashion, without fixing those they plan on creating another entry to the Battlefield universe. It has been announced that the forthcoming title is unannounced. Er....

We've known very little about the development of Battlefield 3, and have heard nothing at all about it since this time last year when its existence was officially confirmed. Now though, we know that there are plans for a beta. The short end of the stick is that to play in the beta, you'll need to purchase a Limited Edition version of EA's soon-to-be released Medal of Honor.
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Still haven't picked up Battlefield: Bad Company 2? Shame on you. EB Games have it priced at $44.97 on PC or $54.97 on console until Sunday. For what is clearly one of the best multiplayer shooters in years, you would be a fool not to jump on this deal....

Radeon owners rejoice! ATI has made their 10.3 drivers available for preview, and they address some quirks you've all been dying to have resolved. Namely, that rampant flickering in Bad Company 2....

Over at the Electronics Arts UK forums, a DICE representative has produced a long, long list of issues hampering Bad Company 2 at present. Astonishingly, every single one of these issues has also been responded to with a 'status' to give those concerned a genuine idea of when or how it's going to be fixed. In some cases, though, there's acknowledgment and dismissal - which is most unfortunate......

Thanks to the kind contribution of Lothar, we now have a 4th server in operation. It's currently setup to run Squad Deathmatch (16 player), so that those of you wanting to try it out will have the opportunity to do so. Also note that server #3 has been changed from Hardcore Conquest to Rush. The reason for this is that our Rush server is continually full - as it is now and has been throughout the night - while our Conquest server (#1) is only full off-and-on....

We've seen high demand for space on our Bad Company 2 servers since the launch of the game - often being full all the way through any given night. Without reserve slots working as intended at this stage, it has been frustrating getting a spot at times.

Community member Korny has made a hefty contribution, deciding to replace that hurt with an extra 32 chances of playing, in the form of a third Gamers-Underground.com server! At the moment it's setup as Conquest, but if there's an overwhelming vote for Rush we'll happily change it.

It's now listed in the website header, where you can keep an eye on who's playing in which server. And because #3 won't be in anyone's favorites or history lists quite yet, it's probably the one to go to if you're heading in with a big crew. GLHF!...

It took a couple days, but the recently talked about Bad Company 2 patch has finally been rolled out to Steam users. The patch addresses a heap of minor bugs most of us have never noticed, and doesn't move to improve the user interface or fix any of the gameplay issues people are having. Enjoy!...

In an article at IGN, we've received the promise that DICE is "definitely" committed to supporting Bad Company 2, for a long time. The key, of course, being a long time. This is a refreshing statement, given the growing trend of disregarding a predecessor to make way for its sometimes less popular sequel. DICE had much more to say, all reassuring - especially for PC gamers. Karl Magnus Troedsson, Executive Producer at DICE had this to say......

Detailed weapon damage and range graphs
Credit to eFeXuy on the EA forums


How Damage Works


Damage its pretty straight forward, the weapon deals maximum damage until reach the falloff start distance, then drops linearly until falloff end distance. Further...

You read right. More server maintenance - this time to add new hardware. A truckload of it, hopefully. The official word from DICE is "Tomorrow, 12th March, and Saturday, 13th March at 8:00GMT/9:00 CET:12:00 (midnight) PST, EA will take the servers down, this time we will come up with even more hardware with more capacity to handle all the BFBC2 traffic."

8:00am GMT means 6pm AEST (7pm AEDT) for Australians. It's promised that once completed we will "experience an improvement to your online experience". Let's hope so! Thanks to Joshuayu101 for the heads-up....

Voodoo Extreme is reporting on a post made in the Multiplay UK forums. VE3D detail that "all GSPs will switch off all public and privately rented Battlefield: Bad Company 2 servers after eight hours of inactivity, in an effort to reduce load on EA's crash-happy master server".

This would mean if you haven't had a single player in an 8 hour period, the server will need to be manually started again. Rather inconvenient. However DICE have responded on the EA UK forums saying "this is inaccurate", followed by this explanation......

Many of us have already sunk in 20+ hours of Bad Company 2 since release. And many of us already have map preferences, likes and dislikes. Thankfully, the first round of downloadable content is on its way, in the form of a map pack! They'll be free using your VIP code provided with your newly purchased copy of BC2, and will be available on the 30th of March......

It seems EA fell over at about 1am AEST, again. Since then, a new server-side patch has been released, and the Gamers-Underground.com servers have just been updated with it. This should fix the Punkbuster kick issues that are being experience globally.

Despite this, DICE has requested that all servers are run without Punkbuster enabled until the master server restart taking place at approximately 6pm AEST tonight - which didn't happen last night as planned....