EA to Shut Down Old Game Servers - BF2, Red Alert 3 And More

[Zontar]

So lemee get this straight: EA shuts down old servers for the multiplayer component of games with tiny playerbases to save potentially thousands of dollars and this sensible, if business minded, decision somehow makes them evil? mmmm'K. *goes back to Titanfall*

And the award for "misses the whole point" goes too....

Anyway, a lot of the games on the list have active online communities, some which put recently released games to shame. EA can't use the "we're doing it to save money" for the simple reason that Sim City showed us they could care less about the cost of servers, if they hasn't made that game have always online DRM the money they wasted on that could have kept these games active for another decade.

All this comes before the fact that a lot of these games are online only, which means they're basically worthless after the shutdown, lest EA allow private servers to remain active.

Although the Titanfall part of your comment only makes the whole thing funnier, since this is the fate Titanfall has waiting for it, only unlike most of these games it's unlikely there will be anyone unset about the shutdown.

 

[Shadow-Phoenix]

So lemee get this straight: EA shuts down old servers for the multiplayer component of games with tiny playerbases to save potentially thousands of dollars and this sensible, if business minded, decision somehow makes them evil? mmmm'K. *goes back to Titanfall*

Kind of what I was thinking, I love Red Alert 3, C&C 3+Kanes Wrath and Battlefront II (doesn't seem to work on my PC at all but had fun back in the PS2 days) but these games currently have next to nothing in terms of communities, I can hardly see much if anything going on for the C&C games of old, if they are they aren't very vocal and large enough at all, almost the same could be said about battlefront II.

The point is the games are old now, some over others and I can see why they're shutting them down in order to save money, companies will do that so this isn't anything new, besides even if they gave away stuff like Red Alert 3 for user use I can't see thousands of home owned, user paid servers sprouting up, I just can't see that realistically.

But knowing this being an EA article it's no surprise when we see anyone quick to spin this into the biggest evil twisted master mind plot of the diabolically clever EA.

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

right after a star wars sale involving battlefront 2, EA, you disgusting motherfuckers

thanks, you added that little extra to convince me of my decision of not buying dragon age

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

So lemee get this straight: EA shuts down old servers for the multiplayer component of games with tiny playerbases to save potentially thousands of dollars and this sensible, if business minded, decision somehow makes them evil? mmmm'K. *goes back to Titanfall*

Kind of what I was thinking, I love Red Alert 3, C&C 3+Kanes Wrath and Battlefront II (doesn't seem to work on my PC at all but had fun back in the PS2 days) but these games currently have next to nothing in terms of communities, I can hardly see much if anything going on for the C&C games of old, if they are they aren't very vocal and large enough at all, almost the same could be said about battlefront II.

The point is the games are old now, some over others and I can see why they're shutting them down in order to save money, companies will do that so this isn't anything new, besides even if they gave away stuff like Red Alert 3 for user use I can't see thousands of home owned, user paid servers sprouting up, I just can't see that realistically.

But knowing this being an EA article it's no surprise when we see anyone quick to spin this into the biggest evil twisted master mind plot of the diabolically clever EA.

have valve and blizzard turned off their servers for old games? no

adding to that, some of those games have significant communities, i think BF2 still does, a battlefront 2 sold quite a bit during the last "may the 4th be with you" sale, i didnt buy it thank god, but do you think its seriously fair to shut down the servers of a game shortly after a sale in which many people bought the game? is bullcrap any way you see it, they didnt even gave a warning

 

[Sanunes]

have valve and blizzard turned off their servers for old games? no

adding to that, some of those games have significant communities, i think BF2 still does, a battlefront 2 sold quite a bit during the last "may the 4th be with you" sale, i didnt buy it thank god, but do you think its seriously fair to shut down the servers of a game shortly after a sale in which many people bought the game? is bullcrap any way you see it, they didnt even gave a warning

I think both of those companies are different for they don't actually host the servers they are just matchmaking, its why all Blizzard games since Diablo 1 have used battle.net and its the same with Valve games they just provide the match making instead of actually hosting the games.

Now I really don't play any of the games EA has announced the shutdown for (at least anymore), but are they all hosted by EA or are they matchmaking servers?

 

[Pyrian]

Servers aren't cheap, and people move on.

Servers for games where people have moved on are dirt cheap. It's pretty much one or the other; either people aren't playing, or its costly. A few megabytes of RAM and listening on a port nobody's calling on a virtual server farm doesn't really cost much of anything at all.

It has nothing to do with DRM or anything.

You've got it backwards. The problem isn't that these games have always-online DRM; the problem is that games with always-online DRM are going to have those servers shut down, most likely without any sort of patch.

 

[themilo504]

Hopefully fan servers can keep these games alive, either way I intend to play some of these games before june 30.

 

[Rad Party God]

Yeah, I replayed BF2 recently and it isn't as good as I remembered, for all the flak BF3 gets, it truly improved a LOT of things over BF2, also Planetside 2 is great, so yeah, BF2 had it's run, it's time to let it go. (Please don't quote me on this, I know I said something you don't agree with and I respect that, so please, think about what you're going so say before hitting that "quote" button).

Also... WHAT!???, Neverwinter Nights!??, first they shut down the master servers and now they're entirely canceling the multiplayer altogether!??, WHY!??, I mean, come on EA!, I was about to set up a party of buddies to play Eye of The Beholder 1 & 2!. I'm sure fans will find a way, but it definitely will be a hassle for new players, I know I wouldn't be bothered if I didn't liked the game in the first place.

Crysis 1 and Wars' multiplayer had a lot of potential, pretty much Battlefield with power suits, but hackers kinda ruined it in the long run. Also I never bothered with Crysis 2 multiplayer and I doubt I'll be bothered to play it before it gets shut down for good.

 

[Karadalis]

One second.. hasnt nwn and nwn2s server browser been shut down completly by gamespy anyways?

And doesnt it work with dedicated servers in both cases where you can still direct connect to IP adresses? Also werent those games made by Atari and not by EA?

It would be news to me that EA has any sway over what goes on in NWN since they never had their hand in it to begin with.

Gamespy had dropped their support for the game along with a shitton of other games some time ago but that doesnt mean that you cant still use them when you have a direct connect option that omits the whole login thing.

 

[Reaper195]

I thought these were being shut down because Gamespy was shutting down?

 

[Rad Party God]

Spoiler: Snip.

One second.. hasnt nwn and nwn2s server browser been shut down completly by gamespy anyways?

And doesnt it work with dedicated servers in both cases where you can still direct connect to IP adresses? Also werent those games made by Atari and not by EA?

It would be news to me that EA has any sway over what goes on in NWN since they never had their hand in it to begin with.

Gamespy had dropped their support for the game along with a shitton of other games some time ago but that doesnt mean that you cant still use them when you have a direct connect option that omits the whole login thing.

Being a BioWare game means EA has some degree of control over what should be done with the servers and yes, they shut down the master servers containing the list of servers you can connect to, an incovenience, but not as crippling as completely shutting down the multiplayer altogether, wich is pretty much exactly what they're doing.

Fortunately the game has LAN support, so it could be possible to set up an online lobby with Hamachi and similar means, but it's definitely not the same as playing on a dedicated server :/

 

[Strazdas]

first of all, how many of these games allow you to host your own private servers? beucase if they do, thats fine you can still play muiltiplayer on community servers and they are just pulling the official servers, which in any healthy community is the minority servers anyway.
now if they dont have that, we have a problem as they are loosing part of the game here.

this right here tells us one thing: allow community to host their own servers and you wont have to pay for old servers since community will do it for you. and if there is no community, well, then noone is going to complain anyway.

 

[major_chaos]

And the award for "misses the whole point" goes too....

You and me just aren't going to get along are we?

, if they hasn't made that game have always online DRM the money they wasted on that could have kept these games active for another decade.

This is slightly bizarre unsubstantiated conjecture.

All this comes before the fact that a lot of these games are online only,

Such is the risk of games that live and die entirely on their multiplayer. I really think anyone who buys a MP focused game
without acknowledging that someday it will wither and die needs to think harder about their purchases.

Although the Titanfall part of your comment only makes the whole thing funnier, since this is the fate Titanfall has waiting for it, only unlike most of these games it's unlikely there will be anyone unset about the shutdown.

You are right, I doubt anyone will care. I know I won't because there has never been a game I care all that much about after six years. Besides by then there will doubtless be a sequel that has hopefully improved on the original. (ya know, like what happened to battlefield.)

All that said I get the impression that the point of your closing comment was to condescend at my preference in games? If so I'm slightly amused that you think you are the arbiter of what is quality and what games people will miss.

 

[james.sponge]

The one that gets me is them dropping "Neverwinter Nights" and "Neverwinter Nights 2" given that they both have fairly active communities with people even having built their own little pseudo-MMOs using it. Not my cup of tea, but I know a lot of people who are hugely into that (having met a lot of them playing Cryptic's Neverwinter).

Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't NWN and NWN 2 allow you to establish your own private servers? I mean there are NWN 2 servers that bypass in-game server browser and gamespy altogether so they shouldn't be affected by EA's decision.

 

[PrinceOfShapeir]

Oh my God. I'm no big fan of EA but grow up. Hamachi is a thing.

 

[Therumancer]

The one that gets me is them dropping "Neverwinter Nights" and "Neverwinter Nights 2" given that they both have fairly active communities with people even having built their own little pseudo-MMOs using it. Not my cup of tea, but I know a lot of people who are hugely into that (having met a lot of them playing Cryptic's Neverwinter).

Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't NWN and NWN 2 allow you to establish your own private servers? I mean there are NWN 2 servers that bypass in-game server browser and gamespy altogether so they shouldn't be affected by EA's decision.

I never got into NWN multiplayer as I said, so I can't tell you. I was under the impression they required EA's servers to run though. I don't remember ever hearing anyone say they ran their own server.

While I'm on hiatus (playing ESO primarily) next time I drop into Neverwinter I'll see if I can find any of the guys who were telling me how hooked they were on the Multiplayer. I grouped with a few of them fairly regularly doing my Malabog's Castle grind.

 

[The Lugz]

Ah, no wonder Origin was giving away Battlefield 1942 for free. I guess I should play it already to see how it's like before they shut down that server.

So they're closing down Star Wars: Battlefront 2 as well!? D: Dammit EA!!! Does anyone know if people will make their own servers? I don'y quite know how that works.

In a word, yes. it's just a piece of software that runs on any old computer, 'servers' are nothing special in fact most of the time they have rather mediocre specs, because all they're doing is processing simple requests, like 'fire' and 'update coordinates' you can bet someone already has emulated it somewhere.. there are private servers for most popular online games it's just a matter of finding one, and if it doesn't exist.. well perfect time to find some geek buddies and make it happen.

I know people have built cry-2 servers because I've been on one, ( pc ) but I can't comment about anything else on the list.

 

[jackpipsam]

This is connected to gamespy, it's not entirely EA's fault.
But I guess EA hating is a great way to get clicks on articles.

Hopefully EA will be able to get some of these transferred over to Origin.

BF2 and Crysis 2 seems likely.

 

[Irridium]

first of all, how many of these games allow you to host your own private servers? beucase if they do, thats fine you can still play muiltiplayer on community servers and they are just pulling the official servers, which in any healthy community is the minority servers anyway.
now if they dont have that, we have a problem as they are loosing part of the game here.

this right here tells us one thing: allow community to host their own servers and you wont have to pay for old servers since community will do it for you. and if there is no community, well, then noone is going to complain anyway.

Glad you pointed that out. A good few of them have dedicated servers. However, it doesn't matter, since they also use Gamespy which is shutting down by the end of this month. So their multiplayer's going to die no matter what. It isn't all EA's fault, this is true, however you'd think they would try to migrate the most popular games like Battlefield 2 over to Origin or something.

 

[rofltehcat]

Battlefield 2? I sure hope the modding community build their own server browser! Some of those mods are neat.

I wonder how long it'll take them to also gut Bad Company 2