Bad news: Battlefield 3, 4 and Hardline for 360/PS3 will be shut down on November 7, 2024. End of an era. This makes sense given that the 360 store will be shutting down and thus rent-a-server will no longer function, so the little money these titles were still generating will be gone. Hopefully we'll see some sort of revival happen one day, though it'll probably be PS3 only if it does.
That's very unfortunate. I started playing both bf 3 and 4 this year on ps3 and they are very alive and still fun games.At least it was fun tha twe got to have it for all the time we did.
@@Kaceydotme just months before/after BF3 shutdown date on PS3, I'm gonna upload more kill compilation videos since I've recorded like thousands of kill clips across a number of maps in BF3 PS3. As good old memories from the past.
I feel like the worst part about the slow decay and death of Battlefield servers is that not every game will recieve the fan support that even some lesser remembered CoD titles, like Ghosts or AW did. Or, that EA, like Activision before them, will shut down any chance of it, salting the digital earth.
unfortunately every cod game before mw2019 (engine rework finally fixed it) is highly unsafe to play multiplayer online, at least on pc. every game has huge rce (remote code execution) vulnerabilities, and Identity theft/cc stealing malware or worse is easily spread from player to player. even black ops cold war had the issue at launch before it was patched because it isn't built on the 2019 IW engine, it's treyarch's T engine, with updates. none of the other games have ever been patched, and valve even removed the multiplayer tag from some of the games on steam.
Battlefield one is the best battlefield, the last great, if they can pull of the feels and atmosphere of that game…. They may save themselves, but at this point I have ZERO hope
@@Alkron1 had so many great memories gaming with the squad back when I was still in highschool when it came out, atmosphere of BF1 is unbeatable, V doesn’t even come close, I’ll truly be sad when BF1s servers finally close 🫠
@@dan_loeb I don't think you know what you're talking about. Not only Cold War, but also MW2019 and Vanguard all suffered from extreme security issues as late as early this year. There have been a handful of scandals involving hackers, servers being unsafe, accounts randomly being banned/shadowbanned and even data leaks. The entire reason Ricochet was advertised and developed in the first place was to """"try to fix these issues"""", but given how there are still cases frequently about these things happening in MW22 and MW23, you can see how it worked out. Seriously, MW2019 being unsafe to play was one of the biggest news of last year.
At some point, it stops being piracy and starts being game preservation. It’s a shame companies refuse to see it this way, especially for “dead” games and games they no longer have official servers for
This is especially bad with games that aren't even sold anymore. Nintendo is the absolute worst offender at this. If there's even a *chance* that they *might* resell an old product in the future they will sue your ass to the depths of hell if you so much as help someone emulate Mario Kart 64. Seriously, fuck Nintendo.
Important to note that bf4 only got an ingame server browser after a long time post release in order to "unify" it with the other newer titles. Hardline also got this treatment
The in-game server browser doesn't exist. Also hardline was probably the only game possible to have a competitive scene but it was ruined. It was like better csgo when you played the elimination bomb or VIP mode.
BF2 is still going strong thanks to the project reality mod.. at this rate it will out last the franchise after giving birth to the p v p mil sim franchise
God, i remember the day Battlefield 3 went online, I got up early before class to play an hour of it cause I was so hyped. Its so weird to think it's going to be gone within the next couple years.
I still get on 3 on the PS3 every now and then. The game had a huge resurgence during covid. It’s still a blast if you don’t run into a one shot hacker.
@@danielaingeragreed. I do want to give 2042 a chance here and there, to see if Jack is right, but he is not. The game FEELS terrible. It isn't good. Portal is terrible and janky. I miss battlefield 3.
Your BF3 mini experience is basically how mine was. Three people I didn't know in my squad, on 360, sweating it out, a lot more shit talking, but I am not good at shooters and was much worse holding a controller so we just owned. Even with its quirks and having way fewer unlocks I prefer (PC) BF4 to BF3 but I've a lot of nostalgia for BF3. Edit: That's not a date I ever wanted to hear announced.
I've never been a massive shooter person, but I remember playing a few Battlefield titles from time-to-time like Bad Company 2 and Battlefield 3, and found it to usually be a pretty decent experience. It always pains to see fan favourites essentially become heavily forgotten to time with no plans for their legacies to remain, because to the massive studios, "they're old, why should we keep these up? We want them to play our newer titles." ... Despite how much these older games hold such resonance and fond memories with players, and how the newer titles just fail to deliver the same amount of entertainment. God bless the longtime fans who will likely reverse engineer these titles so they will have a way to keep resonating with longtime players, and potentially even future players who never got the chance to experience it first-time around. Hopefully it will be something that actually catches on over time... Great video as always, Kacey. :)
I have a similar sentiment with many games, its always surprising to me when people say "Oh well teh developers know best" when the next battlefield game I play felt less like what I know of Battlefield and more like a hero shooter with some left over Battle royal moments. Imagine a critically acclaimed game series suddenly gets a genre shift, people complain, the older game is not being supported nor sold and then a bunch of people say "its revolutionary". My biggest example is when people say that Zoo world is the next Zoo tycoon game and I thought "that is some mighty shoes to fill", I looked at Zoo world and went "meh, Zoo tycoon 2 Ultimate collection has more, its a lake, while Zoo world feels more like a puddle that can go deep, and deeper with DLCs that are already in Zoo tycoon one way or another.
Battlebit remastered has kinda taken the old school bf itch for me such a fun game with 256 player servers and proxy voice chat is just amazing with that many people in one sever
Offline bots that are relatively competent are a great break from the nonsense you experience online sometimes, especially when your internet is having a rough day but you still wanna play (insert shooter)
Agree. I just recently released my first game (check my channel!) and without marketing, i realised how few players get on at the same time. so over the last 2 months i added a single player mode with bots and also player hosted servers. neither of which were originally planned, but its clear to me that any multiplayer focused game needs those 2 things as standard.
The simple reason EA shuts down old game servers is that they're stopping you from buying their new games, loot boxes etc. But Battlefield has really lost its identity, even more so when Medal of Honor also went modern. So EA had two franchises pretty much aping Call of Duty. Bad Company 1 and BF3 were really the pinnacle for me, loved the gallows humour of bad company, and EA really had a thing with destructible environments, but it's just so watered down now. EA really should consider a remake/remaster of an earlier title.
@@Rookie417 No, but they insisted on having servers, rather than allowing people to play P2P like with other publishers. It was fine when people only had 256k broadband in the '00s, but nearly everyone had a decent connection now to host.
That last part of the video, about doing our part to save the games we love. I feel that. I've been playing a lot of old games lately, mostly maintained and expanded upon by their passionate communities. Unreal Tournament (literally buried by Epic), Doom, Quake, Stalker, WH40K:Dawn of War, SW:Galaxy at War... I am increasingly feeling like I need to do something to give back to the community of some game, in some way. I will try to find some community project, or mod, that I can contribute to.
I’m learning the more technical side of things but a good thing you can do is write good, clear guides and post them online in places that aren’t privately gated! And then post gameplay footage places with information linking to your guide & the communities that play the game. Now that this project is off my chest I plan to do this for Halo 3 Sunrise.
Being unable to install new Unreal from Epic Store is fucking ass. Which is a shame. It looks like UT3 while playing more so like the classic games and its a shame they cut off its legs with a machete.
Same here, for me I’ve been having fun in the kotors, Arkham games, and swbf1 remake. All of them are good, but at the same time, have their own host of issues
my favourites are bf2 and bfbc2. never got to play 1943, since i didn't have a console then. it was a sad moment when the bf2 revive project got shut down in 2017-ish, i don't remember exactly when. my pc was quite shit when bf3 was new but i still played it quite a bit, high ping was more of a problem than low specs. i'm in love with battlebit remastered now, if you play on pc i highly recommend to give it a go.
15:12 I believe the bf3 one even requires it. You have to link your origin account to play in the first place which is also probably how they haven't gotten into trouble.
At this point I'm just grateful we have the memories of solid online gaming. I don't think it's ever coming back so I feel bad for kids that will never know how fun it could be.
Battlefield Bad Company 2 can be played on unofficial servers via Project Rome the same people behind Venice Unleashed for Battlefield 3, if you create an account, and sign in. You are able to import your stats from the EA retail version into Project Rome.
Beautiful final little message at the end of the video. I absolutely adore playing obscure, weird and dead video multiplayer games. Maybe even ports of popular video games that receive any of those 3 titles. They’re sometimes portals to meeting some of the greatest of people you’ll ever meet. There’s a funny sense of community when you play dead games, seeing repeated usernames and the likes. Huge charm. It’s up to us to save these types of games, and I’m glad there’s people out there willing to do their part until the day they officially die (and then revive). Great video Kacey!
After the massive success of BF1 and the disappointing reception of Infinite Warfare they had the chance of a lifetime to take the throne. And they threw it all away as if that was the plan all along…
So the reason I didn’t talk about them is because their ship has sailed. They’ve been shut down for years and they’ve already had their revival projects pop back up. This video was big enough and not only would mentioning those here today expand the scope even larger, it would mean shifting the focus entirely given how different those games, their intended function and their community revivals are
@@KaceydotmeEA shut down a revival project for BF 2 in 2017. It just goes to show that they do not give a shit about their old games. They just want you to buy their new shit.
@@cadjebushey6524 That surprises me to hear because there are BF2 revival projects still going. EA does a lot wrong but I don't remember them striking many homebrew projects like that. What was the name of the BF2 project that got shut down?
@@Kaceydotme Think just Revive. But i believe the original story anyway is EA asked them to just remove Battlefield trademarks [kind of like what NFS World and BF Heroes do with their projects now] but instead they just shut themselves down rather than just remove the trademark.
Seeing people still keeping Warfighter's multiplayer alive made me audibly gasp. I loved its multiplayer, despite all the jank and it not being very good. Oh and that PGA Tour battlefield map is fantastic. Never knew about this.
Battlefield 3 and Battlefield Hardline are playable on PS3 since all active servers are private and hackers get banned quickly. Battlefield 4 on PS3 has the biggest problem with hackers since non-moderated EA servers are popular on there.
i miss battlefield hardline i always felt like it was supposed to be a seperate game in pre production but had the battlefield name slapped on it which lead to people having greater expectations from it than it was could achieve.
Re: BFV and BF1, some modders have actually managed to get private dedicated servers working, similar to SWBF2s Kyber I don't expect it to take off for BF1 but I would guess there's a decent chance with BFV that it can take off as we'd be able to do our own server side anti cheat
I'm very surprised about your experience with BFV. I've reinstalled it recently when all the big sales happened and I've been having a blast. Opened the game, went into the server browser, instantly saw full servers and then I just started playing. There was one match when someone was wallhacking and they were promptly reported on the server's discord and booted out (granted, I am EU so maybe we just have it that good here, shout out to the BOB servers). That's it. No more cheaters encountered. Really fun gameplay, a good mix of maps on several full servers, people often actually cooperating to win. And all of this running quite smoothly at 50-80 fps on a 1060 6GB (barely above minimum requirements) bottlenecked by my basically ancient at this point i5-4690k (2!!! generations older than the CPU from official minimal requirements) It's a no-brainer recommendation for me if you want to experience a proper Battlefield game without the clunkiness of the older titles or the shortcomings and bloat of the newer title.
Back in the day, my 360's disc drive shit the bed. Around that time, Bad Company 2 was a free game of the month with Gold. So no joke, the only online shooter I played (besides Gotham City Imposters) for probably 6 months was Bad Company 2 (in 2014). I fell in love with that game and if not for that perfect storm of events, I might not have ever played it. So hats off to Bad Company 2 and everyone that played it and developed it.
battlefield was such a breath of fresh air for anyone who was big in the Military shooter genre at its 2010s peak. Cod fans looked on in envy at Battlefield's huge scale combat and teamwork mechanics.
I agree. Most of late 2000s/early 2010s COD was more on the arcade-y side (minus Black Ops 1 which was a bit more competitive and unique), while Battlefield was more competitive and skill based.
I played 1943 for 16 years on and off on ps3. It was an easy fun arcadeish shooter to quickly get a quick dopamine fix. On December 8, i logged in, managed to get in two rounds on full servers, the third round was not to be, never to load again. After googling i was crushed to have learned that that was the day, the moment, ea shut it down for good. Glad i was there to the end lol.
I haven't played much BF other than BF1 in the past few years, but I still loved to see this video drop just to see you back uploading again! Love your content girl, you create such fascinating deep dives in a way that's so accessible!
After I watch a battlefield video essay, I tell myself this is the last one I’ll watch. Then a new battlefield video essay comes out, and I can’t help but watch the new insights on how my favorite series has offed itself.
wait what? @1:50 there are projects to revive BC1 on the ps3 like some other projects? Can someone link me to this, im really interested. good vid btw :)
I need to stress that you were searching the server browser incorrectly in Battlefield V. You need to select the none, 1-5 or 6-10 free slot option because that refers to the amount of FREE slots there are. Most servers you'll find with players are actually completely full, with only a few servers having 1-10 free slots. That is why you could not find any players in the browser.
14:00 It's a sad that Battlefield 3 is played less than Battlefield 4. BF 3 is better in some aspects. I like more BF3 Maps they better than in bf 4 If Electronic Arts will close BF3 then we have Venice Unleashed which will work
I'm glad the trolls are mostly on the Xbox version of BC1 just played my last match of BC1 on PS3 last night and everyone was playing the objective it's a shame to see one of my favourite battlefield games finally die it was a bitter sweet feeling seeing how my favourite franchise went from being one of the best shooters competing with cod to trying to copy it RIP battlefield
So sad. I grew up with 1943 and all the others after it. I regularly played it on PS3 up until its shutdown. The community on PS3 was very active, there was almost always full games. It doesn't make sense to me why they'd shut it down. As for the Bad Company games, Bad company 1 was good, but I LOVED Bad company 2, especially its Vietnam DLC. I'd play it right after I got home from school. When I got on again around a year ago it was dead. Its like having a large part of your childhood taken away from you. Battlefield 3's campaign mission where you take off on the aircraft carrier was amazing. The graphics and sound design were something else. It might as well be an art thats how good it was.
8:26 casual flex but ok In all seriousness though, this was a blast going through the nostalgia of these older games. Such a shame EA is shutting down some of the older servers, and essentially making relive these memories impossible.
Bad Company 1 was amazing. First shooter game I bought (when I was 12) I remember using my PS3 and hooking it up to my box TV and setting the PS3 next to my window to steal the neighbors WiFi because it was left unprotected lol. I came to find that games mulitiplayer my favorite mulitplayer of all time. I came to be truly one of the best in the world at that game and even bought the Xbox One X just for the backwards compatibility before I ultimately sold it for a PS5. BFBC2 was great and took clan battling in a much better direction as did BF3. If you were on Playstation you might recognize some of the experiences getting spawn trapped by a clan by someone that just buzzes around spawn with a helicopter. Good times. Thanks for the content and keep it up.
I played bad Company 2 for the last 4 months or maybe more in PS3, I very often found full games 12v12 or 4v4v4v4 in team Deathmatch. Just because you didn't find so much people in PC doesnt mean that the game wasn't alive because bad Company 2 was more alive than the last 2/3 Battlefield games
@@Kaceydotme That's strange. The server browser for those games have always worked fine for me on PC and PS5. On BF1 I have Conquest, Operations and Shock Operations selected, 32/32 maps, None and 1-5 slots, and North America. Works perfectly.
It's bizarre to see how DICE/EA not only are erasing the actual game design template they used in the earlier BF games; classes that were designed to have major differences in how they play, and their strengths, (swapped out for the CoD-ification of all classes) as well as erasing their old games PERIOD. Such a shame.
BF: BC up until BF3 on the 360 was my peak time as a BF fan. I thoroughly enjoyed each game in their prime, and it pains me to see both Bad Company titles and especially 1943, my personal favorite of the three, sunsetting. I hate that game companies are doing this now when it's clear that maintenance costs really shouldn't be that high. Just release the server-hosting tools at this point if you can't be fucked. It's bullshit. Great vid though, Kacey, was fun playing Halo with you last night :)
Bought and played BC1 a ton, skipped over BC2 because I was in my single player game phase at the time, then got into BF3 with the demo and eventually full game
I recognise so many gamertags from this video! I'm currently making an achievements related video on the bad company games but for context on conquest lobbies being locked down by people - since the Battlefield Bad Company 1 & 2 servers were shutting down and one of the final achievements for BC1 is earn *10,002* kills in multiplayer (because another developer already made a 10,001 kills joke top one up Gears of War's Seriously...) Many achievement/trophy hunters myself included set up lobbies for a few hours each day to get both the awards and kills achievements because road-killing 50 people over in a BOAT when 90% of the water on every map is well away from the action was not going to happen legitimately. Surprisingly, Gold Rush was always very active but it had different issues, namely the top 100 odd rated players who never stopped playing the game and would purposely crash and grief people if a match wasn't going their way as you saw - it was a wild ride!
Janky thing about BF5 matchmaking is that it doesn't search for a server. It tries to gather a group of people into a squad and then send that squad into a server. A way to get around this and make matchmaking faster is to create your own private squad from the menu, click on matchmaking and then join a squad when in game.
I know this video took a lot of research, and thank you for the time invested in making this! As a content creator myself, I know this took a lot of time and effort. I just wish you enjoyed BF1 a little more, because it is (in my insignificant opinion), the best game in the entire franchise! How is BF1 not peak Battlefield? Some will agree and some will disagree. And I love you all because we are all here loving Battlefield together.
I completely agree. I can't believe they just shut down the servers for these games and won't even allow you to purchase these games from them anymore either. A new low for this franchise. And especially for games like Bad Company 2 that made their franchise popular in the first place
The highested rated BF on Metacritic Battlefield 2 was delisted in 2014 along with numerous other BF games *due to Gamespy going down but still like Massive Entertainment and Ubisoft released World In Conflict for free w/ Master Server fo;es). I dobut they'll take down BF3 for a very long time but sad to see franchise history just being lost so recklessly. I can play CoD 1 on PC online, won't even be able to do the same with BC2 or any BF title before that.
Also that BC1 soundtrack brought back sooooo much nostalgia and why i love the song "Fortunate Son" so much. My next tattoo might be of the smiley face grenade too it was that awesome of a game.
The movement in BFV is goated and I will never understand why they didn’t put it in 2042. If it’s some sort of technical limitation related to the wingsuit, grapple or slide that softens the blow, but I’m still mad about it.
Doing our part to save the games we love hits hard shortly after the official death of Gundam Evolution. That game hooked it's claws into me like the BF3 beta on Xbox 360 back in the day and it's awesome to see efforts to make it playable be worked on through Side 7. As much as you can't explicitly say what kind of projects are keeping these old Battlefields alive, I'm definitely not alone when I say thank you for even bringing that idea to my attention at all! One of them even having MOH Warfighter being available REALLY peaks my interest since I was apparently one of the few who loved that one! Gonna wake up tomorrow and poke about for some of this, and once again it's you who pushed me to take a look. Thanks as always!
I was one of the top players on BF1 Xbox One until I was banned and I just have to say that BF1 was a breath of fresh air. It made me feel like I was playing BF3 at times with the movement and gun play. BF1 and BF3 were just masterpieces.
From all the games I've played since 1998, Bad Company 2 is top 3-5. Sound design - unbelievable. Every weapon viable - you couldn't choose which one to shoot, you just wanted to use all of them. Very rare thing in games. Jeeps, tanks, helicopters - meaty engine sounds, always an event when you see one. Loved the fact that you couldn't prone in this game, or even use A or D keys whilst running - gave an interesting side effect of predictability of enemies who don't know how to run away from bullets. Maps - almost perfect ballance. Not too big, not too small - great for your 2 hour afternoon experience. And the thing I loved absolute most was guided rocket launcher, the AT4 (pre patch). Reticle not too small, like you're peeking through a small key whole (BF3's AT4), rocket not too fast, you launch it and use all your skill, calculation and knowledge to guide that rocket to an enemy chopper. They evade, of course, like they evaded noobs 20 times before, who shoot AT4 at them, but they dont know you live to shoot the AT4. You spin the rocket, hit the choppers belly (who's destroying your team at point A), you see an exploasion, sound follows soon after, reverbing off mountains, and you get that sassy kill feed message, with kill-sound, that sounds like a grass hopper late at night - talala - talala - 2 kills. The most fun you could have in a game, during the years (repeatable on daily basis;skill): - air rockets in Quake3, as well as flick shot rails, - one-tap-snap headshots or perfect sprays in cs1.6, - single shot BAR headshots in Cod1, set-nade kills, - perfect no recoil control sprays in Cod2 with MP44, rifle flick shots (great weapon sway mechanics in this game); - playing as Helicopter gunner in BF3 and BF4, - Battlefield 1 - horse + lance (amazing fun), once you get a hang of it, and that's all you do; Along these things...Bad Companie's AT4 was the most sattisfying experience you can have in that game. It was just THAT good. I remember, on a good day - you'd piss off the enemy team so much, they'd stop flying altogether, start rushing your position on foot. When I think back, there was not a single thing that you'd find not fun in this game. Guns were meaty and fun. Tanks felt like you had to try hard in them to do good - also rewarding. Jeep/Buggy + C4 runs were amazing, as well as running enemies over with them. Both piloting and gunning in helicopters felt just right, very destructive if done right. Even the Drone station you could find was interesting, rare and fun. Not like you get over abundance of it on BF3/4, where every soldier can equip it. No, this was balanced - you'd have to capture an objective to use it. All we wanted was more of BC2. Just more. And with years passing by, we got worse, watered down versions of AT4, worse sound design on every aspect of the game, less destruction (which became dumb map events). Suddenly driving tanks became useless, as infantry had endless means to kill them (especially BF1), flying Jets/Planes became not as much fun as it was in Battlefield2, again, restrictions, limiting their power. And people dont realise why - original devs just left. One by one. Currently, im not sure theres a single dev left in that studio, who worked on BF2 or BFBC2. And their ideas/values show in BFV and the newest BF game. Zero understanding on what Battlefield is about, constant chasing after stupidity that CoD and Siege has become, with out-of-this-world skins and other clownshows. Even Bad Company 2, that was supposed to be a direct competitor to CoD, was vast and able in vehicle department, felt like Battlefield. The franchise is dead.
Imagine one of the biggest shooter franchises have their 3rd and 4th to last game be the most popular experience, the most "battlefield" experience, and those games be the ones people want to go back to instead of playing BFV or the 2042 garbage. CoD is a fucking dumpster fire, but at least they consistently get enough people on board to keep going.
Thank you for this comprehensive look at the state of each Battlefield game. The franchise has been a big part of my gaming life and it’s sad to see EAs utter disrespect of fans with server shutdowns of the old games with no real alternatives. And I have encountered MLG Hobo Joe and friends a while back on BC1.
Alien, Bossmike, and ponqzii i used to see those guys all the time lol, and they are always in a squad just talking and having a good time. Thats awesome you captured that
Im honestly going to defend Battlelog till the day I die. While the "social" shit was completely unnecesary, the ability to set up loadouts without being constantly rushed because the map is about to start, looking at my stats, waiting in queues to join the servers i frequently played on while being able to do whatever i wanted to do instead of looking at "Youre 20th in queue" was the best thing.
imo it would've been fine as an optional thing but making people use a web browser to launch the game was a joke. i mean ffs, make it a standalone launcher if anything...
The day Bf3 servers shut down will be like a hit to the gut. Think about it. All the maps, realism, realistic radio chatter, cinematic moments, machinimas, battlefield friends, the glitches, NOPE, all the fps you tubers had a start there.
Ironically enough, I usually tag the ”1-5” or more often ”none” to get to the servers that are actually populated in BF4 and BF1. However, it is indeed a bit harder to get results from in BFV as you mentioned. But it does work sometimes.
A couple of years after their launch was enough for East Asia BF3 PC servers to just... not host DLC maps and modes. I feel the memory about how often you could actually use the DLC you paid for differs a lot based on what region you live in. If they wanted to do anything interesting with 2042 Portal they'd port the DLC maps and modes from 3 and earlier.
Would be amazing to have Collection like Halo MCC with older titles of BF, MoH and Army of Two, all in one game with one matchmaking. Vanilla can be from Codename Eagle to BFBC2, then add the rest later with seasons etc.
For me, Battlefield will always ve about those insane moments in 1942/DC/Vietnam/2 with Jeeps flying through the air or mowing down whole squads, and noobs in control of helicopters they dont know how to control, streaking towards their oblivion as people fling themselves out and fire rockets upon the ground. Seeing *that fuckin many* soldiers on the battlefield at once, realizing that they're all *real people*! Just insane moments that couldn't be found elsewhere because of the sheer number of players, vehicle options and map sizes. Of course these days all of this is common in games and not really noteworthy anymore, but back then it was absolutely amazing, and CoD with it's small maps just couldn't come close to the scope of BF.
I'm gonna be a massive devil's advocate for Battlelog, because I genuinely would rather use that than use the half-assed menu system they made for BF1 and then backported to BF4. You can't track weapon unlock challenges properly, stats are less detailed, and the server browser is limited to only showing 100 servers at once. Any more, the game tells you to narrow down your filters. The problems experienced with BFV are universal to all BF games using that menu system, so BF4, BF1 and BFV. Hardline doesn't, but Hardline is also dead unfortunately so that's the least of it's problems.
the battlelog might be optional in bf4, but with the ux of the ingame server browser being far worse and slower than the battlelog, it's funny that the thing gamers always wanted ended up being worse. It only came along after battlefield 1 of course, and it was backported back to bf4. maybe they fixed it in the last few years but mmm, console interface on a pc, i love it
This is why I've always wanted a PvE mode for battlefield and other fps games back then. Multiplayer shooters don't last forever, their servers will eventually shut down and they will become worthless after a while, because the value of the single player experience is nothing compared to multiplayer.
whoever misses the good old battlefield days - try battlebit remastered they have NAILED the core gameplay and added some useful mechanics also amazing net code, no stutters or unregistered hits if you have a decent internet connection
Great video! Really speaks to the times we are in regarding games preservation. A lot of our childhood games being multiplayer, means that their ability to exist is tied to some arbitrary profit metric at companies that stopped caring about the kinds of video games we do at least a decade ago. Videos like these are necessary to bring awareness to the topic since it's something almost entirely unique to video games as a medium. This on top of increasing anti-piracy rhetoric, primarily regarding emulation, frightens me about the future of video games past. Without emulation, especially as physical hardware ages, the worst case scenario is losing huge swaths of video game history to companies that either don't care about their past, or only care so much as to what they can drip feed their audiences with services like Nintendo's virtual consoles or hoarding the IP for name recognition. All the work done by our community, with things like the aforementioned custom launchers, emulation, back-doored servers, mods, etc, are why we still have a history we can physically visit. We need to speak up against the companies that wish to let that die so they can make a little more money, or worse, wish to steal that history and sell it back to us. Also shout out to to Wario Puzzle 1 from Mario Picross at 16:43, one of the best tracks to ever grace a video game!
For a game series that was so massive in 2011-2017, I can’t believe it only took Battlefield two mediocre games to completely, absolutely, entirely die
Bad news: Battlefield 3, 4 and Hardline for 360/PS3 will be shut down on November 7, 2024. End of an era.
This makes sense given that the 360 store will be shutting down and thus rent-a-server will no longer function, so the little money these titles were still generating will be gone. Hopefully we'll see some sort of revival happen one day, though it'll probably be PS3 only if it does.
That's very unfortunate. I started playing both bf 3 and 4 this year on ps3 and they are very alive and still fun games.At least it was fun tha twe got to have it for all the time we did.
There being delisted july 31st as well
@@Aqzwonly 360?
@@Kaceydotme just months before/after BF3 shutdown date on PS3, I'm gonna upload more kill compilation videos since I've recorded like thousands of kill clips across a number of maps in BF3 PS3. As good old memories from the past.
I feel like the worst part about the slow decay and death of Battlefield servers is that not every game will recieve the fan support that even some lesser remembered CoD titles, like Ghosts or AW did. Or, that EA, like Activision before them, will shut down any chance of it, salting the digital earth.
unfortunately every cod game before mw2019 (engine rework finally fixed it) is highly unsafe to play multiplayer online, at least on pc. every game has huge rce (remote code execution) vulnerabilities, and Identity theft/cc stealing malware or worse is easily spread from player to player. even black ops cold war had the issue at launch before it was patched because it isn't built on the 2019 IW engine, it's treyarch's T engine, with updates. none of the other games have ever been patched, and valve even removed the multiplayer tag from some of the games on steam.
Battlefield one is the best battlefield, the last great, if they can pull of the feels and atmosphere of that game…. They may save themselves, but at this point I have ZERO hope
@@Alkron1 No.
@@Alkron1 had so many great memories gaming with the squad back when I was still in highschool when it came out, atmosphere of BF1 is unbeatable, V doesn’t even come close, I’ll truly be sad when BF1s servers finally close 🫠
@@dan_loeb I don't think you know what you're talking about. Not only Cold War, but also MW2019 and Vanguard all suffered from extreme security issues as late as early this year. There have been a handful of scandals involving hackers, servers being unsafe, accounts randomly being banned/shadowbanned and even data leaks. The entire reason Ricochet was advertised and developed in the first place was to """"try to fix these issues"""", but given how there are still cases frequently about these things happening in MW22 and MW23, you can see how it worked out.
Seriously, MW2019 being unsafe to play was one of the biggest news of last year.
At some point, it stops being piracy and starts being game preservation. It’s a shame companies refuse to see it this way, especially for “dead” games and games they no longer have official servers for
At some point it's piracy from EA to shut down games we paid for and even still makes (small) money for EA
Battlefield 1942....
This is especially bad with games that aren't even sold anymore. Nintendo is the absolute worst offender at this. If there's even a *chance* that they *might* resell an old product in the future they will sue your ass to the depths of hell if you so much as help someone emulate Mario Kart 64. Seriously, fuck Nintendo.
Exactly
@@FatherMcKenzie66 or sell
1943 is still one of the prettiest games especially for the time. It was so colorful for a military shooter.
I never bought the game but played the beta/demo a ton
@@Gameprojordanit's great I played it alot back then and I definitely still do to this day bc tommrow might be it's last day
its because it takes place in the pacific
But it couldnt beat that soundtrack of Vietnam
I got so much play out of that game on PS3, I wish it had a PC port but it probably have been shut down by now.
Important to note that bf4 only got an ingame server browser after a long time post release in order to "unify" it with the other newer titles. Hardline also got this treatment
Yep I remember this update releasing.
The in-game server browser doesn't exist. Also hardline was probably the only game possible to have a competitive scene but it was ruined. It was like better csgo when you played the elimination bomb or VIP mode.
@@abudorayakobu no way you just said better CSGO lmao...
Battlefield 1 will always be my favorite multiplayer game. Never cared if i did good or bad. I was just fully immersed
Thats the correct way to enjoy these games :)
Graphycs after 7 years still best in battlefield series
BF2 is still going strong thanks to the project reality mod.. at this rate it will out last the franchise after giving birth to the p v p mil sim franchise
🐐
BF3 had the best campaign. BF4 was the best online
God, i remember the day Battlefield 3 went online, I got up early before class to play an hour of it cause I was so hyped. Its so weird to think it's going to be gone within the next couple years.
I still remember grinding to get the Crossbow, haha, good times...
I still get on 3 on the PS3 every now and then. The game had a huge resurgence during covid. It’s still a blast if you don’t run into a one shot hacker.
I remember the beta on operation metro, no game was like it
All good things come to an end
No matter how many videos jack frags does saying its all ok now and they fixed it.
RIP BF
His a paid shill he has too be positive about the game
@@danielaingeragreed. I do want to give 2042 a chance here and there, to see if Jack is right, but he is not. The game FEELS terrible. It isn't good. Portal is terrible and janky. I miss battlefield 3.
Jack lost my total trust.
No one with brains listens to that shill.
@@Handsx "feels" is a very valuable in any conversetion, your comment "feels" like you have no idea what you are talking about
Your BF3 mini experience is basically how mine was. Three people I didn't know in my squad, on 360, sweating it out, a lot more shit talking, but I am not good at shooters and was much worse holding a controller so we just owned. Even with its quirks and having way fewer unlocks I prefer (PC) BF4 to BF3 but I've a lot of nostalgia for BF3.
Edit: That's not a date I ever wanted to hear announced.
At least BF4 has Project Warsaw
I've never been a massive shooter person, but I remember playing a few Battlefield titles from time-to-time like Bad Company 2 and Battlefield 3, and found it to usually be a pretty decent experience.
It always pains to see fan favourites essentially become heavily forgotten to time with no plans for their legacies to remain, because to the massive studios, "they're old, why should we keep these up? We want them to play our newer titles." ... Despite how much these older games hold such resonance and fond memories with players, and how the newer titles just fail to deliver the same amount of entertainment.
God bless the longtime fans who will likely reverse engineer these titles so they will have a way to keep resonating with longtime players, and potentially even future players who never got the chance to experience it first-time around. Hopefully it will be something that actually catches on over time...
Great video as always, Kacey. :)
I have a similar sentiment with many games, its always surprising to me when people say "Oh well teh developers know best" when the next battlefield game I play felt less like what I know of Battlefield and more like a hero shooter with some left over Battle royal moments.
Imagine a critically acclaimed game series suddenly gets a genre shift, people complain, the older game is not being supported nor sold and then a bunch of people say "its revolutionary".
My biggest example is when people say that Zoo world is the next Zoo tycoon game and I thought "that is some mighty shoes to fill", I looked at Zoo world and went "meh, Zoo tycoon 2 Ultimate collection has more, its a lake, while Zoo world feels more like a puddle that can go deep, and deeper with DLCs that are already in Zoo tycoon one way or another.
Battlebit remastered has kinda taken the old school bf itch for me such a fun game with 256 player servers and proxy voice chat is just amazing with that many people in one sever
@@dishmeupbbr is more of a copy of bf3 and 4 more than the classic battlefield games though
@@dishmeup I think that game is much too fast paced to get a similar experience to the older battlefield games
Wise words, couldn’t say better! 👍🏻
This is why every single game should have dedicated servers (user hostable).
And offline bots
Offline bots that are relatively competent are a great break from the nonsense you experience online sometimes, especially when your internet is having a rough day but you still wanna play (insert shooter)
Agree. I just recently released my first game (check my channel!) and without marketing, i realised how few players get on at the same time. so over the last 2 months i added a single player mode with bots and also player hosted servers. neither of which were originally planned, but its clear to me that any multiplayer focused game needs those 2 things as standard.
Most bf games have user hosted servers, you still need a master server though
The simple reason EA shuts down old game servers is that they're stopping you from buying their new games, loot boxes etc.
But Battlefield has really lost its identity, even more so when Medal of Honor also went modern. So EA had two franchises pretty much aping Call of Duty.
Bad Company 1 and BF3 were really the pinnacle for me, loved the gallows humour of bad company, and EA really had a thing with destructible environments, but it's just so watered down now.
EA really should consider a remake/remaster of an earlier title.
It just isn’t reasonable for ea to continue supporting the master servers anymore too
Larry never has a bad take on games, does he?
@@Geferulf_TAS Ha, thank you! :)
@@Rookie417 No, but they insisted on having servers, rather than allowing people to play P2P like with other publishers.
It was fine when people only had 256k broadband in the '00s, but nearly everyone had a decent connection now to host.
@@Larry you still need a master server for p2p?
That last part of the video, about doing our part to save the games we love. I feel that. I've been playing a lot of old games lately, mostly maintained and expanded upon by their passionate communities. Unreal Tournament (literally buried by Epic), Doom, Quake, Stalker, WH40K:Dawn of War, SW:Galaxy at War... I am increasingly feeling like I need to do something to give back to the community of some game, in some way. I will try to find some community project, or mod, that I can contribute to.
I’m learning the more technical side of things but a good thing you can do is write good, clear guides and post them online in places that aren’t privately gated! And then post gameplay footage places with information linking to your guide & the communities that play the game.
Now that this project is off my chest I plan to do this for Halo 3 Sunrise.
Being unable to install new Unreal from Epic Store is fucking ass. Which is a shame. It looks like UT3 while playing more so like the classic games and its a shame they cut off its legs with a machete.
Same here, for me I’ve been having fun in the kotors, Arkham games, and swbf1 remake. All of them are good, but at the same time, have their own host of issues
1943 was by far my favorite BF multiplayer experience with BC2 coming in a close second.
my favourites are bf2 and bfbc2. never got to play 1943, since i didn't have a console then. it was a sad moment when the bf2 revive project got shut down in 2017-ish, i don't remember exactly when. my pc was quite shit when bf3 was new but i still played it quite a bit, high ping was more of a problem than low specs. i'm in love with battlebit remastered now, if you play on pc i highly recommend to give it a go.
15:12 I believe the bf3 one even requires it. You have to link your origin account to play in the first place which is also probably how they haven't gotten into trouble.
At this point I'm just grateful we have the memories of solid online gaming. I don't think it's ever coming back so I feel bad for kids that will never know how fun it could be.
Battlefield Bad Company 2 can be played on unofficial servers via Project Rome the same people behind Venice Unleashed for Battlefield 3, if you create an account, and sign in. You are able to import your stats from the EA retail version into Project Rome.
23:05 If Battlefield Hardline were released in our time, it would be a popular game with many players playing
Beautiful final little message at the end of the video. I absolutely adore playing obscure, weird and dead video multiplayer games. Maybe even ports of popular video games that receive any of those 3 titles. They’re sometimes portals to meeting some of the greatest of people you’ll ever meet. There’s a funny sense of community when you play dead games, seeing repeated usernames and the likes. Huge charm. It’s up to us to save these types of games, and I’m glad there’s people out there willing to do their part until the day they officially die (and then revive). Great video Kacey!
well shit if u like obscure dead multiplayer games you`ll love mine
After the massive success of BF1 and the disappointing reception of Infinite Warfare they had the chance of a lifetime to take the throne.
And they threw it all away as if that was the plan all along…
Fr… bf1 goated
It’s sad to know that no one talks about Battlefield 1942, Battlefield Vietnam, or Battlefield 2142.
So the reason I didn’t talk about them is because their ship has sailed. They’ve been shut down for years and they’ve already had their revival projects pop back up. This video was big enough and not only would mentioning those here today expand the scope even larger, it would mean shifting the focus entirely given how different those games, their intended function and their community revivals are
@@KaceydotmeEA shut down a revival project for BF 2 in 2017.
It just goes to show that they do not give a shit about their old games. They just want you to buy their new shit.
@@cadjebushey6524 That surprises me to hear because there are BF2 revival projects still going. EA does a lot wrong but I don't remember them striking many homebrew projects like that. What was the name of the BF2 project that got shut down?
@@Kaceydotme Think just Revive. But i believe the original story anyway is EA asked them to just remove Battlefield trademarks [kind of like what NFS World and BF Heroes do with their projects now] but instead they just shut themselves down rather than just remove the trademark.
All of these and associated mods are still going thanks to the work of the community. FHSW and FH2 still have especially dedicated communities.
Seeing people still keeping Warfighter's multiplayer alive made me audibly gasp.
I loved its multiplayer, despite all the jank and it not being very good.
Oh and that PGA Tour battlefield map is fantastic. Never knew about this.
I dont want battlefield to go the way of medal of honor
agree medal of honor was good game to but yep EA kill it
If the next battlefield is just as bad or somehow even worse than 2042, it will. And then only COD will remain.
And I dont want MOH to fade into obscurity
I miss the destructible environments from BF Bad Company 1-2, it created some of the most memorable gaming moments during my childhood.
Battlefield 3 and Battlefield Hardline are playable on PS3 since all active servers are private and hackers get banned quickly. Battlefield 4 on PS3 has the biggest problem with hackers since non-moderated EA servers are popular on there.
i miss battlefield hardline i always felt like it was supposed to be a seperate game in pre production but had the battlefield name slapped on it which lead to people having greater expectations from it than it was could achieve.
My theory is that EA wants to close BC2 servers to get more people to install 2042 for portal.
I would feel that way if they were doing anything of note with portal
you're probably correct seeing as a chunk of the portal content is based on BC2
@@Kaceydotme they don't have to do anything with it if they just kill the alternatives
Re: BFV and BF1, some modders have actually managed to get private dedicated servers working, similar to SWBF2s Kyber
I don't expect it to take off for BF1 but I would guess there's a decent chance with BFV that it can take off as we'd be able to do our own server side anti cheat
I'm very surprised about your experience with BFV. I've reinstalled it recently when all the big sales happened and I've been having a blast. Opened the game, went into the server browser, instantly saw full servers and then I just started playing. There was one match when someone was wallhacking and they were promptly reported on the server's discord and booted out (granted, I am EU so maybe we just have it that good here, shout out to the BOB servers). That's it. No more cheaters encountered. Really fun gameplay, a good mix of maps on several full servers, people often actually cooperating to win. And all of this running quite smoothly at 50-80 fps on a 1060 6GB (barely above minimum requirements) bottlenecked by my basically ancient at this point i5-4690k (2!!! generations older than the CPU from official minimal requirements)
It's a no-brainer recommendation for me if you want to experience a proper Battlefield game without the clunkiness of the older titles or the shortcomings and bloat of the newer title.
PLEASE do the golf highlights
That looks so silly and fun lmao
Back in the day, my 360's disc drive shit the bed. Around that time, Bad Company 2 was a free game of the month with Gold. So no joke, the only online shooter I played (besides Gotham City Imposters) for probably 6 months was Bad Company 2 (in 2014). I fell in love with that game and if not for that perfect storm of events, I might not have ever played it. So hats off to Bad Company 2 and everyone that played it and developed it.
battlefield was such a breath of fresh air for anyone who was big in the Military shooter genre at its 2010s peak.
Cod fans looked on in envy at Battlefield's huge scale combat and teamwork mechanics.
I agree. Most of late 2000s/early 2010s COD was more on the arcade-y side (minus Black Ops 1 which was a bit more competitive and unique), while Battlefield was more competitive and skill based.
I played 1943 for 16 years on and off on ps3. It was an easy fun arcadeish shooter to quickly get a quick dopamine fix. On December 8, i logged in, managed to get in two rounds on full servers, the third round was not to be, never to load again.
After googling i was crushed to have learned that that was the day, the moment, ea shut it down for good. Glad i was there to the end lol.
I haven't played much BF other than BF1 in the past few years, but I still loved to see this video drop just to see you back uploading again! Love your content girl, you create such fascinating deep dives in a way that's so accessible!
Sadly bf 1943 will be being shutdown tomorrow for good and that was my very first bf i have played i will miss it 😢
After I watch a battlefield video essay, I tell myself this is the last one I’ll watch. Then a new battlefield video essay comes out, and I can’t help but watch the new insights on how my favorite series has offed itself.
Pirates literally always do more to preservation then actual companies. Weird to be surprised by that lol
3:50 in 2011 DICE said that they canceled the PC port of Battlefield 1943 and the co-op mode for Bad Company 2 Onslaught Mode
wait what? @1:50 there are projects to revive BC1 on the ps3 like some other projects? Can someone link me to this, im really interested. good vid btw :)
I need to stress that you were searching the server browser incorrectly in Battlefield V. You need to select the none, 1-5 or 6-10 free slot option because that refers to the amount of FREE slots there are. Most servers you'll find with players are actually completely full, with only a few servers having 1-10 free slots. That is why you could not find any players in the browser.
I did that, i didn’t have the footage of all it (and truthfully was just trying to finish the video)
@@Kaceydotme ah ok, totally understandable
14:00 It's a sad that Battlefield 3 is played less than Battlefield 4. BF 3 is better in some aspects. I like more BF3 Maps they better than in bf 4
If Electronic Arts will close BF3 then we have Venice Unleashed which will work
Bf3 aged worse than bf4. Bf4 still feels somewhat modern. Bf3 has a very weird movement and gunplay, at least for me (mainly bf4 player)
Battlefield 3 and Battlefield 4 no way not aged / outdated. What is mean "aged"
I'm glad the trolls are mostly on the Xbox version of BC1 just played my last match of BC1 on PS3 last night and everyone was playing the objective it's a shame to see one of my favourite battlefield games finally die it was a bitter sweet feeling seeing how my favourite franchise went from being one of the best shooters competing with cod to trying to copy it RIP battlefield
I don't even like Battlefield but seeing games die or be killed like that makes me sad knowing that there are people that still wants to play them.
I remember ponqzii from BF 3 (360). Crazy to see his name here
So sad. I grew up with 1943 and all the others after it. I regularly played it on PS3 up until its shutdown. The community on PS3 was very active, there was almost always full games. It doesn't make sense to me why they'd shut it down.
As for the Bad Company games, Bad company 1 was good, but I LOVED Bad company 2, especially its Vietnam DLC. I'd play it right after I got home from school. When I got on again around a year ago it was dead.
Its like having a large part of your childhood taken away from you.
Battlefield 3's campaign mission where you take off on the aircraft carrier was amazing. The graphics and sound design were something else. It might as well be an art thats how good it was.
18:00 South America has a strong battlefield community on older games, my fav servers on bf4 and bf1 are both run by Brazilian clans
8:26 casual flex but ok
In all seriousness though, this was a blast going through the nostalgia of these older games. Such a shame EA is shutting down some of the older servers, and essentially making relive these memories impossible.
Bad Company 1 was amazing. First shooter game I bought (when I was 12) I remember using my PS3 and hooking it up to my box TV and setting the PS3 next to my window to steal the neighbors WiFi because it was left unprotected lol. I came to find that games mulitiplayer my favorite mulitplayer of all time. I came to be truly one of the best in the world at that game and even bought the Xbox One X just for the backwards compatibility before I ultimately sold it for a PS5. BFBC2 was great and took clan battling in a much better direction as did BF3. If you were on Playstation you might recognize some of the experiences getting spawn trapped by a clan by someone that just buzzes around spawn with a helicopter. Good times. Thanks for the content and keep it up.
I played bad Company 2 for the last 4 months or maybe more in PS3, I very often found full games 12v12 or 4v4v4v4 in team Deathmatch. Just because you didn't find so much people in PC doesnt mean that the game wasn't alive because bad Company 2 was more alive than the last 2/3 Battlefield games
I remember when they closed BF2 servers back then, there were still full servers with lots of players
great video but for BF1 and BFV’s server browsers you just need to click empty slots (none) (1-5) and thats it lol
I tried that, it didn’t work
@@Kaceydotme That's strange. The server browser for those games have always worked fine for me on PC and PS5. On BF1 I have Conquest, Operations and Shock Operations selected, 32/32 maps, None and 1-5 slots, and North America. Works perfectly.
It's bizarre to see how DICE/EA not only are erasing the actual game design template they used in the earlier BF games; classes that were designed to have major differences in how they play, and their strengths, (swapped out for the CoD-ification of all classes) as well as erasing their old games PERIOD. Such a shame.
18:20 I would PAY for the upkeep and maintenance service of having multiplayer game servers that wipe the hard drives of confirmed cheaters.
BFBC2 heavy metal 24/7 still being up sent me into a laugh/cry spiral
BF: BC up until BF3 on the 360 was my peak time as a BF fan. I thoroughly enjoyed each game in their prime, and it pains me to see both Bad Company titles and especially 1943, my personal favorite of the three, sunsetting. I hate that game companies are doing this now when it's clear that maintenance costs really shouldn't be that high. Just release the server-hosting tools at this point if you can't be fucked. It's bullshit. Great vid though, Kacey, was fun playing Halo with you last night :)
Bought and played BC1 a ton, skipped over BC2 because I was in my single player game phase at the time, then got into BF3 with the demo and eventually full game
I recognise so many gamertags from this video! I'm currently making an achievements related video on the bad company games but for context on conquest lobbies being locked down by people - since the Battlefield Bad Company 1 & 2 servers were shutting down and one of the final achievements for BC1 is earn *10,002* kills in multiplayer (because another developer already made a 10,001 kills joke top one up Gears of War's Seriously...)
Many achievement/trophy hunters myself included set up lobbies for a few hours each day to get both the awards and kills achievements because road-killing 50 people over in a BOAT when 90% of the water on every map is well away from the action was not going to happen legitimately.
Surprisingly, Gold Rush was always very active but it had different issues, namely the top 100 odd rated players who never stopped playing the game and would purposely crash and grief people if a match wasn't going their way as you saw - it was a wild ride!
Don't mess with the Big Pimpers man, Fabian a real one for that
Every bad company 1 player especially on PS3 has been nothing but autistic incels with no purpose or reason to live
The cure for a gambling addiction is hitting BF5’s refresh server button until you find the populated servers.
I think 2042 is mid it looks and feels nothing like a battlefield game it feels more like cod than battlefield
Janky thing about BF5 matchmaking is that it doesn't search for a server. It tries to gather a group of people into a squad and then send that squad into a server. A way to get around this and make matchmaking faster is to create your own private squad from the menu, click on matchmaking and then join a squad when in game.
'42, Vietnam, BF2, BF2142, after that it felt like it was slowly going back the other way - albeit with a shinier ass
I know this video took a lot of research, and thank you for the time invested in making this! As a content creator myself, I know this took a lot of time and effort. I just wish you enjoyed BF1 a little more, because it is (in my insignificant opinion), the best game in the entire franchise! How is BF1 not peak Battlefield? Some will agree and some will disagree. And I love you all because we are all here loving Battlefield together.
Oh for sure, there's no hate for those that enjoy BF1. I wish I liked it more. Maybe with the right group of people and enough time it'll click.
I ran into fake player count multiple times, seems like it’s the German servers
its not just them, the american ones do it too.
@@Kaceydotme true
@@Kaceydotme btw thx for the tip for the fake player counts
I completely agree. I can't believe they just shut down the servers for these games and won't even allow you to purchase these games from them anymore either. A new low for this franchise. And especially for games like Bad Company 2 that made their franchise popular in the first place
Bungie did it best when they released the final patch for Halo CE. They fixed the GameSpy master server issue, and stripped the DRM out of the game.
The highested rated BF on Metacritic Battlefield 2 was delisted in 2014 along with numerous other BF games *due to Gamespy going down but still like Massive Entertainment and Ubisoft released World In Conflict for free w/ Master Server fo;es). I dobut they'll take down BF3 for a very long time but sad to see franchise history just being lost so recklessly.
I can play CoD 1 on PC online, won't even be able to do the same with BC2 or any BF title before that.
Also that BC1 soundtrack brought back sooooo much nostalgia and why i love the song "Fortunate Son" so much. My next tattoo might be of the smiley face grenade too it was that awesome of a game.
Surprisingly, Call of Duty technically stiil have his online servers for each of their games, despite releasing one every year.
It's because they use p2p matchmaking, not dedicated servers, meaning it costs them nothing to maintain them.
The movement in BFV is goated and I will never understand why they didn’t put it in 2042. If it’s some sort of technical limitation related to the wingsuit, grapple or slide that softens the blow, but I’m still mad about it.
Doing our part to save the games we love hits hard shortly after the official death of Gundam Evolution. That game hooked it's claws into me like the BF3 beta on Xbox 360 back in the day and it's awesome to see efforts to make it playable be worked on through Side 7.
As much as you can't explicitly say what kind of projects are keeping these old Battlefields alive, I'm definitely not alone when I say thank you for even bringing that idea to my attention at all! One of them even having MOH Warfighter being available REALLY peaks my interest since I was apparently one of the few who loved that one!
Gonna wake up tomorrow and poke about for some of this, and once again it's you who pushed me to take a look. Thanks as always!
Bad Company 2 and 2142 were peak BF for me.
I was one of the top players on BF1 Xbox One until I was banned and I just have to say that BF1 was a breath of fresh air. It made me feel like I was playing BF3 at times with the movement and gun play. BF1 and BF3 were just masterpieces.
From all the games I've played since 1998, Bad Company 2 is top 3-5.
Sound design - unbelievable.
Every weapon viable - you couldn't choose which one to shoot, you just wanted to use all of them. Very rare thing in games.
Jeeps, tanks, helicopters - meaty engine sounds, always an event when you see one.
Loved the fact that you couldn't prone in this game, or even use A or D keys whilst running - gave an interesting side effect of predictability of enemies who don't know how to run away from bullets.
Maps - almost perfect ballance. Not too big, not too small - great for your 2 hour afternoon experience.
And the thing I loved absolute most was guided rocket launcher, the AT4 (pre patch). Reticle not too small, like you're peeking through a small key whole (BF3's AT4), rocket not too fast, you launch it and use all your skill, calculation and knowledge to guide that rocket to an enemy chopper. They evade, of course, like they evaded noobs 20 times before, who shoot AT4 at them, but they dont know you live to shoot the AT4. You spin the rocket, hit the choppers belly (who's destroying your team at point A), you see an exploasion, sound follows soon after, reverbing off mountains, and you get that sassy kill feed message, with kill-sound, that sounds like a grass hopper late at night - talala - talala - 2 kills.
The most fun you could have in a game, during the years (repeatable on daily basis;skill):
- air rockets in Quake3, as well as flick shot rails,
- one-tap-snap headshots or perfect sprays in cs1.6,
- single shot BAR headshots in Cod1, set-nade kills,
- perfect no recoil control sprays in Cod2 with MP44, rifle flick shots (great weapon sway mechanics in this game);
- playing as Helicopter gunner in BF3 and BF4,
- Battlefield 1 - horse + lance (amazing fun), once you get a hang of it, and that's all you do;
Along these things...Bad Companie's AT4 was the most sattisfying experience you can have in that game. It was just THAT good. I remember, on a good day - you'd piss off the enemy team so much, they'd stop flying altogether, start rushing your position on foot.
When I think back, there was not a single thing that you'd find not fun in this game.
Guns were meaty and fun. Tanks felt like you had to try hard in them to do good - also rewarding.
Jeep/Buggy + C4 runs were amazing, as well as running enemies over with them.
Both piloting and gunning in helicopters felt just right, very destructive if done right.
Even the Drone station you could find was interesting, rare and fun. Not like you get over abundance of it on BF3/4, where every soldier can equip it. No, this was balanced - you'd have to capture an objective to use it.
All we wanted was more of BC2. Just more. And with years passing by, we got worse, watered down versions of AT4, worse sound design on every aspect of the game, less destruction (which became dumb map events). Suddenly driving tanks became useless, as infantry had endless means to kill them (especially BF1), flying Jets/Planes became not as much fun as it was in Battlefield2, again, restrictions, limiting their power.
And people dont realise why - original devs just left. One by one. Currently, im not sure theres a single dev left in that studio, who worked on BF2 or BFBC2. And their ideas/values show in BFV and the newest BF game. Zero understanding on what Battlefield is about, constant chasing after stupidity that CoD and Siege has become, with out-of-this-world skins and other clownshows.
Even Bad Company 2, that was supposed to be a direct competitor to CoD, was vast and able in vehicle department, felt like Battlefield.
The franchise is dead.
Imagine one of the biggest shooter franchises have their 3rd and 4th to last game be the most popular experience, the most "battlefield" experience, and those games be the ones people want to go back to instead of playing BFV or the 2042 garbage.
CoD is a fucking dumpster fire, but at least they consistently get enough people on board to keep going.
a couple years ago i got Hardline on sale, and as soon as I saw there "was nobody playing" i uninstalled and got a refund. Many such cases!
Glad to see you back, been missing seeing you upload
Thank you for this comprehensive look at the state of each Battlefield game. The franchise has been a big part of my gaming life and it’s sad to see EAs utter disrespect of fans with server shutdowns of the old games with no real alternatives. And I have encountered MLG Hobo Joe and friends a while back on BC1.
Man I LOVED 1943! Bad company 1/2 were amazing too
Does anyone know the name of the client mentioned at 16:43? Since trying to Google it down is not exactly easy.
Alien, Bossmike, and ponqzii i used to see those guys all the time lol, and they are always in a squad just talking and having a good time. Thats awesome you captured that
Im honestly going to defend Battlelog till the day I die. While the "social" shit was completely unnecesary, the ability to set up loadouts without being constantly rushed because the map is about to start, looking at my stats, waiting in queues to join the servers i frequently played on while being able to do whatever i wanted to do instead of looking at "Youre 20th in queue" was the best thing.
imo it would've been fine as an optional thing but making people use a web browser to launch the game was a joke. i mean ffs, make it a standalone launcher if anything...
Venice when it launched was so popular, I think lack of game updates and UA-camrs keeping it active killed it but it might make a comeback someday?
The day Bf3 servers shut down will be like a hit to the gut. Think about it. All the maps, realism, realistic radio chatter, cinematic moments, machinimas, battlefield friends, the glitches, NOPE, all the fps you tubers had a start there.
Ironically enough, I usually tag the ”1-5” or more often ”none” to get to the servers that are actually populated in BF4 and BF1. However, it is indeed a bit harder to get results from in BFV as you mentioned. But it does work sometimes.
I really think they rushed BF4 too soon. BF3 was a masterpiece. It’s started going down hill ever since then.
A couple of years after their launch was enough for East Asia BF3 PC servers to just... not host DLC maps and modes. I feel the memory about how often you could actually use the DLC you paid for differs a lot based on what region you live in. If they wanted to do anything interesting with 2042 Portal they'd port the DLC maps and modes from 3 and earlier.
Would be amazing to have Collection like Halo MCC with older titles of BF, MoH and Army of Two, all in one game with one matchmaking. Vanilla can be from Codename Eagle to BFBC2, then add the rest later with seasons etc.
How do you think bf2 fans feel about the newer games? Just gotta get use to change just apart of getting older
Just started playing bf4 again after years & it’s been amazing
I am guessing since BF4 isn't on the list, means they legacy still be strong
For me, Battlefield will always ve about those insane moments in 1942/DC/Vietnam/2 with Jeeps flying through the air or mowing down whole squads, and noobs in control of helicopters they dont know how to control, streaking towards their oblivion as people fling themselves out and fire rockets upon the ground. Seeing *that fuckin many* soldiers on the battlefield at once, realizing that they're all *real people*! Just insane moments that couldn't be found elsewhere because of the sheer number of players, vehicle options and map sizes. Of course these days all of this is common in games and not really noteworthy anymore, but back then it was absolutely amazing, and CoD with it's small maps just couldn't come close to the scope of BF.
I'm gonna be a massive devil's advocate for Battlelog, because I genuinely would rather use that than use the half-assed menu system they made for BF1 and then backported to BF4. You can't track weapon unlock challenges properly, stats are less detailed, and the server browser is limited to only showing 100 servers at once. Any more, the game tells you to narrow down your filters. The problems experienced with BFV are universal to all BF games using that menu system, so BF4, BF1 and BFV. Hardline doesn't, but Hardline is also dead unfortunately so that's the least of it's problems.
the battlelog might be optional in bf4, but with the ux of the ingame server browser being far worse and slower than the battlelog, it's funny that the thing gamers always wanted ended up being worse. It only came along after battlefield 1 of course, and it was backported back to bf4. maybe they fixed it in the last few years but mmm, console interface on a pc, i love it
This is why I've always wanted a PvE mode for battlefield and other fps games back then. Multiplayer shooters don't last forever, their servers will eventually shut down and they will become worthless after a while, because the value of the single player experience is nothing compared to multiplayer.
The problem with losing BF3 on console is that you will never play metro in 32 or 24 player which is vastly superior to 64 player.
whoever misses the good old battlefield days - try battlebit remastered
they have NAILED the core gameplay and added some useful mechanics
also amazing net code, no stutters or unregistered hits if you have a decent internet connection
Battlefield 2 and 2142 were legendary as well.
Bf4 and bf3 are the only ones i actually played consistently without getting bored
Great video! Really speaks to the times we are in regarding games preservation. A lot of our childhood games being multiplayer, means that their ability to exist is tied to some arbitrary profit metric at companies that stopped caring about the kinds of video games we do at least a decade ago. Videos like these are necessary to bring awareness to the topic since it's something almost entirely unique to video games as a medium.
This on top of increasing anti-piracy rhetoric, primarily regarding emulation, frightens me about the future of video games past. Without emulation, especially as physical hardware ages, the worst case scenario is losing huge swaths of video game history to companies that either don't care about their past, or only care so much as to what they can drip feed their audiences with services like Nintendo's virtual consoles or hoarding the IP for name recognition.
All the work done by our community, with things like the aforementioned custom launchers, emulation, back-doored servers, mods, etc, are why we still have a history we can physically visit. We need to speak up against the companies that wish to let that die so they can make a little more money, or worse, wish to steal that history and sell it back to us.
Also shout out to to Wario Puzzle 1 from Mario Picross at 16:43, one of the best tracks to ever grace a video game!
For a game series that was so massive in 2011-2017, I can’t believe it only took Battlefield two mediocre games to completely, absolutely, entirely die