Retirement of Battlefield 3 Server #18742

[Christopher 1,393]

Hello all,

 

Unfortunately, the time is coming where our server lease (for Battlefield 3 - PC server #18742) will end on April 10th this year. The choice of whether to renew or decommission the server is a definitely tough decision - as there are several factors to take into account. However one important factor is cost: forking out $80 is not something that can be easily done when the potential future of the server is unknown.

 

There are a few guilds, clans, and/or organizations that are popular enough to hold silent "agreements" with select server providers, allowing for long and cheap server rentals. However due to our small size, such is not an option and we are forced to pay full consumer's price for such services.

 

As such, it is crucial for all to think about the possible future of the server - that is, how often it will be used, is it worth it, etc. It's not a simple answer, but so far here's what I have seen:

 

1). Less people are playing on the server. While there were spurts in time that our server would get started and would continue, lately the server has been remaining more-or-less empty.

2). Less people are playing Battlefield 3 in general. "In general" is important to keep in mind here - even popular servers such as the [CMW] BF3 servers are empty more than 80% of the time. Primarily, there are only a few servers that appear to be populated regularly, such as the Premium [iAF] server and TDM [RUF] server. Quite a few players in the Battlefield community have undoubtedly (more-or-less) abandoned Battlefield 3 for Battlefield 4, while returning to Battlefield 3 very infrequently.

 

All that being said, unfortunately due to other miscellaneous costs I have to deal with at the moment, I will not be able to support the renewal for the server at this time. Unless others are able/willing/feel it's necessary to help make any further donations to keep the server running, it is likely that we will be decommissioning the server shortly and the server will be retired on April 10th, 2014.

 

We do appreciate all those who connected to and played on the server and hope all had a joyful experience on it. It is unfortunate that the server must come to an end so soon, however, unfortunately nothing lasts forever. The Department of Information Technology will shortly begin making final backups of server data, so that possible future server deployments will be able to have important data restored. If there are any questions, concerns, or comments, please feel free to discuss.