Last night, EA reported server issues with Battlefield Hardline's multiplayer. While this is nothing new with a Battlefield launch, it turns out that EA may not be at fault this time round, with malicious DDoS attacks cited as the reason for the problems.
There's a certain level of irony here. Complaints were widespread when Battlefield 4 failed to meet expectations at launch and, despite several fixes, continued to cause problems for roughly six months afterwards. Reports from Hardline are that the game is holding up well during its first few days... well aside from the issues on Xbox One, which have been addressed by the official Battlefield Twitter account. These issues include being unable to connect to multiplayer servers, and disconnects from game sessions.
It's perfectly normal for games to experience issues during the first few weeks of launch, as it's near-impossible to stress test servers in a closed environment. Translation: you never know what the effect will be of your gaming going from zero players to thousands of players in a single day. However, it's relatively rare for groups of players to actively attack a multiplayer game at launch, with no stated cause for doing so.
We spoke to Matthew Castle, editor of Official Xbox Magazine, who said that “Hardline held up well in our ten hours of pre-release play through EA Access, so it's a real shame to see the proper launch targeted by a malicious few. That said, it smacks of desperate attention seeking, so the best medicine - as always - is to ignore them. I imagine whoever did is is pretty embarrassed that they've already been upstaged by a motorised couch.”
At present, there are no serious problems reported with the PS4 and PC versions of the game, but that could well change over the next few weeks. We rather enjoyed the multiplayer in Hardline, and awarded the game 3.5 stars, and we’ve experienced no problems playing it since launch.
