Renting a 'Battlefield 1' Server Is Totally Reasonable
Seriously, it's not too bad.
Renting your own servers which allow you to run both public and private Battlefield matches have always been an integral part of the game’s experience. This service, available previously through EA on consoles, allows players to pay for their own personal server and customize it with their own server name, map rotation, game mode, and other various gameplay settings. Usually, these types of servers are operated by members of the Battlefield community, and come November 1, will be available for Battlefield 1.
Instead of letting third-party websites run the PC servers for Battlefield 1 like before, EA has decided to take PC rental servers and handle them in-house with the console servers as well. In most cases, that means a better experience for everyone — and it’ll cost you over $300 a year on PC while consoles retain their lower rate of around $200 a year.
The prices, announced on the Battlefield forums earlier this week, are as follows:
PC
1 day: $2.99
7 days: $11.99
30 days: $42.99
90 days: $99.99
180 days: $149.99
PS4/Xbox One
1 day: $1.99
7 days: $7.99
30 days: $26.99
90 days: $64.99
180 days: $99.99
Many Battlefield veterans, like Christoper Strickland, don’t seem to mind the prices either.
“The server prices for Battlefield 1 are about what I would expect,” says Strickland, “nearly matching previous prices on consoles. They seem fair for now, and once we see everything that we can customize on the rental servers, we can start to look at the value behind them further.”
Honestly, it isn’t too surprising to see the server prices where they are — especially considering that the entire process is being handled by EA themselves instead of being outsourced to third-party server providers. $300 a year for each Battlefield 1 server you rent may seem a little steep, but it’s nothing in comparison to the third-party prices, which are usually around $800 a year for a 64-player server.
If you don’t plan on purchasing a rental server though, you can still play on all of EA’s standard servers which Battlefield 1 multiplayer is currently running on. Either way, it will be interesting to see how handling all of the server rentals internally goes for EA.
