If there is one ting that online multiplayer gaming needs in South Africa, it is local servers. As an avid Guild Wars 2 player, I am hounded with a constant 300ms ping. On a good day! Similarly, more competitive games such as Titanfall 2 and Battlefield, have a much harder time with any ping higher than 100 ms. Fortunately, that looks to be changing with the arrival of dedicated South African Battlefield 1 servers in 2017!

In a forum post, DICE’s server producer, Alexander “ Striterax” Hassoon, confirmed that the first-person shooter will get local servers as early as 2017. In case you are not aware, 2017 is just a month away as of the time of this writing. A month!

“I am very happy to announce that we will be deploying official DICE online game servers for the following regions in early 2017”, Hassoon said. He then listed South Africa, the Middle East, and Hong Kong as the three lucky winners. It does feel like South Africa won the server lottery, does it not?

Hassoon went on to promise the Battlefield community that these are only the first steps in DICE’s ongoing effort to support their new shooter. Earlier in 2016, Electronic Arts announced that they will offer rentable servers. This did not sit well with many folks, however. I, for one, am very glad that DICE had decided to go against the grain on this one and rather launch dedicated South African Battlefield 1 servers.

Battlefield 1 is EA DICE’s newest first-person shooter released on 21 October 2016. It is the fifteenth instalment in the Battlefield series, but is a major departure for the series so far. It sees players go through various events during World War I, many of which have been changed slightly and fictionalised for the game. Throughout the campaign, players control six different characters over six-story chapters — each of which has their own stories to tell.

Now if only we could get Respawn Entertainment on this bandwagon! Dedicated servers would be one surefire way to get a lot more Titanfall 2 enthusiasts in South Africa to come out of the woodwork. Until then, gamers can happily rest in the fact that dedicated South African Battlefield 1 servers are almost here!

[Sources: Battlefield (video), Battlefield Forums, HTXT, Lazygamer]

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Junior Editor at Vamers. From Superman to Ironman; Bill Rizer to Sam Fisher and everything in-between, Edward loves it all. He is a Bachelor of Arts student and English Major specialising in Language and Literature. He is an avid writer and casual social networker with a flare for all things tech related.