Battlefield Studios has followed through on its plan to discourage XP farming servers in Battlefield 6. As of this morning, many servers advertising themselves as “XP farms” or “all bots” have had their XP privileges taken away—you can still play on them, but you’ll only earn a pittance of precious experience. Some noticed the XP purge actually began on October 17, the same day BF Studios announced changes other XP changes, but now it’s official.
The change comes after a week of XP farms being the most popular way to bypass Battlefield 6’s career grind. Battlefield 6’s Portal browser promised a slice of '07 FPS culture: custom rulesets, weird maps, and community servers with a revolving door of regulars. That all went up in smoke on launch day, as XP farm lobbies started cropping up en masse, clogging up all the server space so badly that nobody else could host anything for days.
While I’m still occasionally seeing the “Global Quota Exceeded” error, a quick tour around the Portal browser this morning revealed a lot more legitimate servers full of players (hardcore playlists, jet practice lobbies, and a chill Conquest servers simply called “Manny’s Server”) and fewer XP farms.
But not zero XP farms: while many farms have had their wings clipped, I spotted a few servers with full XP still enabled boasting “GUNLESS BOTS, EASY XP.”
While some panicked responses online are claiming all Portal servers are being denied XP legitimacy after today’s update, that’s not the case so far. The majority of servers I’m seeing (NA West) still have full XP enabled, including a Hardcore Breakthrough playlist, a Conquest server with modified health and speed, and my Closed Weapons server that’s mostly bots.
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As you can see on the right, these XP farms are now only eligible for a “Match Completion Bonus.” (Image credit: EA)
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As you can see on the right, these XP farms are now only eligible for a “Match Completion Bonus.” (Image credit: EA)
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As you can see on the right, these XP farms are now only eligible for a “Match Completion Bonus.” (Image credit: EA)
We’re seeing BF Studios attempt to thread a tricky needle here. The goal of letting players progress normally in modified Portal matches remains intact, but servers it considers to be exploiting XP are being flagged seemingly by hand.
The kerfuffle is already demonstrating the strange consequences of Battlefield 6 existing in two worlds: In some ways, it’s a chill FPS from a bygone era that lets you play however you want, so who cares if some folks are inflating their stats with bots? But Battlefield 6 is also a live service game that sells double XP tokens and, soon, battle passes—you can’t make XP too readily available, or nobody will pay for tier skips.
Battlefield 6’s first season begins on October 28 with a new map, a few new guns, a small-scale mode, and a premium battle pass.
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