I'm willing to bet that a good deal of you are stuck inside courtesy of winter storm Hercules that blew through last night. But even if that wasn't the case, I'm sure a lot of you would have wound up staring at an electronic screen sooner or later. Why? Because DICE is throwing a Double XP Weekend for Battlefield 4, and it's live right now.
Here's the details thanks to a post on Battlelog: The event kicked off bright and early at 8 AM this morning. Players get to enjoy it all through the weekend until Sunday evening, January 5, at 6 PM EST.
That's the good news, but here's the bad. Not everyone is having as much luck getting onto Battlelog. The server was one of many that was hit with DDoS attacks, with a group calling itself the Derp Hackers taking responsibility, posting on its Twitter account, "we've directed the Gaben Laser Beam @ the EA login servers. Origin #offline."
While EA has not confirmed the claims, it did post on Twitter to say "we're working to resolve connectivity/login issues affecting various platforms/games. Thank you for your patience. Updates when available."
Valve's Steam service was also the victim of DDoS attacks from another team.
The server problems are just one more issue to strike Battlefield 4, which was been hampered with glitches and bugs since launch. When the problems came to light, EA was stuck with trying to fix a shoddy product, so much so that the company has had to halt work on all future projects, leading to a giant drop in stock, and pissing off investors.
It's gotten to the point that publisher EA is now facing a lawsuit, which claims that EA was well aware of the game's problematic issues, rushed the game's production to beat the release of its FPS rival, Call of Duty: Ghosts, and misrepresented the game to investors.
Battlefield 4 stars a new protagonist to the series, that of Sergeant Daniel Recker, a member of the elite Tombstone Squad. He and the squad learn that an Admiral in the Chinese navy is in the midst of planning a coup to overthrow the current regime, with Russia ready to back him up.
You don't have to be an expert in foreign relations and politics to realize this would cause one hell of a domino effect that would see the whole planet embroiled in war, unless Tombstone can put a stop to it.
Battlefield 4 is currently available now for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PC, Xbox 360, and the Xbox One.