There is a multiplayer game that currently ranks among the most popular on the planet, and it has no matchmaking button at all. The game is Wardogs, and the lack of such a feature is precisely what makes it stand out. It is drawing the biggest crowds that a round-based, military simulation-style first-person shooter (a genre that also includes Squad and Hell Let Loose) has ever seen, and players are coming to it for new ideas about teamwork, economy, and “all-out warfare.”.
The funny part is that Wardogs is filling the Battlefield-shaped hole in a lot of people’s game time, and it is doing so in part because of something Battlefield 6 never managed to deliver: a real server browser.
What a Real Server Browser Looks Like
The full roster of official servers is displayed on the Wardogs main menu, arranged by:
- Player count
- Ping
- Rulesets
- Maps
A dedicated community section sits alongside it, highlighting servers that are rented persistently from third-party vendors. The menu makes no use of forced matchmaking, skill-based algorithms, or lobbies that get disbanded (at least not in community servers).
Fans have been asking for Battlefield to return to that kind of setup for years, and it keeps showing up regularly in niche milsims and indie shooters.
Battlefield 6’s Answer Was Portal
The previous year, EA made a large deal about Battlefield 6’s community server support. Developers insisted that the Portal server browser, which does not support third-party server providers and instead allows players to spin up one semi-persistent lobby at a time, would “tick every box” for a proper server browser.
The browser did not fare well at launch. Portal servers were plagued with bugs, overrun by lobbies dedicated to XP farming, and buried beneath a mountain of Netflix menu tiles. The Portal browser’s reputation as a viable alternative to official matchmaking was short-lived. Today, it serves little purpose beyond hosting goofy minigames and, strangely, remains a destination for XP farming.
Why Battlefield Couldn’t Just Have a Browser
DICE lead producer David Sirland was asked back then why Battlefield 6 couldn’t simply include a genuine browser — the sort that would let players view every official server alongside community-hosted ones. His response, viewed with hindsight, comes across as rather weak.
“Matchmaking servers spin up in seconds (get filled with players), and spin down after the game is over. That couple of seconds, plus when servers lose a lot of players, mid-game is the only time you can join, which makes it a tricky combination (and full of queuing to join issues),” Sirland said.
Millions of players are currently playing Wardogs, and they appear to be managing those “issues” without issue. The alleged downsides of manually searching for content hardly register within the game. With an abundance of official and community servers available, locating one with open slots requires only seconds. Meanwhile, the constant rotation of players into and out of the 100-player matches keeps queues short almost all the time.
The Benefits Are Obvious
Folks who run community servers have the power to stop cheaters and griefers before automated systems can act on their own. When such people are given room to do their work, those servers become places with familiar faces and settled ways of doing things. The developer Bulkhead is not doing something new or unusual; it is simply repeating what most PC shooters did 20 years ago.
The truth is that running a server browser depends on determination. Battlefield 6 lacks a real, noticeable browser because EA does not want one. DICE designed it like a console game (actually, like Call of Duty) with algorithmic factors that get thrown off when people can simply join whatever server they choose. Portal served as the compromise: a closed garden with restrictive, fake-persistent access to dedicated servers. It was a misjudgment about where the wind is blowing in the FPS scene, and it continues to hurt an otherwise great game.
Wardogs Is Far From Perfect
There is plenty left to improve with the server browser. Simple features such as the ability to favorite servers and tiered queueing are still outstanding tasks. Joining a server as part of a group remains more difficult than it ought to be. Server administrators also lack important tools at their disposal.
This is a solid beginning for an early access release, and it feels far more genuine about community support than Battlefield 6. There are several respects in which Battlefield could learn from Wardogs and smaller games like it.
Battlefield 6 was too console-brained to deliver its vision, while Wardogs manages to get it right.
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