Battlefield 1943 suffers server snafu

EA declared war on Battlefield 1943 today, officially releasing the $15 multiplayer-only downloadable shooter through Xbox Live this morning. However, some gamers may find themselves at a loss as to what their dollars were spent on, as the online matchmaking component for EA Dice's shooter is currently suffering from debilitating technical difficulties.

As related by an in-game ticker and menus observed by GameSpot, Battlefield 1943's current issues appear to be a result of unanticipated high demand. "We are over capacity and adding extra servers which may cause some disconnections, please bear with us," reads one message. "Connection Problem: The game appears to be unavailable, please try again," reads a second message.

According to a post on the official Battlefield 1943 message boards by EA Dice producer Gordon Van Dyke, "Good News, the game is incredibly successful beyond even my expectations. We have reached server capacity, but the bad news about this now some people can't join unless someone leaves. But don't worry, we are adding more servers ASAP to Xbox and in preparation PS3 that should start going up ASAP with priority on Xbox 360."

Van Dyke went on to note that while the team is adding additional servers, players may continue to experience problems "from now until 17:30." And while additional servers appear to have been added, according to a post on the Battlefield 1943 Twitter feed, they were primarily for European gamers.

EA had not responded to requests for an ETA on when servers for all players are expected to normalize. For more information, check out GameSpot's previous coverage of Battlefield 1943.