Start killin': Battlefield 1943 'Coral Sea' challenge has started

by Alexander Sliwinski on Jul 10th 2009 3:45PM

The Battlefield 1943 community challenge to unlock the "Coral Sea" map is a go -- that is, for those who can get into a game. The bonus battlefield will unlock as soon as the individual communities on Xbox 360 and PS3 reach a body count of 43 million. We'd give you the current kill count as of this writing, but it's jumped nearly 50K in this brief time. The corpses are piling up fast!

If someone with math skills wants to track the figures over the next day or so and give us a rough estimate of when they estimate the map should unlock, we won't hold it against you. Once "Coral Sea" opens up, if should include an "Air Superiority game mode." Get killin', folks, who knows if there'll be another carrot dangled in front of us when this challenge is done. We hope there will be.

Update: As of 12:19PMEST on 7/13/09 -- Xbox 360: 30,102,476; PS3: 16,434,208 [Thanks, Doug]

Source

Tags: battlefield-1943, coral-sea, dice, ea, electronic-arts, Microsoft, Xbox-360

Reader Comments (83)

PS3 version doesn't have any issues, I played it for 4 hours so far and its been flawless. I'm sure they are fixing the 360 issues anyway if that's the route you go.

The 360 version seems to be having issues because twice as many people are playing it.

What happened was so many people on Live wanted the game the servers became massively overloaded.

DICE went "OH SHIT" and started adding servers as fast as they could. Realizing the problems they were having on live they also added a bunch of servers to PS3 before that game started. By the time it was turned on in PSN, there were no problems with the numbers of PS3 users that were hitting the system because they added so many extra servers. It's hard to fix a problem when you are in the middle of having one which is why the problems have persisted on live.

There were expecting ~25,000 tops on the first day for live and got ~100,000+ trying to hit the servers. Some developers on the Battlefield forums are literally dumbstruck that this game is this popular.

There is nothing wrong with live and nothing wrong with PSN. Both are great ways to get games online.

I think it is the PS3 version that is having issues because you pay $5 a month for XBL and nothing can go wrong if you're paying.

Counter is showing 1.12 million kills on 360 - tweet went out 2 hours ago saying the counter was starting - that works out to about 76 hours (probably less given that it's the middle of the work day in NA)

Got this on PSN, its great, but it's a shame the 4th map is gonna be an air only map that really blows. The planes are so boring to fly in this game, they handle terribly I wouldn't want to play online in the air. A more compact infantry style map would have been ideal :-/

I don't think it will be an air only map, at least from what I understand. I think you unlock the map plus the extra game mode. Coral Sea will still have the same gameplay as the others.

Well the coral sea map is based off the WW2 battle of coral sea, which was a naval engagement at sea... so I'd have to agree that it will be an air-combat only map with carriers to launch from

Not once have I had any problems getting a game in fact in runs beautifully for me . Are others using wireless ? I use wired ethernet and i havent even seen lag in 3 hours so far ,

oh im on Ps3 btw.

PS3 version online was having 0 problems last night. I played for a few hours straight.

what the fu**g f**k, its still a bi***h to join. They haven t fixed anything for EAST Canada. 30 tries for one game and no Match With Friends... i could eve bought it for PS3 but all my friends have x box only.

Why cant you have half of PS3's features you suck.

PS3 version is perfect..

360 version is shit..

It's working fine for me on PS3 since launch, but I have a friend who keeps getting constantly disconnected from games after he joins, says he's with AOL and apparently there's some issues with their customers and this game?

Just did some rough figures against the numbers.

Current kill count @ 5:14 PM GMT -5: 1.5 million (It hit 1.6 mil. as I typed this)

Current uptime for kill counter: 4 hours (plus a bit)

Kills per hour: 387117 (Give or take)

If the current speed at which people are killing continues strong, XBL players will hit the 43 million mark in roughly 4.6 days.

I predict it will hit it by Thursday or Friday of next week. Possibly earlier given that we are now on the weekend, and more people are off work.

It's the the weekend. That shit will hit by Sunday

@AirIntake:

As of right now the counter is:

360: 1,742,122 PS3: 1,266,496

So if "twice as many people" are playing on 360 like you claim, then 360 players must really suck compared to PS3.

Twice as many people *are* playing on xbox live, but they were also having trouble *joining* games, which the PSN people are not experiencing (as per the info from the official site). Theories claim the xbox servers were experiencing unforseen participation, while the PSN servers were "just right" in their estimation of the number of folks that would be playing (ie: less)

So, once the server issues are ironed out, I'm sure there will be more people playing on xbox live. Not that it really matters, guys. Sheesh.

or they're just really good at not getting killed?

Or XBL may have issues with connecting to dedicated servers, and using a sign in other than XBL, instead of the normal method of P2P connection. Where as PSN (though konami Id) has shown it can use other log-ins and it's designed to be run on dedicated (developer hosted) servers.
Though to be perfectly honest my experiences of playing Gears 2 and Halo 3 over XBL haven't exactly done anything to reinforce with BF1943 issue is a stand alone event.

The PS3 version is okay... but the 360 version is better because I pay $5 a month.

Played last night for 3 hours with no problems. Took a couple of tries to get into a game at first, but after that, it was smooooth sailin' :)

Idiot EA games, how the FUCK do they expect people to participate in this if half their fucking players cant even get on. THeir servers have been swamped for 3 days now, hurry the **** up dammit!

360 has about ~2.5M in 2 days, PS3 has ~1.4M in 1 day. Assuming it keeps going at about 3M/day (take in to account the server problems on launch for the 360), I'd give it 2 weeks at MOST.

Also, Saturday and Sunday will likely bring far more than 3M/day each, so I'd say by the 18th at the latest.

I seriously wish the PS3 players enjoy the game and leave the 360 players alone. The only reason the PS3 version works better is that there are like 5 million users less than the 360 userbase has.

Its not strange having EA servers balking all the time. Not just for this game, but pretty much for every game EA releases, we have to use their stupid servers. And everyone knows how much they suck. Same happened for Criterion's Burnout and the Need for Speed series.

Its not that the 360 version sucks. Same would go for the PS3 version and if it were happening backwards, its still EA's Server that ruin the experience. I wont buy it till I can get the Demo logged in properly.

they need to get rid of this auto-matchup crap that XBL uses...give me a server version to run on my PC and let us host our own servers.

the user Lightsout565, on the ea forums is keeping track of kill counts and has it all in a google doc:

http://forums.electronicarts.co.uk/battlefield-1943/737469-coral-sea-kill-count-graph.html

link to doc: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=t_Sm4qsItJu8rT-t_cXb6iQ&gid=1

I can't wait to play this on PC been playing the Battlefield 2 1.5 beta 3 which supports my resolution unlike 1.4 and no one seems to be playing the beta at night :(.

Seriously, EA needs to shape up. This is completely ridiculous. I was psyched for this game, and have been unable to get on for 3 days. At this point, I will not purchase the full game because of the devs complete fail. If I ran my business like this, I would not have clients. I know, I know....here comes the waaaaambulance. If you are going to completely fail to support your user base, get used to people being pissed off.

/rant off

Might buy this if they sort out the problems

lol the level of sony fanboism is off the chain...do you really feel that inferior that you have to take every possible chance to put down the competition even when it has nothing to do with the current topic? @dreadnought1: PSN and Live have nothing to do with the problems in this game, the lack of enough servers from EA/DICE is the issue. So sitting here saying things like "you get what you pay for...oh wait" just proves you are either A) a zealot, B) ignorant or C) both...I vote C.

I'm on PS3 version and ive been trying to get into a match for 2 hrs now!
Raise your hand if your one of the PS3 players that have never played a match yet!
*Raises hand*

I cannot raise my hand because I haven't had any problems with the PS3 version. The game has work perfectly for me since day 1.

Most people can't fly planes worth a crap though. I think many people will be upset with the unlocked map and it's air combat focus.

Previous 50 Comments

Start killin': Battlefield 1943 'Coral Sea' challenge has started

Reader Comments (83)

Posted: Jul 10th 2009 4:42PM phinn said

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