Epic Games are going all out for Gears of War 3. In addition to the stop-’n-pop chainsaw fragging action you’ve grown accustomed to over the last four years, Epic is finally adding something that gamers have been pining for since the franchise was first announced. Yes Ranters, Gears of War 3 will in fact have dedicated servers for you and your buddies to play on.
In addition to cloud based profiles, gamers that want to play with friends will also be allowed to take advantage of persistent parties and host migration. Epic’s gone to the community before for Gears related help, so for those of you that think you’re going to have to wait until the game’s release to test all of the new features, think again: Epic Games will be offering a public multiplayer beta in 2011.
Of the previous games, the biggest complaint when talking multiplayer was no doubt host advantage. Epic has finally solved that problem with their implementation of dedicated servers. According to 1up, matchmaking with friends now takes place at the menu screen. Inviting your friends and partying up then going through and picking what game mode you want to play sounds similar to Halo: Reach, except in Gears 3 if you get tired of waiting for your friends, you can go ahead and start a match populated with bots that will be replaced with human players as they join. Epic refers to this as their “social match experience.”
Executive Producer Rod Ferguson has yet to reveal anything solid as to when exactly the beta will begin, but he did say it will take place during the 5 months leading to the game’s release. It looks like Gears’ delay is nothing short of a great thing, as this gives Epic ample time to make the game as feature rich as possible, and ensure that multiplayer is running super smooth. Adding little tweaks like a calendar to the main menu so gamers know when double xp weekends are taking place, refining multiplayer modes, and unlockable executions are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the suite of options that are being added to the title.
So sound off, Ranters! Are you guys stoked about the new features that Gears multiplayer is bringing to the table? Do you feel dedicated servers are long overdue? Is Gears of War 3 poised to take the number one slot on the Live activity charts now that host advantage will be a thing of the past? Tell us your feelings on Gears below!
Gears of War 3 launches in late 2011 on the Xbox 360.
Source: 1Up
