EA schedules upgrade to hardware, but asks you turn your server off for now.

Since it's European launch, Bad Company 2 has completely destroyed EA's master servers. In a recent post on the Battlefield blog, it was revealed that players in game have already collected 34 billion xp points with over 400 million kills being made, 1.3 million of which were people being ran over by a vehicle. Apparently the game is proving to be popular.

EA and DICE have been struggling to keep players online. The most recent strategy is an unprecedented one. They were actually requesting players renting server space from Multiplay.co.uk to actually opt into a list that would allow their server be shut down when it was sitting idle and empty of players. It is a bold move to actually ask people voluntarily to shut down servers, but hopefully it won't matter much longer.

Tomorrow there is a planned hardware update that should improve performance and matchmaking across all platforms. EA is planning on taking down the servers starting around midnight PST and return about four hours later with the promise of a better online experience for everyone. On the PC specific end of things, DICE is also working on a client fix to improve server browsing speeds and increase the available player slots from it's current 150,000 players concurrently. So if you've been having problems connecting to Battlefield: Bad Company 2's multiplayer, there might be some relief in sight.