Is Rent-A-Server back?

The one thing that is making me wary of picking up BF4 is if they are bring back the ability for players to own and run their own servers on consoles. That update ruined BF3 for me. Trying to get back into BF3 recently has started making me realize this could be a deal breaker unless they streamline the quick match to eliminate unofficial servers. Its a console game, server browsers should not have to be my default method of finding a match.

I'm curious for the exact opposite reason. It was the only way to ensure players used a mic. I only played on servers that endorse mic checks. Otherwise the game feels like herding cats and lots of useless blue triangles all running different directions.

Wow, I never knew that...part of the reason I really dislike playing multiplayer games is the huge number of people who don't use mics and are usually off dicking around on their own and not communicating with the rest of their team.

Yes, that means you, person reading this that never uses your mic!

You can filter the search for servers to include unofficial servers, but when I did so none were listed. I don't know if this means it will not be supported on console or if they just haven't rolled this out yet. But with quick matches, you are unable to filter. But as there don't appear to be any unofficial ones (yet or ever?) it's not currently an issue.

On xbox at least when I've played with randoms, at least one person in my squad has had a mic, if that helps.

It's early, but, thus far, most of the people I've played with have been playing intelligently, from what I can see.