With Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond nearly just a week away from release, we still know surprisingly little about the game’s multiplayer component. Luckily we’ve got some details to share.

It was only yesterday that we got our first clear look of Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond multiplayer thanks to a new trailer which highlighted five games modes

Now we’ve gleaned some specifics on the functions and features of the game’s multiplayer.

Cross-play Between Oculus and Steam

Because the game is the first Oculus Studios title to be released on both Oculus and Steam, one big question on our mind was whether or not the game’s multiplayer will support cross-play.

Luckily the answer is “yes,” says Mike Doran, Oculus Studios Executive Producer. But there’s a catch.

While the game will have cross-platform matchmaking (a shared pool of players queueing up for matches), individual player invites between platforms is not supported, meaning you won’t be able to invite a friend to your squad if they’re on the opposite platform.

“We don’t have a way for the social graphs to talk to each other as there’s no EA account required to play the game,” Doran explained.

That’s a bit of a bummer, but at least cross-platform matchmaking means the game’s population will be healthier than if the two were divided. Some cross-platform VR games have gotten around this cross-platform invite limitation by allowing players to join one another via a ‘room code’ which connects players to a specific room, so there’s at least some hope that such a system could be added after the fact if there’s demand for it.

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Bots to Fill Empty Slots

To further support the health of the game’s multiplayer population, Doran says that Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond will automatically fill empty team slots with bots. That means that even a handful of players will be enough to get a match started—far better than sitting in an endless queue—and hopefully the game will be able to swap out the bots for real players as more people queue for matches.

Dedicated Servers, Private Matches, and Team Sizes

Speaking of matches, Doran also confirmed that, in addition to public matchmaking, players can also choose to host private matches. All matches, public and private, will use dedicated servers.

He also said that multiplayer matches support up to 12 players at a time. We’ve seen that the game offers team modes, meaning the maximum team size will be 6 vs. 6. Free-for-all modes are also in the game, pitting all players against each other, though we’re not yet sure if multi-team modes (ie: 4 vs. 4 vs. 4) will be supported.

– – — – –

Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond also includes a full single-player campaign, which you can read about and watch here. Oculus has said it’s looking into the possibility of bringing the game to Quest 2 in the future.

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Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • I’ve just remembered to remind myself that at some point they’ll almost certainly cut off the support for online and destroy that part of the game entirely, as so many develops do these days with the multiplayer/online components of their games. So best not to get too attached. Hopefully the single player actually remains around permanently, but it seems these days we can’t even count on that anymore either. I really hate some aspects of our new digital world where we don’t really any of this stuff we’ve paid out hard-earned money for at all.

    • MeowMix

      If you’re referring to Marvel Powers United and Ripcoil, I believe that’s a very unusual case (perhaps it has to do with the Facebook buyout and moving Sanzaru servers to FB, or the Disney licensing). Besides, Oculus is giving store credit to those effected (yes even those that purchased the game 2 years ago).

      Oculus staff have already confirmed Sanzaru’s other major game – Asgard’s Wrath (which does include asynchronous multiplayer features), won’t be effected.

      I just don’t think the point that older Oculus titles losing online support is a valid point to push. Oculus/FB have funded other titles that are much older than Marvel Powers United, and their online/multiplayer aspects are still intact : Robo Recall scoreboards, Landfall multiplayer, Echo games, From Other Suns.

  • MeowMix

    Day 1 buy for me ! (on the Oculus store, I’m hoping an eventual Quest2 port is Crossbuy with the RIft copy)

  • Baldrickk

    https://twitter.com/ragesaq/status/1334516196495024128?s=20
    I don’t need to say anything more… what on earth were they thinking?
    twitter.com/ragesaq/status/1334516196495024128?s=20

    • This is utterly fake. It’s not like this in the real trailer at all:

      https://youtube.com/watch?v=m3f42_s6-q4&t=36s&has_verified=1&ab_channel=Oculus

      F**k off with your fake garbage that’s just going to incite false outrage.

      • Baldrickk

        I suggest you watch the trailer again – the specific post I linked has a screenshot from the trailer, at damn near exactly 30s in.

        The video from later in that thread is indeed satire, but that is exactly how the scopes are implemented in the game.

        https://www.reddit.com/r/virtualreality/comments/k27g2w/medal_of_honor_will_have_arcade_scopes_why/
        I’m not the only person to have noticed this.

        • It was the other guy my comment was intended for, hence my removing the reply to this post almost immediately. His video is bullcrap. There are some scoped guns that have the effect (one in the video), we have no completely clear idea of how that’s going to translate in the final game exactly yet (might be good, might be merely okay, but it’s clearly not going to be broken or anything so dramatic), and his fake video does nothing but create unnecessary anger.

  • עמית קיסר

    IN THE ARTICLE WE WILL TALK ABOUT VIRTUAL REALITY, THE NEAR FUTURE AND OF COURSE THE EFFECT OF THE CORONA.
    https://www.caesarvr.com/…/in-the-article-we-will-talk…
    IN THE ARTICLE WE WILL TALK ABOUT VIRTUAL REALITY, THE NEAR FUTURE AND OF COURSE THE EFFECT OF THE CORONA.

  • but like… could you set up EA accounts though?

  • Andrew Jakobs

    Looks great, but I think there are waaaaay too many gametypes, it was what also ruined Battlefield Heroes as a lot of players liked too many different gametypes which made a lot of servers empty..

  • Looks great! Can’t wait!

  • mirak

    It looks awfull.
    The animations and graphics looks really bad.

  • Wait, this isn’t a Quest 2 game? Why is it so ugly? Looks like a 2005 release.

  • Betty Osteen

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  • Look into the game Onward. It will cross play in private sessions. If I want to “jump” into a crowd of no life shooter gamers, I’ll stick with PubG. Some of us have MoH on Oculus, but more of us have it on Steam…… Onward works both vary well, look into it….
    Unfortunately Rift S HATES Onward and won’t play it without 3rd and 4th party BS…