Finding the best Official Server close to you

The official server list has broken priorities and will often direct you to a server with a further location, leading to higher pings. For example, I live in the UK, and players in the UK always get Spain servers. The closest official server we get is EU West, which is located in Germany.

You may have this problem yourself, say you live in US East, you may instead get US South West or US West servers. If you want to force US East every time, this guide is for you.

Steps needed.

First, you will need access to the 'developer console'. This can be opened by going to Options --> 'ALLOW DEVELOPER CONSOLE' - Set this to enabled.



To open the Server Browser, press the ` key. This key is situated left of '1'.

You will be using two commands to achieve a server you desire. The first is 'openserverbrowser' the second is 'mm_dedicated_force_servers' -

openserverbrowser will simply open the Server Browser. Admittedly the server browser is not very good, can be difficult to read and should not be relied upon to force connections for official dedicated through the browser, as these games are often 'friends only'.

mm_dedicated_force_servers gets around this problem by forcing empty servers to load.

Finding Your Server; The 'openserverbrowser'.

First of all, you want to type 'openserverbrowser' (without apostrophe) into the Developer Console. Before I go further, the text for the Server Browser is difficult to read. If you'd like to change it to be easier on the eyes, you can exit the game and follow the instructions below, this should otherwise be ignored if you do not want to change the font.

 1. Direct to: Steam -> steamapps -> common -> left 4 dead 2 -> left4dead2 -> resource

2. Delete stubble-bold.vfont or rename it to something like stubble-bold.old

3. Load the game back up, the text should now be different. Open the Server Browser again with 'openserverbrowser' 

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Now that you're in the Server Browser, your tab will be selected on 'Internet'. You want to change this to 'custom'. A sudden list of servers will appear.

The important part here is identifying what servers you want, and unfortunately, the location filter is broken. But there is a way around it. The next thing you want to do here is click on 'Change filters' at the bottom of the Server Browser.

The only thing we care about here is the 'location' area. If you live in the US East area and want US East servers, you'll need to put the select the location to 'South America' - If you set the location to 'US - East' it doesn't show US East because... you're in a Valve game, things don't make sense. Just trust me and set it to South America.

After this, click 'refresh all' and now the server browser will refresh. Click on the column that says 'Servers (number here)' This will set it alphabetically. Simply scroll down until you find 'Valve Left4Dead 2 US East Server' with a bunch of numbers in brackets.



Now that you've found some servers, there are multiple ways you can go at it, such as binding. What I do however is simply get around 10 or 20 of these servers and add them to my favourites tab. You can do this easily by right clicking on a desired server and selecting 'Add server to favorites'. I'd do at least 10.

The next tab along from 'Custom' is 'Favourites' this is where all your servers selected as favourites will be stored. Now all you need to do from this point is right click an empty official server you added, view the server info and then right click the 'IP Address' highlight all and copy.

This portion of the openserverbrowser is done. But you will need to go into 'favorites' every time you load the game up and do the method with copying the IP. The next step, mm_dedicated_force_servers is the final part.

Forcing the server to load. mm_dedicated_force_servers

Close the openserverbrowser and create a lobby on any game mode with an official Valve map (I.E The Parish, Dead Center, ect.)

Open the developer console again. You want to type a command along with the IP you copied. I will use a random official server IP as demonstration.

 mm_dedicated_force_servers 162.254.192.152:27114 

What this does is basically forces this server to load. Important! Make sure that this server was empty before hand, otherwise people are playing on the server, and the game will never load up.

If you have done this correctly, you should now be able to start the game. The only thing we need to confirm is that after loading, did the server force correctly?

Simply pause the game and enable the developer console. Look at the top right, if the numbers match what IP you forced in, the IP has successfully been forced and now you can play as normal.



Just keep in mind that once you exit the game, if players are still players on this server, the IP will still be forced, and you will need to either get another IP from the favorites tab or enter the following:

 mm_dedicated_force_servers "" 

- This will reset and not force any servers.

The condensed version. (Meta)

1. Enable Developer Console. Type ` and openserverbrowser in console.
2. Custom tab --> Filters --> Location desired. (Locations broken, search others regions for official server)
3. Add servers I.E US East to your favourites by right clicking and adding. Go to favorites tab.
4. Right click, view server info, copy IP from the box.
5. Create a lobby, open console type mm_dedicated_force_servers <YOUR IP HERE>
6. Load server and verify the correct IP is used by pausing, opening console and looking top right with said IP.

Q/A

Q. I can't find the official server I want.

A. The location section is bugged and might not show the official server in the correct location, for example US East players may get their servers in the 'South America' area. This may also be the case for other regions like Europe, Middle East, China, Australia, ect. Just keep looking through the locations until you find the official server closest to you.

Q. Does this also work for non-official servers.

A. As long as the server is empty, yeah.

Q. Why not just use 'Quick Match --> 'Official Server Only'?

A. It doesn't work.

Q. Okay, well why not just use the lobby and starting the game.

A. Because the prioritisation of searching for a game is not very good and will put you in bad locations. I.E EU players will get Spain or North servers even if they're situated in the UK, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, ect. When what we need is EU - West servers.

Q. Wouldn't it be quicker to just bind a few keys to IPs?

A. Go for it, it's faster but I'd rather use the server browser.

[Greenie]

Thank You for the guide. Really helping me during this free weekend mess. Players are even moving to L4D1 because of how shit the servers became, look at SteamDB.

[Sharpie The Dragon]

US East servers seem to be fixed now.

[Sharpie The Dragon]

So it seems like US East servers are still down thanks to Valve's incompetence. Instead of forcing those servers, do the next closest one which is South West.

[ヨゾラ切裂]

how do i let my friends join my server?

[EtherealOne]

Thanks

[ryaN]

ñ

[Murloc]

sure its fucking work

[DRAXTER_NG]

GOD

[ᵀᵒᵒᵗʰʸ]

Also you can only set mm_dedicated_search_maxping to 50

Which is too high of a "Max" ping limit if you ask me

Anyway it'll still ignore EU west servers which provide a stable 30 ping compared to spanish servers which give you around 50-60

[ᵀᵒᵒᵗʰʸ]

Syberian Husky™
can also use mm_dedicated_search_maxping 75



That doesn't work cause the matchmaking system completely ignores EU WEST servers and forces you into spain servers!