Is this for real?? (list of ports needed to play MP)

You don't do each port individually like 10001 10002 and so on when it says 10000-19999... Most routers / modems will have multiple boxes for the port range and if not you can generally just use a dash.

Obviously my concern is not setting each port up manually, setting a port range is quite easy. My problem is security, leaving that many ports open is a kin to leaving your front door open when u go on holiday, you're just asking for trouble.

This is waaaaay too much and EA know this...

Apparently, being paranoid leads to inconveniences

Yeah, it kinda does.
I work in IT, too.

A lot of applications use random ports within a range. Most ports do not have a define purpose so you work with a range to avoid conflicts.
That's not how this works. Even if you forward the ports to your computer they aren't 'open' if there's nothing listing on said port. The only difference with the forwarded ports is that in the highly unlikely event that someone tried connecting to your public IP using one of those ports, it would be your computer getting the request and then not responding (or possibly outright rejecting it) instead of the router...

If you don't want to deal with the port forwarding, get a decent router with working UPnP.


Also, judging by the listed ports I suspect they included ports the game will try to connect to (including EA / Origin servers, not just multiplayer) and not just ports that the game will listen on when hosting a game, there is no way they'd have the client listen for anything on 443, you'd have a port conflict if the player ran a webserver that accepted standard https requests... Not exceedingly common maybe but it'll happen, Windows even has a built in webserver that could have been turned on even unintentionally.

Yes, it is ridiculous. In ME3 you had to open a single UDP port.

If it helps, however I can say that I haven't opened any ports in my firewall and, despite that, I've had no problems joining any lobbies and my friends could join my lobbies perfectly as well (so you may also not need to open any ports).

I was constantly losing connection until I opened all the ports.