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GullyFoyle · Oct 21, 2011, 12:08 AM

Zh1nt0 statements on pre-load/day-1 patch:

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Official Origin function to change your Origin ID: Origin Change ID

New Battlefield Blog Post: Name it and claim it!

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Planet Battlefield - Exclusive Look at the Battlefield 3 Prima Guide

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Thursday, 20 October, 2011 at 16:11 PST | ^Scott^ | Print News
Planet Battlefield is happy to bring you the first images of the official Battlefield 3 Prima Guide. The guide includes extremely detailed information on everything in Battlefield 3 from single player walkthroughs to multiplayer map breakdowns and unlock progression tables for every weapon in Battlefield 3.

Below you will find samples of the weapons pages (M16A4, AK-74M, M320, M416) multiplayer pages (Caspian Border), and a single player mission (Operation Swordbreaker). Thanks to Prima Games for providing these images as well as including Planet Battlefield in the guide itself!

Standard Edition Page count: 352
Collector's Edition Page count: 368 (hardcover, comes with DICE profile, developer interviews, excerpt from "The Russian" novel by Andy McNab, and access to Online Class Objective Tracker.)
Both guides printed on high-quality 80 lb. paper
Release date: October 25th, Pre-Order Available Now

<see original article for pictures>

Quote:

Choose the right tools for the job!
In Battlefield 3, there is no all-purpose class or weapon capable of dealing with every threat you face during online combat. Therefore, you must analyze the threat and choose the appropriate tools for defeating it by selecting your class and customizing your soldier’s loadout. Stating on page 19, all classes and weapons are covered in detail, including unlock criteria for each. Each class also has special equipment capable of giving your team a big advantage. Deployment tactics for each specialized piece of equipment are discussed, helping you get the most out of your gear.

Fight on land, sea, or air!
What sets Battlefield apart from the crowd are the vehicles. Battlefield 3 doesn’t disappoint, providing a wide mix of light vehicles, IFVs, tanks, helicopters and jets. New to Battlefield 3 are vehicle unlocks. Each vehicle type has it’s own unlock progression allowing you to customize your ride with new upgrades, gadgets, and weapons. Flips ahead to page 54 to begin reading-up on every vehicle, complete with unlock progression and vital gameplay tips for each.

Plan your attack!
Knowing the lay of the land gives any soldier an upper hand. In Battlefield 3 there are nine multiplayer maps each supporting six game modes, including Conquest, Conquest 64, Rush, Squad Rush, Squad Deathmatch, and Team Deathmatch. Spanning nearly 200 pages (starting on page 72) the multiplayer maps section is huge, covering every map and game mode in detail. The labeled maps show the locations of every flag, M-COM station, and vehicle spawn point. Breakdowns of every control point, zone, and M-COM station are also provided, discussing attack and defend tactics as well as revealing the respawn times for vehicles at each location.

Find the path to victory!
When you’re not busy roaming the battlefield with your squad, try tackling the challenging co-op missions with a friend or dive into the intense single-player campaign. There are six co-op missions waiting to put your combat and teamwork skills to the test. To survive each mission you must leverage every piece of equipment at your disposal while working together. The Co-Op section (page 266) offers a detailed walkthrough of each mission, helping you defeat the onslaught of hostile forces. A comprehensive walkthrough of the single-player campaign (page 290) is also provided. In addition to covering crucial gameplay tactics, both the co-op and campaign sections offer tips on where, when, and how to earn the achievements and trophies associated with each mode.

The spoils of war!
Regardless of the game mode, there are plenty of rewards awaiting you in Battlefield 3. The Battlefield Compendium (page 338) is your one-stop quick reference source for every unlock, award, achievement, and trophy. The criteria for every multiplayer rank, ribbon, medal, and dog tag is covered as well as all associated unlocks. The multiplayer scoring system is also listed, helping you determine which actions net you the most points.

Gamasutra - Building Battlefield 3's Social Gaming Layer

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by Christian Nutt
October 20, 2011

[In this in-depth interview, producer Patrick Loving explains precisely how the team at DICE architected the web-based social layer for Battlefield 3, lessons learned in beta, its future, and much more.]

If there's something you hear a lot about these days, it's the transformation of games into services. Another thing you hear a lot about is community, and social media's relevance to that community. Big franchises like Call of Duty and Halo have their own social communities -- so why not Battlefield 3, EA's big shooter for 2011?

To that end, a team was put together at Stockholm-based DICE to create the Battlelog service for Battlefield 3. Producer Frederick Loving speaks to Gamasutra about the development process for the service -- including how he determined what to include, what services influenced it, what the team achieved with it through the game's recently-ended beta, and future plans.

Why was Battlelog prioritized for this game?

I wanted to take the fun that we have in the game and just spread it out -- so you can pretty much access it from work, from when you're in transit, or pretty much any time you want. Because I wanted that, and I think a lot of other people actually wanted that as well -- to just have fun outside of the actual second to second.

How did you prioritize what you wanted to be available in Battlelog and scope it at the beginning?

I think we started with the whole friends-centric approach. Everything that Battlefield is about is playing with your friends, or against your friends, so that was the key -- to establish the friendships. So that was the core of everything: comparing with your friends.

And then we just started off that, and moved up, so then we added Platoons -- which is groups of friends playing together. So it's still the whole friend-centric [element], and then we added the Com Center, which is where you see where your friends are playing, what server they're on, you can communicate, you can VOIP with each other. So it all boils down to the friends actually.

Do you have a game development background or a web services background?

I actually have a bit of both. I've been working at DICE now for five and a half years, and before that I was actually in a web background.

As social features become more relevant to games, just as the web drew game people in via Facebook, it's going the other way. It seems that web services people are being drawn into games via these kind of integrations. Did you pull in people with web services backgrounds?

We have a fairly big team, and we, of course, recruited people for this. But we have a lot of really, really good people of course at DICE, and a lot of good designers, so we actually didn't have to look that much outside of the company. We had the expertise there already; we just needed to get it on the web, and that's why we looked elsewhere.

Did you look at what had been done before in social networking?

Definitely. I looked at all social networks, from Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, to of course [Halo] Waypoint, [Call of Duty] Elite. We looked at everything. That's inspirational for me -- just finding out what other people do, and just sort of grabbing the good pieces out of it.

But yeah, of course we're inspired by a lot of the social networks that are out there, and they're all pretty common, if you look at them. They have the similar feeds, they have similar likes, they have similar comments -- so there's a lot of common features amongst all social networks.

Why did you think it was important to integrate your own social networking features rather than work via Facebook Connect, or something like that?

I think a lot of gamers want to have their own little world where they just communicate with other gamers. I don't think everyone would like to spam the Facebook feed with what they're doing in-game. But I think it fits perfectly into a branded social network such as Battlelog. So that was the key: people want to keep it within the Battlefield community. The friends you have on Facebook are probably not the same friends that you have on Battlelog.

When it comes to other services like Elite or Waypoint, they have a lot of content. Waypoint goes as far as to have videos and behind-the-scenes stuff. Are you doing the same stuff, or are you concentrating on the core social experience?

For now -- for launch-- we're definitely focusing on the core social experience. But like I always said, this is a long term investment for us. We really want to give the players what they want. We're going to be keeping pumping out features as we go along.

Is this going to be a project that lives across Battlefield as a franchise, DICE as a studio, or EA as a whole? How big is this going to get?

We're starting off with Battlefield 3 and then we'll see where it leads us, but Battlefield 3 is where we're focusing right now.

Are you planning to increase the functionality of Battlelog as the game's life continues? Because this game is going to continue to be played for a long time.

I think that's one of the core strengths of Battlelog is that not only can we keep sort of pace with the game, we can do a lot more, since we're tapping into the data that's coming out of the game, and we can just manipulate and do whatever we want from the website with them.

We can, if we wanted to, do daily updates and improvements. Of course, we won't do daily updates but that's the power of being on the web -- we don't have to patch anything, we just update the web with all the figures that we have. So I think that's a major, major advantage that we have with Battlelog, is that just being able to update on the fly, pretty much.

Are you happy with where you got to on a first iteration?

I'm actually extremely happy. We've been focusing so much on this. We've been putting a lot of heart and soul into this. And we have to remember that the key for us is also that it's very, very robust and stable. I want it to be up at all times, and with the amount of traffic that we're seeing from open beta, and just moving forward, we put a lot of effort into making everything stable.

So yeah, I'm very happy with the features that we have, but of course we're going to keep adding stuff as we go along. I just want to see how people react to it, so that we can give the consumers what they want.

Has it functioned in the beta the way you anticipated, prior to launch?

Yeah. I think we got a lot of feedback in the beta that's been really, really good. Of course we acted on feedback, but the key part that we got feedback on was how to handle the backend service. We've been trying a lot of stuff behind the doors that people haven't been seeing -- so yeah, definitely. We've been getting some really good feedback that we're looking into, and implementing as we go along.

gamrfeed.vgchartz.com - Exclusive Interview: Battlefield 3 Creative Director Lars Gustavsson

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by Alex Hanna 10 hours ago

At the EB Games Expo, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Lars Gustavsson; the creative director of Battlefield 3 (the game that also won "Best of Show"). Our discussion was brief, but we covered a good few important notes: including the early development phases, how BF3 is going to go up against the competition and how you can get into the game industry.

gamrFeed: First off; congratulations on winning best of show. You must feel honored.

Lars Gustavsson: It's definitely an honor. I mean this show, coming here, it's an amazing crowd since it's so passionate, it seems like everyone wants us to do well. And that's really wonderful. And getting these awards is more than what we expect coming here.

gamrFeed: I think you'll find that Australia is full of passionate gamers like us. We're so grateful you could all come down here.

Gustavsson: We're grateful that you could have us.

gamrFeed: Now, just looking around the floor, it's obvious that BF has a lot of competition. Rage, Halo, Skyrim and Modern Warfare. It's going to be tough, regardless of how great the game is. What is it that's going to make Battlefield 3 the must-play game of the year?

Gustavsson: I think that we pushed the boundaries in so many areas. To be honest, it's extremely good looking, it's the best in industry sound, we have the destruction, we have the huge landscapes and I think this time, we really let you play it your way with the tight worlds and the open worlds. They're kind of tied together with the BattleLog. It's such a complete package and it's all high level since we pushed the boundaries, everyone can look at this game and see that "this is something more."

gamrFeed: So would you call this the ultimate FPS experience of this generation?

Gustavsson: I would say so. Of course, we will do more in the future. But yeah, I would say so.

gamrFeed: Lots of confidence, we love to hear that. Now, you've made, as you put it, "The most realistic shooter ever", can you tell us a bit about some of the challenges you went through making this experience so real and memorable?

Gustavsson: First off, it's worth saying with "realistic", we always choose fun over realistic. You should never forget that some people will get bored when they're playing, but we've gone in-depth with every piece of hardware. How it works, getting the animations right, getting the movement on the battlefield, connecting the player to the battlefield physically. You know, you do a hand plant when you jump over something, you're not doing some stiff animation. So, these things are there in the battlefield. We brought in Andy McNabb, former SAS soldier who wrote Bravo Two Zero and he could really step in, look at things we've done and kind of pin point how you would do it in the field. So, we've got so many layers of realism. This is how you open a door, this is how you reload your weapon, don't do that in the field if it'll get you killed. With these things, you feel really professional on the battlefield while still having a good experience if you see what I mean.

gamrFeed: I think I see. Clearly a lot of effort went into this. The majority of FPS's these days cater towards the multiplayer experience. They usually don't even touch the single player all that heavily. But there are still many gamers, much like myself, who still play games for the single player experience. What are you guys doing with Battlefield 3 to cater to the single player experience?

Gustavsson: Well, it's interesting, because Battlefield came from a multiplayer only experience with bot wars and have since added single player and co-op. But I think, once again we want to cater to everyone. This time it's a much more mature story that goes kind of in line with the tone of the game overall. It's a really engaging story with pacing that allows you to really feel the heat of battle, but also the anticipation of the battle. It's got both up and down which is quite unique.

gamrFeed: I see, so you've gone for a more immersive experience than other shooters out there?

Gustavsson: It's an extremely immersive experience.

gamrFeed: Turning towards the game industry as a whole; you're a veteran, you've been at this for a long time, you've produced one of the greatest games to ever be released. For someone out there who is trying to get into the gaming industry, design programming etc, what advice can you give to any aspiring university students that want to break into this industry?

Gustavsson: I would say there are a couple of ways. There are education programs you can go into, that's definitly one of them. Second one would be the modding scene. Start building a level, show them that you can handle the 3D room or world. Build up anticipation, build up the immersion or try out with smaller mini games. Just to show that you have the eye for it. And for us, many times it's the sheer passion, the will and showing that you have a spark of talent that will take you a very long way.

gamrFeed: Thank you very much for you time Lars, I won't take up any more of it. Thanks for the talk and enjoy the rest of the show.

Playstation Blog - Beta Feedback: How You Helped Shape Battlefield 3’s Multiplayer

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System Name:	Wopper
Processor:	Intel i5 3570 @ 4.2 Ghz
Motherboard:	ASRock Z77 Extreme4
Cooling:	Noctua NH-D14
Memory:	8 GB
Video Card:	Powercolor HD6950 1 GB
Hard Disk:	64Gb SSD + 2 GB Games + 1.5 TB Data
Optical Drive:	Samsung SH-S203B DL DVD-RW
CRT/LCD Model:	ViewSonic VX2268WM 22-Inch 120 Hz 3D-Ready
Case:	Antec P182
Sound Card:	Realtec onboard
PSU:	Antec TruePower New 550W
Software:	Windows 7 Professional 64 bit