http://www.battlefield.com/battlefield3/1/beta

Need an Origin account (This will become your in-game name!) and then download Origin, Download Battlefield 3 Beta, get the web plugins and then you can play.

My Origin name is Lucas-John-W (Because getting an available name was a b-tch).

I know about the name thing, my PSN ID is the result of such a hunt for a name, and I wish I had kept searching.

I know a few friends who got in to the private beta a few days ago. I'm not a true fan of Online FPS so the beta doesn't interest me as much as a single player demo would.

Please do post your experience, if you can, as I'm interested in the game but have my pre-order on MW3. But, the BF3 and MW3 debate is for another topic.

No it's not. BF3 wins, end of discussion.

Nobody cares. These games suck.

Origins is one of the reasons I've lost faith in EA pulling off a true sequal to BF1942. I've heard no word on dedicated sever or mod ask support as well. BF2 was close but the lack of supporting 64 player co-op makes it nowhere near the fun of 1942, though I did like the squad mechanic and that made up for it a bit. the AI was still lacking in BF2, not much better than 1942 and you can't make up for it with numbers.

For me to buy BF3 it'll need a 64 player co-op mode with at least listen server capability if there isn't a dedi server available. And I'm still not crazy about Origins, it'll take being rather impressive to win out over Valve's Steam.

Ugh, Origin. EA, pull your head of your ass and put it on Steam!

But they don't own steam yet. How are they supposed to make a$$loads of undeserved cash if they don't own fecking everything?

The Battlefield 3 beta only has 16 vs 16, but the final release does have 32 vs 32 in the Conquest mode. Dedicated rent-a-server sites are offering pre-orders for BF3 servers, so obviously there must be a dedicated server application.

EA wants to put BF3 onto Steam but apparently there approach doesn't agree with Steam's TOS (Apparently Steam wants ALL DLC done through itself).

Ugh, I *hate* TF2.

I was going to give it a try (both Origin, to get a feel for how evil it seems, and Battlefield), but never got into the game because I had to jump hrough too many hoops.

I installed Origin, created an account, let it download Battlefield, and hit play, and it opened my web browser to let me choose a server.
That was the first real annoyance. I don't care about making the game 'social', I want to shoot some nameless men. Forcing me to browse servers in a web browser before I launch the game is stupid. Even worse, there's no way to evaluate your latency to a given server while in the server browser. I just picked a server that's geographically close and hoped it would have decent latency.

So I picked a server that looked decent and hit the Join button. Oh, I need a browser plugin to be able to join a game, since the server browser exists only in my web browser. That was the point where I said "Screw you, I don't care enough."
..and then I uninstalled both Origin and Battlefield.

As far as my impressions of Origin go, the interface is rather slick, but lacks much useful functionality. Overall, I see no reason to prefer it to Steam- some commentators have noted that it might not be all evil, acting to add more competition to the game download marketplace, but I don't think that's going to happen.
There are plenty of Steam competitors (D2D, Impulse, GMG...) that rake in agreeable amounts of money on their own merits, without taking advantage of their position as a publisher to lock users into using their service. Even ignoring any other players in the digital game marketplace, I'm much more likely to trust Valve, as a privately-held company, to do 'good things' for their customers than I would EA, the publicly-held behemoth.

Short version: gave Origin a chance, now I surely don't intend to use Origin, nor purchase Battlefield 3.

I know, nothing can beat Unreal Tournament 2004. Probably the only FPS I ever did or will play `-`

Yes, there is quite a lot of hoops to hurdle through, typical EA behaviour though.



Battlefield isn't like Unreal Tournament or COD and to less extent TF2. It's all about teamplay, not FFA nor Deathmatch.

UT2k4 is far from the pinnacle of multiplayer shooters.

Once I finally jumped through all the hoops, including installing the beta Nvidia driver for my GTX 460, required play the beta and I am rather impressed. It looks to be a a good game for multiplayer. I actually went through all the hoops solely to see how it actually played and if it tied back to the BF1942 and BF2 days. It did and then some which I loved, my hugest gripe is the origins web browser launch game crap.

If I launch the game through a web browser why do I even have orgin installed? And why does the launch game button open a web browser? I mean WTF? What happens when 10 years down the road I want to play this game but their browser plugin isn't compatible with modern web browsers? Or even if I want to play locally and I don't have an active internet connection? Steam allows for that no problem, but I see no possible way to do that with orgin and I'd say its a pretty crucial. If that is really how they plan to do it in the final version I just have zero plans on getting it. If it was all done through Origin fine, but why do I need Origin and a potentially buggy and insecure browser plugin to boot?

A LAN server option would maybe be enough to redeem them, but I don't even see how a LAN server would be possible with that setup. It seems like they just assume everyone has a massive pipe coming into their house and has no interest in LAN's or Tournaments anymore.

haha, this beta gave my friend's computer a BSoD, lulz. (it happened midgame, he didnt see it coming)

Yeah, everybody knows nothing beats doom 1. 14.4 modems FTW!

Lol, I just created a 'platoon' called U.N.I.T, the Brigadier would be proud.

Said like someone who truly doesn't know what's going on.
It's actually Quake III Arena.

But I digress. One of my roommates downloaded it on Xbox. It looked decent as far as console shooters go, but I can tell it's much better with real input devices, rather than a gamepad.

http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf3/forum/threadview/2826551139112653522/

As an avid BF1942 player, and more recently BF2(though the lack of a good 64 player co-op mode makes BF1942 win there) I have to say that thread sums up what would make this truely Battlefield 3 and not seem like another Battlefield Bad Company Squeal.

The only thing making me not want to get this game is Origin and the stupid Browser plugin crap, I mean really, I don't want to have to open a Memory hungry Web Browser to launch a Memory hungry Game. Forget to close a few Flash video windows and watch weaker CPU's crawl and your game lag.