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Hey Guys - figured I'd better weigh in here.

So, first of all (and some of this has been covered) this is an old build and is definitely not representative of the final game. In fact, this is not even reflective of the HD capabilities of the platform.

Glad to see that you're all excited, but honestly this is probably doing more harm than serving "the greater good". People that see these videos and captures might not take the time to understand or appreciate the source and quality issues that using a dev build presents.

I'm getting bombarded with people asking me if this is what they should expect from their console copy of BF3, which, of course, it's not. So, the EA, DICE teams and myself are working to address these concerns instead of working on other things that you guys would probably appreciate more.

In turn, all you're doing by circulating this content is hurting your own community I understand that you're excited, but there is a reason, and a very good one, why we don't circulate this kind of stuff publicly.

PS - Not cool, bro. I've been up all night @_@

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Came into work late today. Got yelled at for it. Didn't care a bit. I spent most of this morning and early afternoon playing with about 40 testers and developers on an official developers server. We played round after round of Gulf of Oman looking for issues. Afterwords I had to just sit there and stare at my monitor. It was fantastic. The graphics and destruction are insanely improved, even over BC2. The map itself is immense with plenty of room for spectacular dog fights. The flight physics themselves are much more realistic and a butt load of fun. The only real complaint that I had was that the programmers who actually input the physics for the weapons and ammuniton should not have been allowed to snipe. Sons of bitches never missed. More importantly, I got a ton of very unique developers dog tags. Too bad the stats will be zeroed back out once the testing is complete. Still haven't been told when the open beta will be, but they are doing a 24 hour per map, one map a day marathon. Soon we move onto Wake Island. May have to take a sick day.

Wake Island. F'n rocks! Flying the "unnamed but kick ass" jet over the enemy base and just unloading falling death is fantastic. Specially, when you get multiple kills with a single bombing run and the pilot yells out "Fuckin' take that bitches!". Also noticed for the first time today, when you get a headshot while coming down in a parachute, your soldier yells out "Death from above!" As for the map itself, other than the island shape, you won't recognize much. As expected, the graphics are insane. There are a lot of places to hide and snipe from, but just like in BC2 a lot of those spots are destroyed or uncovered before long. Also as expected, I was gettin butt raped in the dog fights, but they were serious fun. Ground fighting was intense. We had a full server this time with 64 people. You basically had an entire airforce flying above and killing everything that moved, and a butt load of soldiers and vehicles doing the same. Oh yeah, little.... fuckin.. bird!

Side note 2: Yes, you customize your dog tags. They track one stat and have an image of your choice on them. Currently, mine tracks knife kills. 97! Some of you are already aware of what I am running and it doesn't make any difference to you. I have been fortunate enough to be able to build a serious gaming machine recently and for the average user, your just not gonna be able to match it. Just make sure you have a minimum of 1Gig video card, as much ram as you can reasonably afford, a quad core CPU, and very little crap running in the background. (yes, that means you to Insul8tor) As EA has previously stated, Vista or Win7 and DX10, DX11 ready. I'll be gaming with my DICE friends tonight and let you know what they say.

Do NOT expect to run BF3 on maximum graphics settings. There aren't many machines out there at a reasonable price that can. Fortunately, I'm an unreasonable guy.

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Videos of people opening authentic looking Battlefield 3 boxes are finding their way to Youtube. At first, most people were passing them off as fake or to boost their subscriber count, but they're legitimate boxes. These boxes do NOT contain the Battlefield 3 game or manual, but contain the codes for pre-order bonuses (physical warfare pack, SPECACT kit, etc.) Even the Steelbook edition of Battlefield 3 has been seen:

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One of the discs will contain the multiplayer content and HD installation data, the other, the single-player campaign.

“Battlefield 3 for Xbox 360 ships on two discs with endless hours of spectacular high-definition gameplay,” EA told Eurogamer. “Disc one features the stunning multiplayer, co-op levels and HD installation content. Disc two features the superb single-player campaign.”

The PS3 version of the game will ship on a single Blu-ray disc.

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DICE’s Alan Kertz, one of the lead designers of Battlefield 3 (and an avid Tweeter), has confirmed that Battlefield 3 will ship with 9 maps, a fact we’ve known since GamesCom. However, Kertz also revealed that all 5 game modes — Conquest, Conquest 64, Rush, Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch — will be available on all 9 maps.

In addition to the 9 maps, those who have pre-ordered Battlefield 3 (1.25 million of you), will be getting additional 4 maps from the Back to Karkand expansion pack: Strike At Karkand, Gulf of Oman, Sharqi Peninsula and Wake Island. Back to Karkand is scheduled for release approximately 1 month after the release of Battlefield 3.

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