EA just announced via Twitter that Battlefield 3 has been played for a total of 1 billion hours by gamers. Battlefield 3 has sold over 20 million copies to date, with over 3.5 million buying the Premium subscription. It would be interesting to compare this number (1 billion hours) with the previous games in the series, such as BF2 and Bad Company 2.

How many hours have you logged in Battlefield 3 multiplayer so far? Let us know in the comments section!

EA has announced that its Battlefield 3 Premium subscription has reached an impressive 3.5 million members. Back in February, we reported that Premium had almost 3 million members, so it looks like the service is seeing steady sales, even after BF3 has been over a year and a half on the market. EA said that the Premium service has resulted in over $120 million in additional revenue.

Premium members have access to all DLC for free, and a bunch of other goodies. The best part of Premium these days though, is that all Battlefield 3 Premium members will get access to the upcoming BF4 beta.

Because of the recent Battlefield 3 DDOS attacks, the double XP weekend was pushed to a new date. Today EA revealed the new date: May 23-27 — a full 96 hours of double XP.

The Double XP will work as usual, with player’s scores doubling at the end of each round. It’s a great way to quickly earn some new weapon and vehicle unlocks if you haven’t already unlock everything.

The double XP weekend is open to all Battlefield 3 players, not just Premium members.

Over the past few days, Battlefield 3 servers have been under a DDOS attack. The DDOS — distributed denial of service — attack has crippled the multiplayer infrastructure and several Battlelog features. Players are reporting that they cannot connect to EA servers, and that their stats appear to be wiped.

The attack is still undergoing, and is targeting Battlefield 3′s back-end multiplayer servers, which means that basically everyone is affected. DICE and EA are working to resolve the issue. In a statement, EA said:

“The focus of the attack has been interference with network communications preventing access to multiplayer gameplay. At this point, no user data is involved. We share your frustration about the impact this has had to our service and the ability for many of you to play Battlefield 3. We are working tirelessly to mitigate the problem.”

Because of the issues, the planned Double XP weekend scheduled to take place on May 9-13 will now moved to a later date.

EA has announced that Battlefield 3 developer DICE will be working on Star Wars games in the future, built on the new Frostbite 3 game engine. EA recently secured an exclusive Star Wars license from Disney, which gives them freedom to make video games based on the popular movie franchise.

So far there are no details about what kind of Star Wars game DICE might be working on, but we certainly hope they do a multiplayer shooter set in the Star Wars universe. We kinda had something like that before: Star Wars Battlefront.

Despite being 18 months old, there are still plenty of Battlefield 3 players out there. And those gamers who have played the game all that time until now have established their own, personal play style. Some like lone-wolfing it and focusing on kills, some are more team-oriented, while others love the safety of armored vehicles.

As the video above asks; what makes a truly great Battlefield 3 player? His K/D ratio? His W/L ratio? His teamwork? What do you think makes a great Battlefield 4 player? Let us know in the comments section!

DICE has announced that all Battlefield 3 players — Premium and non-Premium — will be getting a double XP event next month. While usually it’s just a double XP weekend, this time it runs from May 9 to 13, four days, or 96 hours of doubling up on all the points your earn in-game. The double XP will count only on Ranked servers and will include all game modes and all maps.

But it’s not like double XP matters any longer. Most of the players who are still playing have unlocked everything a long time ago

One of the small annoyances with Battlefield 3 and its social network, Battlelog, is that it’s limited to only 100 friends. The limit is tied to Origin, and according to DICE, they are working with the Origin team to remove the friend limit.

In addition to increased friends limit, DICE is also working on improving friend suggestions, better privacy options, and an Android version of the popular Battlelog iPhone app.

No mention as to when we can expect these new features. Perhaps we’ll have to wait for Battlefield 4 to get all of it.

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Battlefield 3 Premium owners will get a chance to be some of the first to play Battlefield 4. DICE has confirmed that all BF3 Premium owners will get access to the Battlefield 4 beta when it launches this Fall. The beta will be accessible to Premium members and those who pre-order select editions of the game on Origin. Battlefield 4 was unveiled last month with a 17-minute gameplay video (seen above), showing the first mission in the singleplayer campaign. The game will launch this Fall.

With the release of End Game, DICE wrapped up work on Battlefield 3. We’ll still get patches, of course, but content wise, there won’t be any more DLC. It’s good that Premium owners get a few more incentives, since there won’t be any more free content, at least in the form of expansions. A few months ago, EA revealed that Premium now has over 3 million subscribers.

The Battlefield 3 beta launched a few weeks before the game shipped. It started out with a single map and a single game mode (Rush on Operation Metro), and was later extended to another map with another game mode (Conquest on Caspian Border). We’ll have to wait and see what the BF4 beta has in store for us. DICE is expected to unveil the multiplayer portion of the game at E3 in June.

The Battlefield 3 End Game DLC has been out for a few weeks now, and if you’re still unsure whether to get the new content, these reviews might help you make up your mind. End Game is of course free to all Premium members, but for those who aren’t part of Premium, you’ll have to fork over $15 bucks for the DLC. And so far, it seems that End Game is worth the money, because many are calling it the best DLC Battlefield 3 has seen to date. And it should be, as it’s the very last DLC Battlefield 3 will see. Check out several video reviews of End Game after the break. READ ON »