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.

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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The Battlelog web service is an integral part of the Battlefield 3. It’s practically used as the main menu for PC players, and there’s no doubt that it’s a piece of very advanced web technology. EA has now announced that they’ve acquired the developers of the Battlelog framework, ESN. ESN is a Swedish platform developer who have been working on gaming web technology for 10 years.

As you know, Battlelog offers all sorts of stats tracking and social networking features for Battlefield 3, and is deeply integrated with the game, especially the PC version. With the announcement, EA also confirmed that the upcoming Medal of Honor Warfighter will support Battlelog.

Cheating is still a big problem in Battlefield 3. To make matters worse, the “Report” button on Battlelog has never worked properly — many reported cheaters are still playing and ruining the game for everyone else. Now there’s hope on the horizon: DICE has improved the “Report” player functionality, which now lets users report cheaters and stats padders, and lets them submit links to Battle reports, select the soldier that’s suspected of cheating. DICE promises that reported cheaters will be manually checked by the anti-cheat team at DICE. Hopefully the system will work better this time.

Battlelog is getting more and more features these days. We’ve seen the addition of live score-boards, improved server browser, custom matches, and now a brand new feature lets players select their weapon and accessory loadouts. A new tab is available in the soldier section, which lets players select the weapons, accessories, specializations, gadgets, and pretty much everything else for all classes and all vehicles. The new loadout feature works on all Battlefield 3 platforms. You can even browse what loadouts other players are using, and copy it with just one click.

DICE has announced a brand new feature for Battlefield 3, one that competitive gamers will love. Called “Matches”, the new system will help gamers to arrange and coordinate competitive multiplayer matches. Setting up matches happens via Battlelog, and the player is required to have access to a dedicated server. Players can set the player count, start time, team size, and map rotations, as well as other settings and tweaks. On top of that, Battlefield 3 Matches brings tracking of rounds played and stats to Battlelog. There’ still no ETA on when Matches will be released, and it’s unknown whether the new feature will be free for all or for Premium members only. You can read more about Battlefield 3 Matches on the official blog.

You may have seen advertisements of an iOS version of Battlelog on Battlelog’s website for many months now. Despite this, we never got word on when or if we’d ever see Battlelog released on Apple’s iOS platform. To everyone’s surprise, EA has now released the Battleog app for the iPhone. The free app lets users check their stats, notifications, and friend lists.

A few days ago we reported that DICE was working on implementing live scoreboards to Battlefield 3 game servers on Battlelog, where the feature was under testing through select users. DICE has now rolled out Live scoreboards to all players on Battlelog. You can now see the progress of a match, how many tickets are left, the player scores and so on, before joining a match.

Battlefield 3′s Battlelog will be getting a new feature soon: the ability to see live scoreboards before joining a server. Many players have experienced joining a game, only to find out that the round is almost over. Or worse, to be met with a message “You team lost”.

Now, Battlelog will be getting live scoreboards so players can check a server’s progress, how many tickets remain, the user scores, and more. The live scoreboards are currently being rolled out on Battlelog for PC users, and as DICE gathers performance and data, more and more players will find the feature enabled.

EA boss John Riccitiello recently spoke to analysts regarding Battlefield 3 — which sold 10 million copies — where he hinted at Call of Duty Elite, the paid subscription service for Modern Warfare 3. Riccitiello said:

“Frankly, I gave a compliment to one of our competitors. It’s got a subscription on the back end of an FPS title. I think that’s a best-in-class performance.”

He went on, saying that EA has been toying around with something similar, called Ultimate Team for its FIFA series. Riccitiello added:

“The reason this is such a fast-growing revenue stream for us is we’re identifying and implementing best practice across the range of our products, and you’ll see lots more to come including an announcement near term that Peter just alluded to.”

This “announcement” is supposed to be the new DLC announcement for Battlefield 3 which is supposed to happen this week. Could we see a paid subscription model akin to Call of Duty Elite? It could be a premium version of Battlelog, with access to all future DLC, much like Activision’s model.