Battlefield 3 Is Free For EA's On The House Program

[CpT_x_Killsteal]

Wow, I didn't realise people hated origin that much. I only open it grudgingly, but still, free is free. Even steam doesn't do free on a permanent basis.

EDIT: Even steam doesn't do free on a permanent basis REGULARLY.

Trust the escapist to point out factual errors that are irrelevant to the point.

To be honest there have been already 3 free games on Steam, L4D2, Red Orchestra 2 and Arma: Cold War Assault.

Not really picking sides but its at the same pace as Origin.

Nope those games were over the course of over a year, whereas origin only started "on the house" recently, not a comparable rate at all. Please don't make me defend origin, I don't want to but I'll do it dammit.

Well to be fair, L4D2 and RO2 are still frequently played games and the latest in their series, whereas BF3 is one iteration old (I don't know about it's multiplayer so i can't say anything there) with half the maps and guns locked behind premium. and with AAAs shutting down their old servers at increasing rates, I doubt BF3 will survive the release of the next iteration.
NOTE: I don't count Arma because it was the publishers who decided to release it free.

To me it just seems like a last grab at revenue (via premium) from an older iteration before the servers are shut down in two years.

Also, if you install and register with Origin, just once, they'll make money from selling your information. There's that too.

 

[josemlopes]

Wow, I didn't realise people hated origin that much. I only open it grudgingly, but still, free is free. Even steam doesn't do free on a permanent basis.

EDIT: Even steam doesn't do free on a permanent basis REGULARLY.

Trust the escapist to point out factual errors that are irrelevant to the point.

To be honest there have been already 3 free games on Steam, L4D2, Red Orchestra 2 and Arma: Cold War Assault.

Not really picking sides but its at the same pace as Origin.

Nope those games were over the course of over a year, whereas origin only started "on the house" recently, not a comparable rate at all. Please don't make me defend origin, I don't want to but I'll do it dammit.

Left 4 Dead 2 was 6 months ago and Dead Space was 3. There are some cool things about Origin but when you want to defend it you might want to check your facts instead of interpreting 6 months as "over a year ago" and 3 months as "recently".

EDIT: Actually it was 5 months and not 6 (25/12/2013), so its even more recently then what I thought.

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

I feel no guilt nabbing free stuff as long as it won't destroy my PC

Any application that installs with admin rights has the potential to bugger your system. Hell, I've got an old AMD system in the garage that was completely fucked by SecuROM from EA's Spore game back in 2008.

i mean guilt from having to use Origin and in general getting in touch anything EA related

i hate those bastards at EA, they are ruining this industry

Indeed they are. And now they can add your name to the list of Origin users for their next shareholders' meeting. Congratulations.

atleast the number wont mean much since i dont plan on buying any EA game in the foreseeable future

 

[Metalrocks]

ok so i tried to register to origin and

Your password must be 8 - 16 characters, and include at least one lowercase letter, one uppercase letter, and a number.

FUCK YOU. i know how to do my passwords and i dont want your shitty systems meant to force idiots into securing thier passwords. i dont want lowercase letters in my password!

seriously??
i dont have any uppercase letters and i got in. but i guess back then (2010) it was not that strict with security. and i got origin for ME3 in 2011 and i could use my account from bioware.

probably new changes. i noticed this shit creep in a lot lately. its the reason i didnt change my World of Tanks password even for free gold, because i dont want to be put in your insecure password rules, and last thing i want is to broadcast to any possible hacker the small range of possible combinations my password needs to be in.
Also, if you dont comply to these rules anyone trying to brutweforce it wont even consider your possibility so yeah its actually even more secure in reality.
i guess i need to make a new password generation method that includes lowercase letters now, logic be damned.

yeah, its annoying. just had a little fight logging in to the forum for guild wars 2. even i have an account there, my old password wasnt accepted anymore. had to change it with also an uppercase letter and numbers.
with origin (and steam) i can understand why they request more secure pass codes. since people do enter credit card details on their account.

origin is really not bad. i personally had no issues with it. in fact, i at times prefer it a bit more than steam. already alone for the download speed. with steam it downloads between 600 to 800kbs. wile origin is over 800kbs, up to 2mbs.

 

[AstaresPanda]

this is just kinda annoying i PAID for this crap, installled fucking Orgiin for ONE game, only to have them talk about BF4 coming out. So i was really like fuck this game and ive not played it in ages.

 

[mindfaQ]

The desperate attempt to drag at least some people to their redundant Origin-platform. They know that the barrier for using it gets lower, once one has installed and used it once.
I still won't get it, I'm not starved for games and could have BF3 for Origin anyway, since I still have that key from the Humble Bundle lying around unredeemed.

 

[fix-the-spade]

Aren't the BF3 servers going down this summer?

Not on the PC version they're not.

It's BF1942, 2 and 2142 that die in three days time with Gamespy, which I am still genuinely upset about.

BF3 as it happens is excellent and more populated than BF4 on PC, but really needs the DLC (since that's clearly the angle EA are taking here).

 

[ThreeKneeNick]

Well thanks for the free game EA but Origin won't download it. It goes for 2 minutes and then stops and tells me to check my internet connection. No, you check your connection, Origin.

 

[Rozalia1]

The thought of installing Steam on my machine has never crossed my mind is what this reminds me. No hate involved as I only have steam myself due to me having a secondary user of my machine.
As for the game I've already received it free through +.

Wow, I didn't realise people hated origin that much. I only open it grudgingly, but still, free is free. Even steam doesn't do free on a permanent basis.

EDIT: Even steam doesn't do free on a permanent basis REGULARLY.

Trust the escapist to point out factual errors that are irrelevant to the point.

EDIT2: Please understand I am very much on Team Steam, I just make sure origin's given credit where it's due. For reference I have 3 games on origin, and as for steam....well....

My Steam Profile (from SteamDB [http://steamdb.info/calculator/?player=76561198044132419&country=us])

• Games owned: 188
• Games not played: 54 (29%)
• Hours spent: 1,242.2h

Why is all that necessary? Like wow, are you scared of posters on here or something? I know we got some pretty big marks for steam on here, but there is no need to post all that "steam cred" in defence of a simple comment you made.

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

atleast the number wont mean much since i dont plan on buying any EA game in the foreseeable future

Doesn't really matter. EA cooks the numbers in order to make themselves look better for stockholders.

When Spore released, they posted all kinds of numbers about accounts created (which included Creature Creator accounts and 5 users allowed per game) and creatures created (including every auto-saved creation after every step of "evolution").

They stopped posting numbers after I "uncooked" their data and showed that the average user was only creating a handful of items before leaving the game forever.

dude i already feel pretty bad about biting this bait, dont make it worse

 

[mitchell271]

Anyone know how well the community is holding up? I'm in the mood for some battlefield but don't want to buy 4 so I'd really love it if I could just re-install 3 and get a few games in.

It's completely dead. Back when EA did a humble bundle, I installed it on the first day. The highest worldwide population I saw was about 1000, with only two 64 player servers being remotely close to full. Try it out, see how it is, especially with it being free, but don't expect much.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

ok so i tried to register to origin and

Your password must be 8 - 16 characters, and include at least one lowercase letter, one uppercase letter, and a number.

FUCK YOU. i know how to do my passwords and i dont want your shitty systems meant to force idiots into securing thier passwords. i dont want lowercase letters in my password!

seriously??
i dont have any uppercase letters and i got in. but i guess back then (2010) it was not that strict with security. and i got origin for ME3 in 2011 and i could use my account from bioware.

probably new changes. i noticed this shit creep in a lot lately. its the reason i didnt change my World of Tanks password even for free gold, because i dont want to be put in your insecure password rules, and last thing i want is to broadcast to any possible hacker the small range of possible combinations my password needs to be in.
Also, if you dont comply to these rules anyone trying to brutweforce it wont even consider your possibility so yeah its actually even more secure in reality.
i guess i need to make a new password generation method that includes lowercase letters now, logic be damned.

I just use a regular sentence.

Something like "This is my 1st password for Origin" should do the trick, but I agree, any enforcing of limits on a password just make it easier to bruteforce a difficult password.

 

[Strazdas]

I tried it to test out my graphics card's potential.

Testing out graphic card potential with BF3? wow thats an odd choice of a test.

also, where is your avatar gone?

Nice one, I expected something much less meaty, like Peggle.

Now the game itself is a piece of shit, but you can't argue with free stuff.

ech, during the Dead Space for free giveaway there was a reddit thread about it and people were asking for battlefiend to be next. Origin representative that is quite active there said he "will ask about it". and here the next game was battlefield. ANd now on reddit the same representative is saying "your welcome" so yeah, i think it was basically a choice by demand.

Well to be fair, L4D2 and RO2 are still frequently played games and the latest in their series, whereas BF3 is one iteration old (I don't know about it's multiplayer so i can't say anything there) with half the maps and guns locked behind premium. and with AAAs shutting down their old servers at increasing rates, I doubt BF3 will survive the release of the next iteration.

Well, if we go by fair, BF3 is more popular than BF4 in terms of people playing and is stil lvery active. It is also considered by many to be the "Better of the two", so its not like they are throwing old crap here. Battlefield was never about singleplayer really, so judging it by that only does not give you the full picture.

Any application that installs with admin rights has the potential to bugger your system. Hell, I've got an old AMD system in the garage that was completely fucked by SecuROM from EA's Spore game back in 2008.

SecuROM was pure evil. However as far as admin priviledges goes, its microsofts fault really for not making the user priviledges adequate. when half of my problems NEED admin priviledges to function properly thats not really much of security your doing forcing (because on windows 7 and above you dont have a choice at all) you into inferior account that you have to go around and give everything admin priviledges anyway.

origin is really not bad. i personally had no issues with it. in fact, i at times prefer it a bit more than steam. already alone for the download speed. with steam it downloads between 600 to 800kbs. wile origin is over 800kbs, up to 2mbs.

Origin has gotten a lot better recently and they seem to be genuinely working towards making it good. From what me talking to one of their guys tells me is they are a semi-autonomi from EA and can work towards making things better for users.
They lie about download speeds though. Steam gives you actual download speed. Origin gives you unpacked file size speed. you download a file at 800kbps and then unpack it locally into game files which take more space than downloaded one, Steam reports the speed you download, Origin reports the size of unpacked files, thus it makes you look like you download faster but in reality your downloading the same and they just lie about it.

I just use a regular sentence.

Something like "This is my 1st password for Origin" should do the trick, but I agree, any enforcing of limits on a password just make it easier to bruteforce a difficult password.

wont work. password cannot be longer than 16 characters. because fuck security Origin wants everyone to make similar passwords.

 

[CpT_x_Killsteal]

Well to be fair, L4D2 and RO2 are still frequently played games and the latest in their series, whereas BF3 is one iteration old (I don't know about it's multiplayer so i can't say anything there) with half the maps and guns locked behind premium. and with AAAs shutting down their old servers at increasing rates, I doubt BF3 will survive the release of the next iteration.

Well, if we go by fair, BF3 is more popular than BF4 in terms of people playing and is stil lvery active. It is also considered by many to be the "Better of the two", so its not like they are throwing old crap here. Battlefield was never about singleplayer really, so judging it by that only does not give you the full picture.

Does it really have a larger population than BF4!?! if so then I might give it a shot. I played BF3 on my 360 and it was fun, even with the 12-a-side limit. I'm sure I can scrounge up premium somewhere cheap.

24 bucks. Eh, that's an alright price, especially since on origin it's $40 (higher price than the actual game itself I might add).

 

[Strazdas]

Does it really have a larger population than BF4!?! if so then I might give it a shot. I played BF3 on my 360 and it was fun, even with the 12-a-side limit. I'm sure I can scrounge up premium somewhere cheap.

24 bucks. Eh, that's an alright price, especially since on origin it's $40 (higher price than the actual game itself I might add).

according to this post it does:

BF3 as it happens is excellent and more populated than BF4 on PC, but really needs the DLC (since that's clearly the angle EA are taking here).

 

[fix-the-spade]

Does it really have a larger population than BF4!?!

according to this post it does:

Alright, numbers time!

Before it went free last week BF3 PC was tracking around 5'000 more players average and 20'000 more players than BF4 PC at peak times (Saturday, Sunday night).

Now that BF3 has gone free the difference has rather grown, right now (21:20gmt on Friday the 30th May 2014) there are 38'267 people playing BF4 PC, but (wait for it) 68'429 people on BF3 PC. I expect that difference will be even bigger by midnight Saturday,

The graphs of player numbers over time need a P_stats account to see, but the right now player numbers are freely available from BF3stats.com and BF4stats.com, go and have a look.

BF3 and 4 seem to have a BF2/2142 type relationship going on, there's more stuff in 4, but more problems to the point of it no longer being fun to play. BF3 is by no means perfect, but it's extremely playable and lot's of fun, so people are steadily abandoning 4 and going back to, just like what happened with 2142.