Although everybody’s been enjoying a good bit of Armored Kill action on the games.on.net servers, there’s been more than a few cries for the gunship to be nerfed beyond recognition. DICE have heard your pleas, and released a server update yesterday that should take care of the issue.

Following the patch, gunships will now take even longer to move forward to a new base in Rush mode, upping the delay to 30 seconds from 15. Similarly, the delay between gunship re-spawns has been increased from 90 to 120 seconds in Rush mode, and the initial delay before a gunship spawns into a map has been vastly increased from 15 seconds to a full minute.

The patch also reduced the amount of damage the gunship takes from jet cannons, as well as stationary and mobile AA cannons, and fixes a number of bugs relating to squad leaders, the MK1A3′s flechette rounds, and Squad Rush bugs on Sharqi Peninsula. Click here for DICE’s explanation of why they’ve made the changes.

Source: Battlelog

Last night, vehicular Battlefield 3 expansion Armored Kill went live, baby — for PS3 owners, at least. Great news for rivetheads, but for those of us who don’t give a care, there is actually a reason to part with said singular care. With Armored Kill’s release comes an udderly massive swag of tweaks ‘n changes to the game proper. The list is long and those PC-centric UI fixes are very welcome, but here’s what immediately struck me in the cataracts with a totem pole…

The first step in the series of baby-steps that is the launch of Battlefield 3: Armored Kill was taken today, with its release to Premium members playing on the PS3.

To celebrate, a launch trailer has been released, like some sort of salt-based wound accessory. It shows gameplay from all four of the new maps that feature in the expansion — the expansion which, if you are an XBox or PC player and not a premium member, you won’t get for another two weeks. So enjoy the trailer!

Although the PS3 is getting a week of exclusivity out of the ‘Armored Kill’ DLC, the huge patch that will be accompanying it will be released to the PC at the same time on September 4. DICE have just released the details of the changes, and they’re quite extensive. There’s dozens of weapon tweaks, flares removed from gunner positions in helicopters, and much more — take a look below.

(more…)

DICE have released a new video showcasing their new map Alborz Mountain, designed for inclusion in the upcoming ‘Armored Kill’ expansion (available to BF3 Premium members on September 11 following a week of PS3 exclusivity). The developers have released a blog entry detailing their intentions behind the map and how they’ve gone about tweaking the terrain fidelity and creating the right amount of cover for the upcoming expansions’ vehicle heavy gameplay. Take a look at the video below.

Source: DICE

The details for the release of Battlefield 3‘s Armored Kill expansion have finally been settled and announced. If you’re itching to get your hands on this one, get yourself a PS3 and a BF3 Premium subscription, unfortunately — the first people to get their hands on it will be the Premium subscribers, with Playstation 3 players getting it on September 4. Premium users for the XBox 360 and PC will get a hold of it on September 11.

After this brief period of Premium-only access, the expansion will be released to the general public. Again, it will be hitting the PS3 significantly earlier on September 18, with the rest of us regular folk getting it on September 25.

Source: Battlefield.com

Here is a video full of new footage of Battlefield 3‘s upcoming Armored Kill DLC, courtesy of EA’s French division. Unfortunately a lot of the talking at the beginning is, as a result, in French. I hope that’s not too inconvenient for you! But in any case, there’s a lot of exciting new footage to look at, even if you don’t speak French. Or better yet, you could just skip to about the two-minute mark where they a) start speaking English and b) show the gameplay footage. Check it out below.

Battlefield 3‘s next digital expansion Armored Kill has a new gameplay trailer. The expansion will feature 5 new assignments and 4 new maps, but more than anything, more new vehicles than you can RP a G at. It will also feature a new game mode, Tank Superiority, “where heavy vehicles clash in order to control key areas”. I, for one, hope they mean ‘clash’ literally. Check out the neat new trailer below.

Stretching 1.9km between U.S. and Russian deployment zones, Battlefield 3‘s upcoming Bandar Desert map for the ‘Armored Kill’ DLC is being touted by DICE as the biggest in any Battlefield game to date – longer than Caspian Border and longer even than Fushe Pass from Battlefield 2.

“Should you count the distance between your spawned jet and the enemy spawned jet, you will end up with 2,400 meters on Bandar Desert,” writes DICE Designer Inge Jøran Holberg. “From the closest capturable flag to the furthest capturable flag, you are looking at around 1,200 meters. For Caspian Border, the equivalent distance is just about 400 meters.” Holberg also offers some tips for handling the extreme new open vistas in-game, so take a look.

Source: Battlefield Blog

Toby McCasker loves a bit of Battlefield 3, and the release of the Close Quarters DLC was a perfect excuse for him to call up the game’s Lead Designer, Niklas Fegraeus.

The upcoming ‘Armored Kill’ expansion, which aims to scale Battlefield 3 back to a game of tanks, jets, helicopters and smears-of-what-used-to-be-infantry, has been pegged for a September release window. ‘Armored Kill’ will follow this month’s ‘Close Quarters’ release, and then ‘End Game’ is expected to release sometime around the end of the year. More details will doubtless arrive in next week’s EA press conference at E3, where the leaked ‘Battlefield Premium’ service is also expected to be revealed.