Battlefield 3: Back to Karkand Release Dates Confirmed

Sharqi Peninsula (Back to Karkand)The Back to Karkand expansion for Battlefield will be released on December 13th for PC (and Xbox 360), EA and DICE confirmed today.

In an inexpicable move, PlayStation 3 owners get the expansion one week early, on the 6th of December. With EA running the show, money is everything I guess, but if the expansion is as good as hoped, I guess we can wait one more week?

Preorders included the Back to Karkand expansion pack, while others will have to buy it separately.

EA / DICE also announced that five new Trophies will be available for Back to Karkand:

  • Complete Warrior (Silver)
    Get a kill with the following weapons in a single life: Rifle, Jet, Tank
  • Third Tour (Bronze)
    Get a kill with the new APC, Desert Buggy, and STOVL fighter jet
  • Gunslinger (Bronze)
    Get 10 kills with all B2K weapons
  • Like a Boss! (Silver)
    Get a kill with the skid loader
  • Jaws (Bronze)
    Take a swim in the pool at the Oman hotel

 

Battlefield 3: Mythbusters – Myth Busting “Marathon”

All five Battlefield 3 Myth Busting videos for your enjoyment!

Battlefield 3: 22. November Update Patch Notes

Client-Side Changes:

Visuals, Stability and Performance Fixes:

• General performance and loading time improvements
• “Black Screen” fix for an issue occurring on some PC Configurations
• Stereo and Rendering Support for Nvidia and AMD Graphics Cards
• Adjusted the “stuttering” encountered on some PC configurations.
• Fixed several Crashes when joining MP and Co-Op sessions
• Fixed multiple problems when using multiple monitors (Eyefinity / Surround).
• Fixed visual corruption issues on certain Nvidia Cards
• Improved loading times for certain textures
• Added console command “GameTime.MaxVariableFps” to limit max FPS
• Added console command “UI.DrawEnable” to hide UI for screenshots / videos

Balance and Gameplay Adjustments (PC)

• Fixed a problem with high speed mouse movement
• Added back some missing Growlers on Kharg Island Conquest Large
• Added back EOR sound for SQDM and TDM
• You should no longer be able to damage a friendly vehicle when sitting in an open position
• Grenades now drop to ground if you get killed while attempting to throw it
• Spawn protection now should work in Conquest. You should no longer spawn on points too close to enemies
• You should no longer spawn too close to enemies in TDM and SQDM
• Combat areas on Kharg Rush tweaked in order to disallow defenders to access the carrier ship after 1st base is taken and being able to enter the AA gun
• Fixed a problem with revived players not suffering suppression
• Fixed a problem with the camera when being revived in COOP
• Added joystick deadzone setting
• Fixed sound for when climbing ladders
• Fixed an issue with some weapon sounds in first person
• Fixed a swim sound loop error
• Increased the damage of Helicopter Miniguns, AA guns, and Jet Cannons against infantry
• Increased the damage of Helicopter Miniguns against jeeps.
• Reduced the physics impact of AA guns and Jet Cannons, players under attack from these weapons should no longer lose control.
• Increased the damage of the 44 Magnum slightly.
• Increased the range and minimum damage of the .357 Round from the MP412 Rex.
• Increased the range of all .45cal and 9mm weapons.
• Slightly increased the range of the P90 and MP7 and PDW-R.
• Slightly increased the range of the 5.56mm PDW-R and decreased the minimum damage at long range.
• Slightly increased the minimum range of the Mk11, SVD, and M39 EMR 7.62mm rifles.
• Decreased the maximum damage and maximum range of the G3 and SCAR-H 7.62mm weapons.
• Reduced the damage from FIM-92 and SA-18 IGLA missiles against aircraft.
• Increased the damage and range of the 40mm BUCK rounds.
• Reduced the damage .50cal weapons do against Helicopters.
• Updated T90 canister shell tweaks to match Abrams canister shells

UI Changes (PC)

• Added round duration and ticket summary at EOR
• Advanced squad polish – should be more intuitive
• Significant changes to the Join Squad functionality (see below)
• Fixed a problem regarding keybindings while playing
• You should now get a better error message when being disconnected via Battlelog

Server Update Highlights:

• EOD Bot exploit fix
• Several crash fixes
• Anti-stat padding measures taken, disallowing ranked servers to run obscure settings
• Improved team kill kick configuration
• Support for unranked servers. Unranked servers do not report players’ scores to Battlelog, but server administrators can freely control all settings

Share your profile and stats with new Battlelog functionality

• Ability to share your Profile and Stats pages to Facebook, Google+, and Twitter
• User Profile and Stats pages on Battlelog can now be accessed without being signed in to Battlelog if you know a user’s URL
• Single sign on from Battlelog to Origin. If you’re not logged in to Origin and join a game server, Battlelog will automatically sign you in to Origin in the background and join the game server

Quick notes on Squad changes in the Nov 22 update

• Removed FIND ME A SQUAD option
• Allow players to join empty Squads alone, thus having 1/4 squad members
• Change order of options to LEAVE SQUAD, INV A FRIEND, SWITCH TEAM
• Disable Privacy flag when 1 man squad
• Reset Privacy flag from Private to Public when squad drops to 1 player
• All occupied Squads will now show up colored blue on the Squad Selection screen
• Players who choose not to join squads will also show up as Blue in the “Not in a Squad” line
• Squads that are currently empty will display as white — if you wish to join an empty Squad, you can choose the first one marked with white text
 

ASUS Sabertooth X79 Qualified Vendors List

In case you’re looking for some compatible memory modules that are confirmed to work on the ASUS Sabertooth X79 motherboard, the Qualified Vendors List (QVL) can be found below, as well as a quick overview of possible memory configurations.

Download the PDF version:
ASUS Sabertooth X79 Qualified Vendors List

 

So, what’s this new Intel X79 you speak of?

Last week was the official launch of the Intel X79 platform from Intel, featuring the new LGA-2011 CPU socket. This is the new “enthusiast” platform taking over for LGA-1366.

If you want to learn more about the new Intel X79 platform, Sandy Bridge-E and LGA-2011 socket from Intel, and maybe learn a bit about overclocking with this new hardware, check out this webinar posted by Corsair (of course biased towards Corsair’s own products, but I’m not at all ashamed to say I’m a fan of their products):

Battlefield 3: Back to Karkand Assignments Explained

For the Back to Karkand expansion, DICE are introducing “assignments”. Now we know that each assignment you complete unlocks a new weapon. Both the assignments feature and new weapons will be available on both vanilla and Back to Karkand maps to everyone who has the expansion pack installed.

There will be 10 different assignments, all with different situational or kit-based requirements. For example, “Let it rain” requires 20 Light Machine Gun kills and 2 mortar kills, whick unlocks the QBB-95.

By looking at the official  screenshot below, we now have confirmation that the previously posted “unconfirmed” weapons list was indeed correct. That weapons list has now been updated to reflect this new information.

Battlefield 3 Back to Karkand Assignments Explained

Also, here’s a new official Back to Karkand gameplay teaser video from DICE: