There will be a small update for BF3 PC gamers on February 14th at 8am UTC (3am EST). The patch will improve stability, performance as well as fix a couple crash issues.



Please note that this is NOT the "big patch" that everyone has been anticipating for February. A larger patch should be released or at least announced at some point in the next couple weeks.

During a discussion of Q3 2012 earnings, Electronic Arts' VP of investor relations Peter C. Ausnit stated, "...you’re going to hear some announcements from us on Battlefield actually as early as next week in an event we’ve got in New York."

From the same discussion: "...we've got plans for all of our major franchises to turn them into more of as we're seeing with FIFA and with Battlefield more as games for service that have constant flow of downloadable content."

Although nothing has been confirmed yet by EA, rumors of an American map pack are flying around Battlefield/gaming sites as well as Twitter.

Stay tuned!

Sparta Gaming now has a new 32 slot BF3 server located in Chicago, Illinois and hosted by Branzone Inc.



Discussion regarding the new server can be found here.

If you find yourself being kicked by PunkBuster after ~5 minutes of gameplay, the BF3 dev team says, "it is likely to be caused by PunkBuster not being updated or timing out". Instructions on how to kill the PB processes and update them manually can be found HERE.

DICE is also asking for help from anyone that is familiar with packet capturing program Wireshark. Run a capture while you are playing/being disconnected, upload your wireshark log to a file sharing site like Mediafire, then send the link to community manager zh1nt0. This will help them better understand what is causing the issue.

DICE community manager zh1nt0 has hinted on Twitter that there is something in the works for Battlefield 3 fans. Could it be another patch? More DLC? We'll find out soon I guess!



In other news, EA has acknowledged the issues PC players have been experiencing with the latest Punkbuster release. Before you resort to their solution (avoid PB enabled servers), try manually updating your Punkbuster client files. Download them here and place them in the following folder:

C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\PunkBuster\BF3\pb\htm