This afternoon, retailer Target, broke the street date (tomorrow) for the release of Battlefield 3 in Australia. This meant all other retailers with the game then placed the game on shelves more than 12 hours before the anticipated midnight launch.
After securing the Limited Edition PC version this afternoon, it’s now 5 hours later and I’m still unable to play the game. Post-installation of EA’s new Origin service (think Steam, but EA’s version), users receive an error at the log-in screen. While you can create an Origin account, you can’t sign into it, and therefore, cannot play the game.
This isn’t multiplayer we’re talking about, this is any part of the game. It turns out the Origin servers are tied to the activation servers and until the official street date arrives at midnight, gamers who selected the PC version are unable to play.
Mouse and keyboard have always been the tools of choice for first person shooters, but it seems in this instance, you don’t get faster response times. You don’t get anything, but an agonising wait for one of the most anticipated titles this year, to activate.
While your waiting, make sure you have the latest drivers for your NVidia or AMD Graphics Card.
Update
The EA Support page for Battlefield 3 shows the times around the world where Origin servers will go live. In Australia, it’ll be 12:01am (GMT +1). – https://help.ea.com/article/battlefield-3-pre-load-info
Update 2
After creating the 3rd account, it finally worked. The game is now installing, by downloading 11.1GB despite having the DVD in the drive.. go figure.
