DICE's highly anticipated shooter Battlefield 3 will open up for testing in the coming weeks, the series' community manager Daniel Matros recently explained. There will be two trials: a "highly tech focused", invite-only alpha trial, and a more open beta trial for those who purchased a special-labeled copy of Medal of Honor Limited Edition.
The closed Alpha test is already underway and available only to a lucky few. DICE says it won't be distributing download codes on social networks at this stage, but those who want to improve their chances of being called upon, can sign up to the Battle field newsletter here and make sure that their 'Veteran status' is up to date – for this you need to login to your EA account and link at least two previously purchased Battlefield games to your account.
The Beta phase will begin in September, and as mentioned above, access is guaranteed to anyone who purchased a copy of Medal of Honor Limited Edition with the "Battlefield 3 - Early Access Included" sticker on the box. Owners of that version will receive an invitation via a newsletter so be sure to opt in on your EA Profile.
The full game will be released for the PlayStation 3, the Xbox 360, and Windows on October 25, 2011 in North America and October 28, 2011 in Europe. There's been a bit of a controversy with news that the game might not be available for purchase on Valve's popular Steam platform, but that hasn't slowed down interest in the game. According to EA, Battlefield 3 pre-orders are currently at 10 times those of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 at the same time prior to release.