The big Battlefield 3 question: is the Battlelog worthwhile?

Just yesterday I was waiting for the Battlefield 3 beta servers to come back up, and I spent a lot of that looking around the official servers. While the "OMG, server is down!' thread was growing at the rate of about about two pages every 30 seconds (mostly folks either panicking or trying to calm the panic, with a liberal dash of idiocy), I also discovered something rather interesting.

A lot of people are really hating the Origin/Battlelog combo. I call this surprising because, for once, I'm not having any issues at all. In fact, I'm finding Battlelog in particular to be a smooth and largely effective browser application.

Normally, if there's a bug to be had, I'll get it. It must be some kinda of karmic balance to make up for the fact I don't pay for games. But right now, I'm finding the entire BF3 beta experience to be quite smooth. Yeah, it is annoying now having yet another game service I have to open up, but it's at least a smooth experience - as smooth as Steam, for sure. 

And yeah, it might be seen as curious to have to open up your web browser (and then install a browser app, which isn't particularly well-communicated, I'll admit), but my browser's pretty much always open anyway. More importantly, though, it's fast - far faster than Bad Company 2's game browser, and the Battlelog functionality in pretty impressive. I've never been too involved in tracking stats, but with BF3's impressive amount of upgrade and unlocks, it's always nice to be able to find out what I can work toward next.

At the end of the day, though, it's Battlelog's low impact that I appreciate most. Modern browsers are designed to operate quietly and efficiently, and it's certainly a smoother experience than many server browsers. It's easy to simply ignore all the clutter of social networking and KDR info and jump straight into a game. I don't even mind the way the game opens in Windowed Mode. It seemed odd and more than a little broken at first, but I barely notice it now. It makes sense, too, as the Battlelog interface features a lot of drag and drop functionality for adding friends into games - by opening the game itself in a window you can keep fiddling about with invites, and get into the game when you're ready.

Unsurprisingly, there's a lot of folks in the office giving the game ago, and there's certainly one guy who's having a really tough time of it - our video guy, and writer of BF3 vs CoD, Josh Lundberg. He's having launching issues, and he makes a really good point about the game's current division of labour.

"I love the idea of the content [in Battlelog], that’s great. But BF2 had all the stats built in and they’ve all had the server browser built in, so why change it?" he asks. "It also means when things go wrong it is way harder to diagnose. I don’t know if its Origin, the browser, the plugin running Battlelog, my connection or the game itself... I had major issues with it."

"I did" he went on to tell me, "have Battlelog launch the game, but only run it as a background task – not launch or even appear on the taskbar – but it was there using up RAM and CPU, but I couldn’t get in. And I had no way of knowing where the problem was coming from because I’m not using one piece of software, I’m using four."

How's your experience of Origin and Battlelog? Like mine, and pretty seamless, or like Josh's? While you're pondering, check out this new trailer to see the system in action for yourself if you're not already in the beta.