EA penalises its existing customers; nobody cares

To follow up from my last babblings on the scourge of expansion packs and unfair advantages, EA/DICE has really put the cat amongst the pigeons with the release of BF3 Premium.

I bought BF3 premium because I view £40 for 5 expansion packs as a reasonable price (even if I already own Back to Karkand and don’t receive a discount or extra copy, ala Steam). However, read about the other features and you’ll notice the following blurb,

Queue Priority

Get priority when queuing for your favorite game server. Queue priority lets you get quicker into the game (VIPs will still go first).

Read this and think about what it actually means. You, the existing, non-premium customer, are being actively penalised through no fault of your own.

A mere 7 months ago, you spent £30 to £40 of your hard-earned money, but now you’re a second class citizen because you’re not willing to spend even more. This is not a case of players with the base game being unable to utilise new content/maps/guns etc., it is a case of a whole tier of customers being treated with contempt, and for what? To add an extra bullet point on the marketing blurb.

Why the hell should somebody who paid an extra £40 be given the nod ahead of you when joining a vanilla BF3 server? Somebody on the BF3 forums used an excellent analogy – everybody knows it is rude to jump the queue (or to use an Americanism, to “cut in line”).

I often play on heavily contended servers with queues containing 3 or more players – without premium there’s every chance that several premium players could repeatedly knock me down the queue, potentially indefinitely. “Your game is important to us, please hold the connection”.

I don’t often unleash a polemic about something, but this is what is technically known as, “total bullshit”.

It sets a worrying precedent. I hope EA/DICE reconsider this decision and show their customers more respect.