We recently made the December Soldier Upgrade available for all of our Battlefield 3 Premium members. You should see them now in the game and here on Battlelog. The upgrade includes five weapon camos and five Assignments tied to one dog tag each. More details below. Happy hunting!

New weapon camos (instantly available):
M416 Airman Camo
ACW-R Tactical Camo
M240B Desert Stripe Camo
JNG-90 Berkut Camo
PP-19 Digital Woodland Camo

New Assignments/dog tags
You also get access to five new Premium exclusive Assignments, each one unlocking one new dog tag. These new Assignments are all listed under “Premium” on Battlelog. They are:

Battlescars


Get 25 knife kills
Get 50 kills with the SCAR-H
Get 50 kills with the SCAR-L
Unlocks: Battlescars dog tag

Fire in the hole!


Destroy 20 pieces of enemy equipment with the M67 grenade
Get 50 kills with the AT launchers
Unlocks: Fire in the hole! dog tag

Combat Medic


Revive 100 team mates
Revive 100 squad mates
Get 200 team heals
Get 200 squad heals
Unlocks: Combat Medic dog tag

Rambo


Get 20 kills in one round
Get 10 kills without dying
Get 5 multi-kills
Unlocks: Rambo dog tag

Silent Hunter


Get 50 kills with silenced MP443
Get 100 kills with the AS-VAL
Unlocks: Silent Hunter dog tag

A new server update rolled out last week for consoles and this morning for PC. Changes include the ability to tailor Gun Master mode to your liking. PC players have also received the latest game client update today. Full details below.

Server update change list
1) ADDED 5 NEW WEAPON LISTS TO GUN MASTER MODE

We’ve seen a lot of interesting discussions in the community on which order you want the weapons to appear in Gun Master mode – Now we are giving server admins the choice to decide between six different presets, each bringing a twist to this popular game mode in Close Quarters and Aftermath. The available weapon progressions are: Normal (default), Normal Reversed, Light Weight, Heavy Gear, Pistols Only, Snipers Heaven, US Arms Race, RU Arms Race and EU Arms Race.

Normal Reversed reverses the gun order but keeps the knife as the ending of the match. Light Weight is for players who love to play with PDW’s for a really fast paced round. Heavy Gear was added for the Assault and Support players out there wanting to only play with their favorite weapons – and to add a big bang we introduced the C4 just before the final knife kill requirement! Pistols Only is added for the pistol lovers, which also results in a bit of a slower paced version of Gun Master than the other lists. Snipers Heaven is for the skilled snipers out there wanting to prove their aim going from slow to medium paced games, ending with the new crossbow weapon that we’re bringing in from our latest expansion pack Aftermath. US Arms Race, RU Arms Race, and EU Arms Race all have unique weapon progressions focused only on weapons manufactured in each respective region.

We hope you will enjoy these new Gun Master options. Let us know what you think in the comments below!

2) NEW QUICK MATCH FUNCTIONALITY
It is now possible to Quick Match into Hardcore and Infantry Only servers on PC.

3) <4 PLAYERS = PREROUND
Servers where the number of players drop below 4 will go back to a pre-round state. Note that you will not lose any progression because of this – the current round will end, but a Battle Report will be sent as normal before the server goes into the pre-round state.

4) M-COM DISARM EXPLOIT FIXED
We now limit the number of times you can get scores for arming and disarming M-COM stations to 6 times per 180 seconds. This is to prevent people from taking turns on arming/disarming the M-COM stations to artificially boost their stats.

Matchmaking – How does it work?
There has been some confusion as to how our Quick Match matchmaking system works. We’ll try to clear that up below.

For your server to receive players from the Quick Match matchmaking system it needs to fulfill these requirements:

1) The server max player count must not differentiate more than 25% from any preferred game mode player count in your rotation. For example: A server that has Conquest Large (64 players) and Tank Superiority (24 players) in the same rotation cannot fulfill this requirement and will therefore not receive players from the Quick Match matchmaking system.

2) You need to be running the Normal preset on a console server and Normal, Hardcore or Infantry only on PC servers.

3) Game mode ticket count must be between 50% and 1,000%.

PC players can check if their server will receive matchmaking traffic with the RCON command: serverinfo (the last Boolean tells you whether it’s enabled or not). In addition to being match-makeable, your server will also need to have at least one player joined for the matchmaking system to send any Quick Matching players to it.

PC client update live
Today, we also rolled out the latest game update for PC. This is the same game update that console players received last week, featuring a number of tweaks and fixes. You can see the full change list in this earlier News post.

Today we rolled out a small update to Battlelog with some tweaks and fixes, mainly focused on dog tag presentations. Full details below.

Battlelog December 3 change list
Fixed the Scavenger mode Battle Reports to properly display team information

Restored previous dog tag sorting order as the alphabetical sorting introduced in the last Battlelog update was unintentional

Fixed dog tag “Expansions” filter not showing Aftermath dog tags

Added an “ALL” button to the new dog tag filter options for the “Types” selection. Known issue: The Premium and Expansion filter options do not return all the dog tags associated with this filter — This will be resolved in a later Battlelog update

Fixed homepage CO-OP button that was not working as intended

Fixed chat window boxes not getting proper focus when opening them

Fixed some weapons showing as locked with a negative unlock score amount left (some weapons might still have this behavior – we are working on a fix)

Thanks to our entire community for pulling all the plugs in our latest dog tag challenge! You all worked together on all three platforms to successfully achieve a massive 6.66 million base captures in Armored Kill!

As a reward, we have now unlocked the bonus “Trolling” dog tag for you in the game. As you read this, you should be able to see and equip the dog tag in Battlefield 3. If you’re a PS3 Premium member, bring it to the post earthquake environments of Battlefield 3: Aftermath, available to you today! (Xbox 360 and PC Premium members will get acess to Aftermath on December 4)

Battlefield 3: Aftermath is rolling out today for our PS3 Premium members! Check out the launch trailer below, featuring gameplay footage from all four maps.

Aftermath goes live for PS3 Premium members the following times (these are standard publishing time slots used by Sony):

In Europe: Nov 27 4-8 PM GMT
In the US: Nov 27 4-8 PM PST
In Japan/Asia: Nov 28 10 AM-2 PM JST

Make sure you accept the latest game patch, then download Aftermath from the in-game store or PlayStation Store at no extra charge if you are a PS3 Premium member. Then give Scavenger mode and the new crossbow a spin and let us know what you think in the comments below!

UPDATE: For Xbox 360 and PC Premium members, Aftermath will be available on December 4.