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Mass Effect 3, Battlefield 3 Launch Dates Announced
Electronic Arts used their E3 press conference to show off a number of upcoming games and provide release dates for a few of them. BioWare's Mass Effect 3 is due out March 6th, 2012, at which time Commander Shepherd will return to defend earth from the Reapers. Battlefield 3 is closer to launch, currently planned for October 26th, with a beta in September. Some new video clips of the game are available. Star Wars: The Old Republic got impressive new trailers, but not many hard details (though they did talk about raiding not long ago). Gamespot's liveblog of the event has more information about the various presentations, including snippets on Need for Speed: The Run, FIFA 12, The Sims Social for Facebook, and Curt Shilling's Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, which is planned for next year.
From what I have read BF3 will be micro payment hell, where you have to pay real money to get each and every weapon upgrade.
Sure you're not confusing it with the completely unrelated Battlefield Play4Free, modelled after Battlefield Heroes but with the BF2 engine and maps?
Call of duty 3 looks like it will have a monthly fee to play online without a handicap.
No handicap. The Elite subscription fee gets you access to (pretty extensive) online stats tracking and bonus content, but the info I've read is really specific that not subscribing will not handicap you in any way. It sounds like your fear is that there will be weapons/perks available only to paying subscribers, but all the info I've found specifically says that won't be the case. I expect the subscribers will get goodies like weapon and player skins, and possibly deals on the DLC.
Can't speak for BF 3 though. If indeed they set up a system for paying real world money for weapon upgrades I expect people will freak. One of the early and lesser played XBox titles Chromehounds had that and people hated it.
I can only assume you meant CoD: MW3, since CoD3 came out six or so years ago for original XBox...
Also until I really read that some place I'm going to have a hard time believing any developer would cripple their flagship franchise like that.
"UNIX is very simple, it just needs a genius to understand its simplicity." -Dennis Ritchie
Ya I've heard nothing of the "pay for each weapon" thing in BF3. Of course nothing is final till it is out but from the sounds of it it'll be very much like past Battlefield games in the you pay for the game and that is that. Servers are separate, not provided by EA, and are up to individuals to buy from hosting companies as they wish.
Now I'm sure there'll be DLC, but I can't imagine it'll be as you talk about. In Bad Company 2, the current BF game, there have been two DLC packs. One was fairly cheap, $5ish, and added new weapons and looks. However the weapons were just reskins of existing weapons. It was 100% optional, just for people that wanted it, not needed for gameplay. The other was Vietnam, which was a $20ish expansion pack. That introduced a new game, where you played with new weapons, levels, and so on, but didn't affect the original game at all. You could buy it and play if you wanted, or continue to play the original.
BF3 sounds similar, doesn't sound like they are going to try to nickle and dime you.