EA is planning to launch a "Premium" service for Battlefield 3 that's sounding a lot like what Activision did with their Elite service in Modern Warfare 3. News of the membership came to light via a leaked fact sheet out of Germany but don't brush this aside as another baseless rumor; EA has confirmed that Battlefield Premium will be announced on June 4.
The one-time fee of $50 will grant players access to the five released expansion packs as well as two weeks early access to future packs and the ability to reset stats. There's also another member perk that Joystiq describes as "pretty gross."
According to the leaked document, premium members will get queue priority into servers. That's right, if you pay $50 you essentially get to skip the line when trying to join a game. Meanwhile everyone else is pushed further down the queue list. It will be interesting to see how this plays out - depending on how many gamers sign up for the premium service, this could either be a non-issue or potentially generate lot of hatred from Joe Gamer.
The idea of bundling all of the expansion packs into a single purchase actually saves gamers a bit of money in the long run. The model has proven successful with the Call of Duty franchise as it has amassed 2 million paying subscribers.
EA has confirmed the existence of the Premium service on Twitter and says that users should check out Battlefield.com on June 4 for more info. This date just happens to coincide with the company's E3 press conference so there's a possibility that they could launch the service on the same day.