Today, May the 12th marks the first Double XP weekend for Battlefield 3, a game that has been on store shelves since October. While Battlefield 3's biggest competition Call of Duty tends to announce Double XP weekends at least once a month -- although its Mass Effect 3 that seems to be doing that nowadays -- this is the first weekend that DICE's popular shooter has offered double the experience.

Typically a multiplayer shooter offers Double XP within the same week that a highly anticipated piece of DLC releases, but many of those offerings, like the Back to Karkand pack, have come and gone. Now fans are looking to the Close Quarters Combat pack as the next exciting piece of additional content, but that doesn't release for another couple weeks.

In all honesty, this Double XP weekend is a real head-scratcher, and has us wondering what EA has been thinking putting such an event off for so long. Initial enthusiasm for the game was almost at a fever pitch, but now that the bugs and the server connection problems have reared their heads, there is less of a desire to log in — no matter how engaging the experience might be.

Perhaps this Double XP weekend is just a dress rehearsal for the many that are to follow — the many that will accompany upcoming DLC releases like the aforementioned CQC map pack, which is followed by the Armored Kill pack and the appropriately titled End Game expansion pack. It won't take much to get Battlefield 3 players back online with DLC out in the wild, but a little extra XP couldn't hurt.

Nonetheless it's hard to overlook some extra experience, a commodity so precious that DICE has begun selling it through "booster packs," and undoubtedly fans will come back. It's just a shame that this type of event wasn't offered sooner, or in connection with something new.

Will you be returning to Battlefield 3 for this Double XP weekend? Was it too little too late for an event like this?