Played it this weekend.
I put maybe six hours into it this weekend.
Meh. Nothing amazing. Graphics were fine but not what I was expecting. Both the graphics and gameplay seemed to be better than Bad Company 2.
The alpha (at least) had no Commander option. Classes were different than BF2 and the guns didn't seem to be as connected to the gaming experience as BF2. Lots of insta-kills though knife kills are slower than say, COD. Machine gun kills halfway across a map were common. Smaller issues were things like having trouble getting over curbs, walking through chunks of concrete and branches, getting stuck on pebbles, confused maps, invisible walls (probably an alpha thing?), and way too much in the way of smoke, drifting paper, dust, leaves, etc. It was neat but after the initial cool factor wore off it was just annoying. In general the whole experience felt like you were playing a game not like you were in the game.
As it is, and I am sure it is far from finished, it didn't feel like much of a successor to BF2.
The Origin interface was a mixture between a browser window and their installed interface. If this interface is the only option for playing BF3, there is no way I would purchase the game.
I think they intend on forcing Origin on all future EA game customers. No thanks. I can live without EA and Origin. With the possible exception of ME3.