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The Death of a Legacy - Battlefield 1942 - Battlefield 2142
Battlefield 1942, BF42, was the first of its kind. A first person shooter (FPS) that allowed the player to not only run around shooting people, but allowed them to use just about anything in the game. From a tank, a ship, a sub, a jeep, anti-aircraft stations, mines, dynamite to an airplane the possibilities were limited only to a few simple rules: Stay in the map boundaries and learn to fly on your own time not while in a public server with an active game.
EA, the publisher for the Battlefield Series, and Dice, the developer of the series, were at the top of their game when they released BF42. With the much beloved Medal of Honor series (MOH), also published by EA, still running hot and fast in the gaming communities EA needed something big, like BF42, to show that MOH was not where they would stop... not even close.
As the title indicates, BF42 is a WWII war simulator. Most people still refer to it as a FPS, but there is not another FPS that simulates the actual feel of real combat control like BF42 did. The player not only had to worry about being shot by an enemy troop, but had to retaliate, unsuccessfully more times than not, against the likes of 20mm shells being lobbed on a beach from a destroyer, a tank cresting a hill or rounding a corner or a dive bombing zero, or worse yet a carpet bombing B17, raining 250 pound bombing from above. These were not the tell-tale-signs of a FPS, but of a war simulator.
BF42 was not perfect on it's initial release by any means. Many bugs in the game, both single and multi-player, presented quite a bit of frustration for players. But what could someone expect from such a ground breaking all-inclusive game? Some issues like player's using det-packs to launch themselves up cliff faces (friendly fire off of course), balance issues, and even connectivity issues plagued the game. But as the game matured, through patches, it grew in popularity and the entertainment value became more rock solid. Each patch provided more content and better improvements for the game.
Soon came one of the most underrated expansion packs, for any game, ever released. Battlefield 1942: Road to Rome (RTR) was in many gamer's opinions better than BF42. Maps, like Operation Husky, were far superior in playability and shear entertainment value than any of the BF42 maps. RTR also included new vehicles, aircraft, armor and concepts.
RTR also opened some new doors to the modding community. While there had been mods for BF42 a while before RTR came out, they were nothing more than a few skin packs, sound packs and realism mods with weapon modifications. RTR opened the conceptual door for modders around the world to make their own vehicles, planes, maps and game types.
Next from EA/Dice was another expansion pack called Battlefield 1942: Secret Weapons of WWII. In this expansion pack EA tried to provide some advanced concepts to the WWII genre. These concepts were not received well by the gaming community as most of them had already been done, and in most cases done better, by some mods in early beta. Action Battlefield (AB) already had a jet pack, flame thrower and even included a nuclear det packs and bombs (dropped from the B17) which still has not been attempted by another modder since. A fairly well known mod at the time, called Desert Combat (DC), had already attacked helicopters and jets. Secret weapons was too little to late and for all intents and purposes died the day it was born.
Unbeknownst by EA at the time, DC was about to put the expansion packs out of business for good. With DC being released in Beta 3.5, for free, it was played more than all of the other mods and expansion packs combined. Eventually more servers were hosting dedicated DC games than plain old vanilla BF42 games. The mod was so popular that It didn't take long for a new BF42 gamers to find out about DC and they were instantly hooked and rarely if ever looked back.
What made DC so popular, besides the entertainment value of the mod and the fact that it was absolutely free of charge, was the developers solicited feedback from the community for improvements to the mod. To top that off the developers used that feedback to build their next release of the mod. The gaming community was ecstatic to have their ideas for improvement actually used and not ignored.
Trauma Studios, the developers behind DC, destroyed any future money earnings EA/Dice had left in BF42 Expansion Pack business. The community loved DC and servers that didn't host DC were almost always empty, even the beloved RTR servers. It didn't take long for EA to realize the potential income loss in any future expansion packs.
Not long after the sucess of DC hit it's peak, a new mod was released in Beta 1. The mod was called Eve of Destruction (EOD) and hit the scene in a big way. The Vietnam Era mod had gamers scrambling to download their copies.
Before EOD Beta 3 could be released, EA responded with the announcement of a new game title called Battlefield Vietnam (BFV). EA touted a new vegetation system to allow for dense jungle growth, playable music from the era (as well as custom MP3 soundtracks) and realistic weapon systems. This announcement killed nearly all interest in EOD, but the developers pushed forward in hope to release a final version before BFV could hit the market.
Another BF42 mod squashed by the EA jauggernaut was the Star Wars mod. Soon after the announcement of the Beta 1 release (which was missing a lot of content) of this mod, the announcement of Lucas Arts' Star Wars Battlefront came. Using the BFV Engine this game was seen as the only hope for a space based war simulator, though most fans of BF42 and BFV were not into the space combat genre. The strategy seemed to work because the Star Wars MOD only released a few more Betas and was never heard from again.
BFV came to the market amidst mixed reviews. The game was beautiful, fun and challenging. At the same time the game had several issues, many of which were similar to the issues BF42 had in its first release, and some were new.
These persistent issues, such as using det-packs to launch yourself in the air and unbalanced weapons, and the infamous ability to see an enemy through bushes caused a huge uproar in the community. The fact that EA failed to deliver on several promises in their earlier marketing campaigns, like the promise of a working weather system and fully operational tunnels provided more than enough fodder for the community to start a campaign to get it fixed.
EA's failure to deliver working tunnels and a weather system into the game engine appeared to be a direct result of their desire to beat the BF42 EOD mod to market. EA's ability to sell a Vietnam-era Battlefield would have been all but killed if EOD could beat them to market and EOD was close to being completed.
Complaints were posted in forums around the internet that EA failed to get it right. Expectations were high and EA failed to meet them. EA responded with a patch, 1.1, to BFV which addressed some weapons balancing issues, the det-pack launch pad issues, but still failed to provide any new maps or working features promised in the initial marketing campaign.
Word began spreading throughout the community that several of the popular BF42 mods were moving to release BFV versions to take advantage of many of the new features the BFV engine offered that the BF42 engine could not. Some of these mods included EOD, Dice City, Point of Existence and Forgotten Hope.
No official word came from Trauma Studios about their intent to port DC over to the BFV engine and there was good reason for that, but rumors abounded about when they would start work on the port.
Just when the community was ready for an official announcement from Trauma Studios, EA announced the 1.2 patch for BFV. The patch was a meager attempt to get the game fixed again. Shortly after the 1.2 release Trauma Studios announced that the .7 beta release of DC for BF42 was to be the last. They also informed the community that they had been purchased by Dice to work on a new Battlefield project called Battlefield 2 (BF2).
Although this was exciting news, it left the community wondering what would happen to their beloved DC mod and when the nxt patch for BFV would be released to finally fix it. The BFV community waited.
In the end, another development team took over the DC mod and released DC Final a month later. Although DC Final was a fine effort, the mod was not quite done. At this point the gaming communities focus turned towards the now upcoming release of BF2.
With BFV dead in the water and BF42 all but dead, due to old age and the incomplete final release of DC, the community struggled to keep their interest in the flailing Battlefield Series. Added to this struggle was the release of the highly anticipated Doom 3 (D3), followed closely with the constantly delayed release of Half-Life 2 (HL2) and the Counter Strike Source (CSS) mod. Both of these games provide a brief interruption of focus for the gaming community.
D3 failed, miserably, to provide a substantial and satisfying multi-player environment for gamers. Not only that, but D3's single player game bored many gamers after an hour of play due to its repetitive nature. HL2 on the other hand offered gamers not only a rich environment to interact with, but also a magnificent story line to follow.
What intrigued most of the fans of BF42 was CSS. CSS had the rich environment of HL2 with the fast pace of Unreal Tournament combined with the armament of DC. This made CSS a must play, at least until the hacking began a few hours after release.
Despite the prolific hacking, CSS was a main staple of any gamers appetite, but BF2 lingered in their minds. During this time many of the remaining die-hard fans of the Battlefield series continued to struggle with EA to provide another patch to BFV. Their cries fell on deaf ears as EA abandonned the community when they announced that all future development in the Battlefield series was focused on BF2. The community heard this loud and clear and took note.
The community continued playing a little BF42 and a variety of its mods and CSS. But all the time they watched as preview videos, screen shots and news releases of promised functionality were released by the marketing jaggernaut known as EA.
When BF2 hit the market in the summer of 2005, it hit like a raging typhoon. All of the pre-release hype, (commanders, ranks, weapon unlocks, artillery, supply drops, videos, new vehicles) helped feed the communities hunger the next best thing. Gamers clamored for a copy of the game, many having already pre-puchased it. They got their disks. They installed the game on their machines. They created their accounts. They logged in.
The game looked beautiful and played somewhat as expected. But, alas, there were, once again, some serious issues and missing features in the game and game play. Many of the issues were seen in the first release of previous titles, like BF42 and BFV. The community was astounded to see such a lack of attention paid to such well known issues.
Many of the marketing movies and screen shots EA released included vehicles, like the Blackhawk with missle racks, that never made it into the final version of the game. Most of these media clips also showed little to no fog in many of the map, a sore spot for many members of the community. Several features were also either missing or were not fully functional as well.
New issues, known to even a casual Battlefield gamer, included dolphin diving, red-tag bug, weapon unlock issues, weapons passing through targets, strict rules on running ranked servers (known as the ROE), the cost associated with running a ranked server and the ever persistent unbalanced weapons. Gamers responded quickly with flaming, nasty posts in forums. Some of the gamers even logged off the game vowing never to return. What changed in the gamer's mind?
This time it counted in the mind of the gamers. After the community was left holding the bag on their copy of the now defunct BFV they were bitter. The BFV wound was still bleeding and the BF2 issues were salt added for effect. The fact that all actions in BF2 earned points towards ranks, which unlocked better weapons, and the fact that many of the bugs in BF2 affected how fast you could get points to gain rank made the community unhappy to say the least. Gamers were finally fed up with spending $50+ for a game that was far from complete.
On top of that with the BFV fiasco still fresh in their minds, the community only expected the worse. The community was tired of being the Beta testers for a company that had stuck their noses up at them less than a year before. They finally had their fill of paying EA their hard earned money for that "privilage"
After the first two patches for BF2 several of the bugs that affected the game play, red-tag bug, unbalanced weapons, and others, were still not addressed. EA also released an expansion pack called Battlefield 2: Special Forces(SF) which was received with mixed luke-warm reviews at best. EA then changed their business model and release two more expansion packs, although they now called them booster packs, called Armored Fury (AF) and Euro Force (EF). The community was looking for EA to fix the issues with the core of the game not provide these "mods".
These packs, be it booster or expansion, were nothing more than mods for a game that was broke. The mods cost anywhere from $9.99 to $19.99, depending on if it was called an booster pack or expansion pack, respectively. After releasing these packs to a community struggling to deal with the ever-persistent bugs in BF2, the community rejected them for the most part. A few servers ran the packs as dedicated servers but only a few and only the SF servers were consistently populated.
These "packs" also acted to divide the gaming community. Those that played SF got extra medals, weapon unlocks, and points for new functionality in the game that was not offered in the vanilla version of BF2. This division, short lived as it was, created even more anamosity and resentment towards EA. Many in the community thought that these packs, especially SF, should have been included in the patches they released in conjunction with.
Soon after the "packs" came the announcement of an all new game, Battlefield 2142, a futuristic Battlefield; can you say Star Wars Battlefront 2 meets Mech Warrior? They had preview movies ready for their marketing launch letting gamers know EA is well on their way to being ready to release.
The community was mixed about this announcement. Some gamers made it clear that they want nothing to do with a "Star Wars Clone" claiming "Lasers are for Losers", even though BF2142 doesn't seem to include lasers as a weapon option, while others can't wait to drop another $50.
Certain factions in the community also made it clear that they wanted BF2 fixed before BF2142 would even be considered a viable option. This backlash is still happening today and continues to divide the community.
Then came the infamous 1.3 patch, which was expected to fix all the issues with BF2. During this time EA/Dice poured hours of resources to release all of these expansion packs and was directing resouces towards work on BF2142, they put very little thought, resources and efforts into fixing the bugs that make BF2 all but unplayable.
Community backlash was fierce. Not only did this patch fail to fix the previous bugs, it introduced new elements, like vehicle drops known as "cartillery", to the game, that were never requested. It also introduced new critical bugs like memory leak issues, random and not so random crashes to the desktop (CTD) and server crashes plus problems that affected the server browser interface. On top of all of that no enhancements actually requested by the gaming community were included.
The BF2 community roared in rants, posts and flames towards EA. EA listened, but it seemed too little too late. EA soon announced the release of the 1.4 Beta patch program. EA's intent was to have the gaming community test the patch before releasing it, much like Trauma Studio's Beta release/development of DC. The primary difference in EA's beta program and Trauma Studio's DC beta was that DC was free. Second each patch for DC actually included improvements, requested by the community, and fixed bugs from the previous release.
EA BF2 1.4 Beta 1 patch did not fix any bugs, at all. As a matter of fact more bugs became more prevalent. The game actually got worse as a result and the community was no longer disappointed they were pissed.
EA wasn't done yet. They released BF2 1.4 Beta 2. And again no existing bugs were fixed. CTDs still happened. Server crashes were as prevalent as ever and EA had the gull to added another two elements to the game; Infantry Only (IO) and a new map, neither of which were requested by the community. Added to this insult was the fact that even more new bugs appeared in the Beta 2 release.
EA, already in the brown creek without a paddle here, has proven time and again that they are unable to fix the serious issues with their products. In most cases of feedback from the beta testing, EA is outright refusing to provide many of the requested enhancements provided by the very community that provides their income. EA is unable and seemingly unwilling to provide the gaming experience they promised and the community has requested and paid for.
The lack of bug fixes, constant release of new "packs" and unrequested content and the shameless pimping of BF2142 is not only pushing gamers away from BF2, but it is making gamers re-evaluate EA's ability to deliver the best possible gaming experience. It would appear that EA has signed the certificate of death for a Legacy that had an enjoyable and memorable past and was looking to have bright future.
Goodbye Battlefield, we loved you dearly while you were here.
EA, the publisher for the Battlefield Series, and Dice, the developer of the series, were at the top of their game when they released BF42. With the much beloved Medal of Honor series (MOH), also published by EA, still running hot and fast in the gaming communities EA needed something big, like BF42, to show that MOH was not where they would stop... not even close.
As the title indicates, BF42 is a WWII war simulator. Most people still refer to it as a FPS, but there is not another FPS that simulates the actual feel of real combat control like BF42 did. The player not only had to worry about being shot by an enemy troop, but had to retaliate, unsuccessfully more times than not, against the likes of 20mm shells being lobbed on a beach from a destroyer, a tank cresting a hill or rounding a corner or a dive bombing zero, or worse yet a carpet bombing B17, raining 250 pound bombing from above. These were not the tell-tale-signs of a FPS, but of a war simulator.
BF42 was not perfect on it's initial release by any means. Many bugs in the game, both single and multi-player, presented quite a bit of frustration for players. But what could someone expect from such a ground breaking all-inclusive game? Some issues like player's using det-packs to launch themselves up cliff faces (friendly fire off of course), balance issues, and even connectivity issues plagued the game. But as the game matured, through patches, it grew in popularity and the entertainment value became more rock solid. Each patch provided more content and better improvements for the game.
Soon came one of the most underrated expansion packs, for any game, ever released. Battlefield 1942: Road to Rome (RTR) was in many gamer's opinions better than BF42. Maps, like Operation Husky, were far superior in playability and shear entertainment value than any of the BF42 maps. RTR also included new vehicles, aircraft, armor and concepts.
RTR also opened some new doors to the modding community. While there had been mods for BF42 a while before RTR came out, they were nothing more than a few skin packs, sound packs and realism mods with weapon modifications. RTR opened the conceptual door for modders around the world to make their own vehicles, planes, maps and game types.
Next from EA/Dice was another expansion pack called Battlefield 1942: Secret Weapons of WWII. In this expansion pack EA tried to provide some advanced concepts to the WWII genre. These concepts were not received well by the gaming community as most of them had already been done, and in most cases done better, by some mods in early beta. Action Battlefield (AB) already had a jet pack, flame thrower and even included a nuclear det packs and bombs (dropped from the B17) which still has not been attempted by another modder since. A fairly well known mod at the time, called Desert Combat (DC), had already attacked helicopters and jets. Secret weapons was too little to late and for all intents and purposes died the day it was born.
Unbeknownst by EA at the time, DC was about to put the expansion packs out of business for good. With DC being released in Beta 3.5, for free, it was played more than all of the other mods and expansion packs combined. Eventually more servers were hosting dedicated DC games than plain old vanilla BF42 games. The mod was so popular that It didn't take long for a new BF42 gamers to find out about DC and they were instantly hooked and rarely if ever looked back.
What made DC so popular, besides the entertainment value of the mod and the fact that it was absolutely free of charge, was the developers solicited feedback from the community for improvements to the mod. To top that off the developers used that feedback to build their next release of the mod. The gaming community was ecstatic to have their ideas for improvement actually used and not ignored.
Trauma Studios, the developers behind DC, destroyed any future money earnings EA/Dice had left in BF42 Expansion Pack business. The community loved DC and servers that didn't host DC were almost always empty, even the beloved RTR servers. It didn't take long for EA to realize the potential income loss in any future expansion packs.
Not long after the sucess of DC hit it's peak, a new mod was released in Beta 1. The mod was called Eve of Destruction (EOD) and hit the scene in a big way. The Vietnam Era mod had gamers scrambling to download their copies.
Before EOD Beta 3 could be released, EA responded with the announcement of a new game title called Battlefield Vietnam (BFV). EA touted a new vegetation system to allow for dense jungle growth, playable music from the era (as well as custom MP3 soundtracks) and realistic weapon systems. This announcement killed nearly all interest in EOD, but the developers pushed forward in hope to release a final version before BFV could hit the market.
Another BF42 mod squashed by the EA jauggernaut was the Star Wars mod. Soon after the announcement of the Beta 1 release (which was missing a lot of content) of this mod, the announcement of Lucas Arts' Star Wars Battlefront came. Using the BFV Engine this game was seen as the only hope for a space based war simulator, though most fans of BF42 and BFV were not into the space combat genre. The strategy seemed to work because the Star Wars MOD only released a few more Betas and was never heard from again.
BFV came to the market amidst mixed reviews. The game was beautiful, fun and challenging. At the same time the game had several issues, many of which were similar to the issues BF42 had in its first release, and some were new.
These persistent issues, such as using det-packs to launch yourself in the air and unbalanced weapons, and the infamous ability to see an enemy through bushes caused a huge uproar in the community. The fact that EA failed to deliver on several promises in their earlier marketing campaigns, like the promise of a working weather system and fully operational tunnels provided more than enough fodder for the community to start a campaign to get it fixed.
EA's failure to deliver working tunnels and a weather system into the game engine appeared to be a direct result of their desire to beat the BF42 EOD mod to market. EA's ability to sell a Vietnam-era Battlefield would have been all but killed if EOD could beat them to market and EOD was close to being completed.
Complaints were posted in forums around the internet that EA failed to get it right. Expectations were high and EA failed to meet them. EA responded with a patch, 1.1, to BFV which addressed some weapons balancing issues, the det-pack launch pad issues, but still failed to provide any new maps or working features promised in the initial marketing campaign.
Word began spreading throughout the community that several of the popular BF42 mods were moving to release BFV versions to take advantage of many of the new features the BFV engine offered that the BF42 engine could not. Some of these mods included EOD, Dice City, Point of Existence and Forgotten Hope.
No official word came from Trauma Studios about their intent to port DC over to the BFV engine and there was good reason for that, but rumors abounded about when they would start work on the port.
Just when the community was ready for an official announcement from Trauma Studios, EA announced the 1.2 patch for BFV. The patch was a meager attempt to get the game fixed again. Shortly after the 1.2 release Trauma Studios announced that the .7 beta release of DC for BF42 was to be the last. They also informed the community that they had been purchased by Dice to work on a new Battlefield project called Battlefield 2 (BF2).
Although this was exciting news, it left the community wondering what would happen to their beloved DC mod and when the nxt patch for BFV would be released to finally fix it. The BFV community waited.
In the end, another development team took over the DC mod and released DC Final a month later. Although DC Final was a fine effort, the mod was not quite done. At this point the gaming communities focus turned towards the now upcoming release of BF2.
With BFV dead in the water and BF42 all but dead, due to old age and the incomplete final release of DC, the community struggled to keep their interest in the flailing Battlefield Series. Added to this struggle was the release of the highly anticipated Doom 3 (D3), followed closely with the constantly delayed release of Half-Life 2 (HL2) and the Counter Strike Source (CSS) mod. Both of these games provide a brief interruption of focus for the gaming community.
D3 failed, miserably, to provide a substantial and satisfying multi-player environment for gamers. Not only that, but D3's single player game bored many gamers after an hour of play due to its repetitive nature. HL2 on the other hand offered gamers not only a rich environment to interact with, but also a magnificent story line to follow.
What intrigued most of the fans of BF42 was CSS. CSS had the rich environment of HL2 with the fast pace of Unreal Tournament combined with the armament of DC. This made CSS a must play, at least until the hacking began a few hours after release.
Despite the prolific hacking, CSS was a main staple of any gamers appetite, but BF2 lingered in their minds. During this time many of the remaining die-hard fans of the Battlefield series continued to struggle with EA to provide another patch to BFV. Their cries fell on deaf ears as EA abandonned the community when they announced that all future development in the Battlefield series was focused on BF2. The community heard this loud and clear and took note.
The community continued playing a little BF42 and a variety of its mods and CSS. But all the time they watched as preview videos, screen shots and news releases of promised functionality were released by the marketing jaggernaut known as EA.
When BF2 hit the market in the summer of 2005, it hit like a raging typhoon. All of the pre-release hype, (commanders, ranks, weapon unlocks, artillery, supply drops, videos, new vehicles) helped feed the communities hunger the next best thing. Gamers clamored for a copy of the game, many having already pre-puchased it. They got their disks. They installed the game on their machines. They created their accounts. They logged in.
The game looked beautiful and played somewhat as expected. But, alas, there were, once again, some serious issues and missing features in the game and game play. Many of the issues were seen in the first release of previous titles, like BF42 and BFV. The community was astounded to see such a lack of attention paid to such well known issues.
Many of the marketing movies and screen shots EA released included vehicles, like the Blackhawk with missle racks, that never made it into the final version of the game. Most of these media clips also showed little to no fog in many of the map, a sore spot for many members of the community. Several features were also either missing or were not fully functional as well.
New issues, known to even a casual Battlefield gamer, included dolphin diving, red-tag bug, weapon unlock issues, weapons passing through targets, strict rules on running ranked servers (known as the ROE), the cost associated with running a ranked server and the ever persistent unbalanced weapons. Gamers responded quickly with flaming, nasty posts in forums. Some of the gamers even logged off the game vowing never to return. What changed in the gamer's mind?
This time it counted in the mind of the gamers. After the community was left holding the bag on their copy of the now defunct BFV they were bitter. The BFV wound was still bleeding and the BF2 issues were salt added for effect. The fact that all actions in BF2 earned points towards ranks, which unlocked better weapons, and the fact that many of the bugs in BF2 affected how fast you could get points to gain rank made the community unhappy to say the least. Gamers were finally fed up with spending $50+ for a game that was far from complete.
On top of that with the BFV fiasco still fresh in their minds, the community only expected the worse. The community was tired of being the Beta testers for a company that had stuck their noses up at them less than a year before. They finally had their fill of paying EA their hard earned money for that "privilage"
After the first two patches for BF2 several of the bugs that affected the game play, red-tag bug, unbalanced weapons, and others, were still not addressed. EA also released an expansion pack called Battlefield 2: Special Forces(SF) which was received with mixed luke-warm reviews at best. EA then changed their business model and release two more expansion packs, although they now called them booster packs, called Armored Fury (AF) and Euro Force (EF). The community was looking for EA to fix the issues with the core of the game not provide these "mods".
These packs, be it booster or expansion, were nothing more than mods for a game that was broke. The mods cost anywhere from $9.99 to $19.99, depending on if it was called an booster pack or expansion pack, respectively. After releasing these packs to a community struggling to deal with the ever-persistent bugs in BF2, the community rejected them for the most part. A few servers ran the packs as dedicated servers but only a few and only the SF servers were consistently populated.
These "packs" also acted to divide the gaming community. Those that played SF got extra medals, weapon unlocks, and points for new functionality in the game that was not offered in the vanilla version of BF2. This division, short lived as it was, created even more anamosity and resentment towards EA. Many in the community thought that these packs, especially SF, should have been included in the patches they released in conjunction with.
Soon after the "packs" came the announcement of an all new game, Battlefield 2142, a futuristic Battlefield; can you say Star Wars Battlefront 2 meets Mech Warrior? They had preview movies ready for their marketing launch letting gamers know EA is well on their way to being ready to release.
The community was mixed about this announcement. Some gamers made it clear that they want nothing to do with a "Star Wars Clone" claiming "Lasers are for Losers", even though BF2142 doesn't seem to include lasers as a weapon option, while others can't wait to drop another $50.
Certain factions in the community also made it clear that they wanted BF2 fixed before BF2142 would even be considered a viable option. This backlash is still happening today and continues to divide the community.
Then came the infamous 1.3 patch, which was expected to fix all the issues with BF2. During this time EA/Dice poured hours of resources to release all of these expansion packs and was directing resouces towards work on BF2142, they put very little thought, resources and efforts into fixing the bugs that make BF2 all but unplayable.
Community backlash was fierce. Not only did this patch fail to fix the previous bugs, it introduced new elements, like vehicle drops known as "cartillery", to the game, that were never requested. It also introduced new critical bugs like memory leak issues, random and not so random crashes to the desktop (CTD) and server crashes plus problems that affected the server browser interface. On top of all of that no enhancements actually requested by the gaming community were included.
The BF2 community roared in rants, posts and flames towards EA. EA listened, but it seemed too little too late. EA soon announced the release of the 1.4 Beta patch program. EA's intent was to have the gaming community test the patch before releasing it, much like Trauma Studio's Beta release/development of DC. The primary difference in EA's beta program and Trauma Studio's DC beta was that DC was free. Second each patch for DC actually included improvements, requested by the community, and fixed bugs from the previous release.
EA BF2 1.4 Beta 1 patch did not fix any bugs, at all. As a matter of fact more bugs became more prevalent. The game actually got worse as a result and the community was no longer disappointed they were pissed.
EA wasn't done yet. They released BF2 1.4 Beta 2. And again no existing bugs were fixed. CTDs still happened. Server crashes were as prevalent as ever and EA had the gull to added another two elements to the game; Infantry Only (IO) and a new map, neither of which were requested by the community. Added to this insult was the fact that even more new bugs appeared in the Beta 2 release.
EA, already in the brown creek without a paddle here, has proven time and again that they are unable to fix the serious issues with their products. In most cases of feedback from the beta testing, EA is outright refusing to provide many of the requested enhancements provided by the very community that provides their income. EA is unable and seemingly unwilling to provide the gaming experience they promised and the community has requested and paid for.
The lack of bug fixes, constant release of new "packs" and unrequested content and the shameless pimping of BF2142 is not only pushing gamers away from BF2, but it is making gamers re-evaluate EA's ability to deliver the best possible gaming experience. It would appear that EA has signed the certificate of death for a Legacy that had an enjoyable and memorable past and was looking to have bright future.
Goodbye Battlefield, we loved you dearly while you were here.
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