Are you being served?
OPINION
I'm confused. That's not difficult to do with me, but I'm not clear on who owns this copy of Battlefield 2 I bought from Electronic Arts games; them, or me. I'm aware of games like Asheron's Call, the intent of which is to play the game entirely on
With EA's new version of Battlefield things are just a bit different. They purport the game is playable as a stand-alone on your own machine. However, when you boot the game, you must sign-on to an account server to access "single play." This "joins you at the hip" with EA. I didn't buy the game to marry a developer. The single play game will also only generate medium-sized maps, so where on the demo-servers you found airfields, and other accoutrement, these same maps don't have the option of flying aircraft. You're forced to deal with EA in some fashion to access this feature. Now, my fifty-buck investment is beginning to seem a bit fishy.
Yet, I do play on-line on "rated public servers." It just isn't the same playing a cloned-mentality, robot-like artificial intelligence as it is playing other people whose thinking is just a bit more difficult to predict, and who have the advantage of being inventive, resourceful, adaptive and who can improvise. This makes things a bit more intense, and it's an edge that I find is indispensable once it's been experienced. So, what of these "public servers?"
Nature of Public Servers
There are, firstly, ranked and unranked servers. Playing on ranked servers is the only way to activate the scoring feature of the game. You can't rise in rank, receive awards or gain points by playing the game in single-player mode (chipping away at my fifty-buck investment in "home gaming"), and you can't rise in rank if you're playing on an un-rated server. EA has an arrangement with service providers which allows people to rent server space for $5 dollars per person per month. (Per person is in relation to the map size; 24 up to 64 players, the top-end being [do the math] a very expensive $320 per month - way out of the budget of most individual players.) The upshot is two types of public, ranked servers. One is with corporations
such as Gamespy, Gamespot or Gamecenter.com. EA itself has four or so available. The other is ranked servers rented by "clans", or organized groups which play against each other in leagues, but who make their servers available to the public when not in league play. I'll examine the corporation servers first.
Corporation servers - Anarchy on the Battlefield
Corporation servers have some good features, one of which is they aren't clan servers, which I'll get into further down. They have good ping rates (the time it takes to send a "packet" from your computer to theirs and back). They aren't overseen by over-officious people who use arbitrary control over the players. They do have some drawbacks, though. There are a LOT of people playing this game on-line. During high-traffic hours for the internet, and given that this is "summer vacation" for many countries' school children, these servers are averaging 1.8 million (that's right, million) players at one time. That's quite a crowd, and not everyone is well-mannered, or even has a clue as to how the game is played. It's a "team-oriented" game, and with the high volume of pre-and early teens on the servers, plus the fact your cumulative scores are affected by the outcome of each game, the multitude of players oblivious to the requirements of serious players makes it near impossible to progress within the ranks.
Teamkilling is a form of humor. Armored vehicles and aircraft which are critical in game play are commandeered and used for joyriding making them
unavailable to players trying to "get somewhere" with the game. There is a feature, which I find to be ridiculous, where players can vote to kick a player from a server. That means if you're doing particularly well during a game, those who are getting the bad end of the deal can vote you off the server just for being successful. Another ridiculous feature is the "commander" function. This is an elected position which is intended to oversee a team, and provide supplies, artillery support, radar intelligence to locate enemy players and an overall strategy to win a map. The player at this position can be ousted by a "mutiny" vote. This means if a player wants to be the boss, he/she can initiate a mutiny vote regardless of how well the commander may be doing. The commander, oddly enough, gets points through a formula taken from all the other players in a game, so if a player isn't proficient enough to play the game, being commander ensures a high score though the player has no corresponding skill with the game. At best, it's very difficult to see through the white text proclaiming habitual kick votes initiated by those whom can only be described as brats - annoyance.
Worst case, you could be racking up a tremendous score, have "the brats" kick you because you're killing them to win the points, and all your efforts vanish from the account server, as though you'd done nothing at all. Hours of effort have been lost by thousands of players in this fashion. The upshot to this is mistrust, which isn't conducive to gameplay, and frustration, which isn't FUN. One can only hope when school begins again these brats will be annoying their teachers in a classroom and there may be a few hours when the corporate-sponsored servers are bratfree. Don't get your hopes up.
Clan-sponsored Servers - Killing ground for Clans
Then, we have the clan-sponsored servers. Of course, at first blush, it seems making a server they must pay for available free to the public is a generous thing to do. However, after many hours on these servers I can tell you that's far from the truth. These servers are operated as practice grounds for their team members. They control who is on which side. If their people are on the MEC, or Chinese side, the "server puts you on another team." More to the point, the server operator moves you to the team the clan members are set to victimize. Invariably they're using a software called TeamSpeak, and are privately communicating with one another with microphones and speakers. While the "public" is frantically trying to organize itself into some kind of team, they're already organized and are just rolling over their "guests" with an impunity that rivals the rudeness of the aforementioned "brats." Whereas the brats are only behaving with a recklessness befitting their ages, these clans are comprised of "over-eighteen years of age" people who are supposed to be mature and disciplined. What they do can only be called deceptive and cheating. They use their guests to advance themselves to their guests scoring detriment under the guise of providing a public service. This is less than honorable. It's the same as inviting you to play hockey in their rink, only they get the skates and you go barefoot.
Still, since EA has designed the game the way it has, these are your only options to garner the full features of the game. You are almost forced to play on one server, or another, unless you have the money to set up your own. I don't. That has resulted in Battlefield 2 being such a disappointment in its application, that it's downright depressing. But, if you're a hard-headed, gaming freak such as myself, you're going to play on those servers anyway. If you do, my next article will be about getting the most from your equipment and the proclivities of these servers during game play.
Conclusion
On a final note, Electronic Arts' account server was recently hacked. They were forewarned by those who intended to hack them, and paid slight attention, so the hackers broke in. What they did was "unlock" all the weapons available to players normally by attaining rank. There is a rack of weapons much more powerful than the ones with which you begin. As you gain stripes, you can unlock weapons one at a time. The hackers allowed all gamers all weapons just to show EA their software isn't as bulletproof as they claim is their standard. Insofar as all the above mentioned problems which tend to take all the fun from the game, there are no authorities to whom you can complain. Most of them are problems created by the ones who run the servers and many are created intentionally by these people, so EA would likely hold themselves blameless. Don't let that discourage you, though. I've gotten into some really good games and even managed to get my score recorded, because I had no "trouble with [my] server."