This was posted to the Planet Battlefield Forums:

Swedish paper this morning anouncing that at least 200 people working for DICE will loose their jobs.

I tried to confirm it online, but can not. Either way, I imagine it is true given the recent cuts and acquisition of DICE by EA. This does not speak well of the future for the Battlefield Franchise.

Battlefield 2 Statistics program was released today. This promises to extend the BF2 ranking system to unranked servers, and LANS and customize it. The main features are:

* Your Own Private Ranked Server wich is capable to produce:
In-game awards, ranks and unlocks and Stats to appear in BFHQ.

* Your Own database hosted on your server, and fully in your control.

* Your Own WebStats System installed locally, to view and compare
your stats with other clan members or players.

* Centralized Database – to see and compare your stats against other
players.

* You control ranks, score and other in-game ranking parameters.

In other words we are giving you the opportunity to install a Ranking System
where ever you want it : clan server, lan parties and public Servers.

This is a truly cool idea. One of the things that I miss from Battlefield 1942 was having server specific stats and rankings. I loved checking in to this site every day after pwning Atomm, ephil, Racer and Tuna and having the numbers there for all to see (evil laugh).

The Desert Conflict Mod Team has released the .2 version of their CTF mini-mod. The first release was excellent, and while I havent played the new version yet, I am looking forward to finding some populated servers.

Head on over to the Desert Conflict site and grab the download off of one of the mirrors listed.

If you have the .1 version of the mod installed you should delete that one prior to installing the new version.

I just received the EA newsletter in my email. It included the following statement:

Take the powerful Euro Force into action with a full arsenal of the
latest technical weaponry. 7 new weapons, 4 new vehicles, and 3 new
Asian maps, including the Great Wall of China. Download Euro Force
direct from EA to your PC and begin playing immediately.

Ummmmm…. Did somebody in marketing not get the memo that said this was delayed? Oops…. Of course, we would expect nothing less than this from our buddies at Electronic Arts Marketing Department….

An update regarding the forthcoming 1.2 Patch for Battlefield 2 was provided in the EAUK Forums today. Sentience(who is AJ Marini the EA Community Coordinator for Battlefield 2) posted a topic that contains both good and bad news. From that post:

First, I’ll start with the bad news to get it out of the way. We have held onto the 1.2 patch a little longer than we had initially planned. We really felt that it was important to delay the patch and take care of some of the issues that have had the community concerned. This means that it will be released sometime in the next two or three weeks. This, unfortunately, means that the Euro Force Booster Pack will be delayed as well since it relies on the patch. Look for Euro Force to be released in the latter half of February now.

Also, another bit of bad news is that the new feature that allows player to pick up deployed mines with the G key is being held back. In the end, we felt it just wasn’t complete enough for public consumption. We at DICE apologize to all of you who were eagerly awaiting this feature.

I hope that the reasons for the delays are seen as positive by you, the community, and therefore I list these reasons as the good news portion of this update.

The following issues were addressed:

– Being able to pass through walls using a spinning tank turret has been fixed. It has also been addressed on all rotating vehicle positions just to be safe.
– The disappearance of tank projectiles and grenade launcher projectiles during online play has been improved and should occur less frequently
– The distance for throwing hand grenades, ammo packs, and health packs has been increased.

And finally…

– The Red/Blue nametag bug has been addressed

Regarding the last point, what we have done is make the code more secure to try and prevent any cases where this bug may occur. Since the fix has been in place, we have had no reproduction of the bug in testing.

As for me, Ill trade a couple of weeks in patch development for a smooth transition into a better game. Getting rid of the Red/Blue tag will go a long way towards making this game more enjoyable. Add this to getting rid of the bunnies, dolphins and noobtubers, and the other tweaks to game play and I am getting downright excited!