Since Battlefield 2 has ranking and ranked servers I have noticed a change in the way many people play the game.

In the original Battlefield 1942 and Desert Combat Mods most people concentrated on winning the map by way of taking flags and racking up the kills defending/taking flags. Don’t get me wrong, I know there always was good number of campers and Stat Mongers that would do little to win or help the team, those guys always will only be interested in the stats and never really get to enjoy the true fun of Battlefield and battlefield 2; the team play. Most Original BF campers I’ve seen would just sit on the fringe somewhere picking off people as they spawn, (Boring….)

The biggest thrill I get is when we all work together and achieve objectives like taking the flags and holding them until we eventually win the game due to our team work and defense skills. There is nothing better in my books then to be defending a flag and to repel wave after wave of enemy forces to the point that they send the almost entire dam team after us to get one flag back. That kind of battle is both rewarding and exciting, I have not seen anything like that in the new battlefield 2 yet.

With the new Battlefield 2 ranking always being on the mind of most players, now the game has a new objective, one that may even be superceding the what I feel should be the primary objective; Winning the map. What I see and hear now is a general consensus among many players that winning the map or game is not as important as bolstering ones own score, (purely for self serving purposes, or out of 100% ego). Most people keep saying that they only want to open the next weapon (right now that means making it to Corporal for most of us), but human nature is such that I find it hard to believe that once the next rank has been achieved the desire to go one more rank would not have the same appeal. I think the “Dangling Carrot” of a higher rank or more weapons will never go away.
Where this new Rank Whore mentality is shown at the highest level is when players hide of in a corner of the map killing “friendly enemies”, or friends who are on the opposing side with whom arrangements are made to kill each other with the sole purpose of getting badges, ribbons, rank promotions, or other rewards. Tell me where is the fun in that? To me it’s like cheating on your golf score, as when you finally get a good score for real, something you are proud of yourself, no one cares or believes you.

To a much lesser degree the chopper whoring (see other article on this site) is also a Rank Whore Technique as without some team members staying behind to defend it the flag is most often turned back to enemy control before the chopper is even out of visual range.

All in all I think the Rank system is adding some fun stuff to the game, but I don’t feel it will last too long in it’s current incarmation. There are too many problems with the implementation of it, let alone the any errors in how the scores are calculated.

If EA does not do something to at least attempt to curb the Exploitive, Glitching, Rank Whores then any remaining interest ranking will be lost. I for one can’t wait until the first Mod comes out, if it’s a good one it will end the rank issue for me once and for all. Once a mod comes out that is equally fun or more fun that the original Battlefield 2 game I doubt I would be back to the Vanilla version as it’s only the unmodded BF2 that will be part of the “official” ranking system.

On a closing note, why do you think the ranking was implemented by EA for in the first place?
Do you think it is to increase the game experience for all of the BF2 enthusiasts?
Or is it the more realistic answer that EA has a pant load of empty servers at $8 per slot and they decided that this would be a good way to rent them (at least for the short term, until something new/better comes along)

If EA actually gives a flying fart about the ranking they will begin to at the very least make some more changes with the promise of making things better, that would show me that EA is taking an interest in the ranking. If they do nothing to correct the Exploitive, Glitching, Rank Whore problem too long it may be too little too late for me to care.