Battlefield 2142 - A consolidated BF2 Mod? (3/5 stars until EA gets it together)

My brother told me about this game, saying that he thought it looked like it was going to be cool. I've bought the last two episodes and thought they were pretty cool. So I threw down the cash and happily took it home. All I have to say is BETA at best. Well that's not all I have to say, because I want to rant some more. EA get your QA act together! As far as I can tell this looks like a detailed mod of Battlefield 2 with a whole lot of bugs. I dropped out of servers left and right, experienced weird graphic glitches, and lag died oodles. My biggest complaint is on the most compelling part of game, moving up in rank and getting unlocks. I was moving up in rank and had a couple of locks when out of the blue they were gone! So sadly I started over at recruit... and then a little while later they were back! I got up to 200 points and was waiting for my promotion to gold gunner, and waited, and I'm still waiting at 280+/200 for my promotion and new unlock. Then finally last night after coming home from a 10hr shift at work, I thought I'd play for a half hour. After I find a server that I think looks good and hit connect all I get is a message saying "invalid CD key". I spent my half hour and more trying to get it to work. Finally, in desperation, before taking the game back for an exchange and new key, I reinstalled and re-patched and it worked again. But then sadly it was time to get the kids to bed. Oh, yes, I did say re-patched. Be prepared, the game only recently released and already there is patch you have to download (more waiting, less playing) and I can't say I can tell that it fixed anything. So in conclusion, if your the easily frustrated it might be worth waiting a while for EA to work out the bugs on this one. I wasn't sure I liked the consolidation of soldier types at first but it has grown on me along with some of the other minor changes. I still think Titans suck at the moment but I'll give it some time before I make a final opinion. All in all, when it is working, it is pretty fun (maybe because if nothing else it's something semi-new).

EA, if by some chance anyone reads this, I want to have my unlocks in single player mode! And, I want to be able to move up in rank and have it stay with me even if I don't get credit for it in multiplayer mode. Also, I want to be able to play the larger sized maps with more than 16 bots. If my computer could handle it I want 64 bots. Oh, and I think the command system was easier in battlefield 2 (but maybe I'll get use to that too and love it).