Battlefield 2 fun #2

I have been playing Battlefield 2 (BF2) a bit over the last month or so, and it has been fun. There are some annoyances and suspect deaths (people shooting the other direction and getting a head shot) but the online game play is good, most players who have managed those JFK ballistic miracles don't last long as the admins are quick to ban suspect behaviour.

There are weapon upgrades for most kits as your player progresses up the ranks, from private to corporal all the way to a four star general. If you play on a ranked server you can get your scores updated to the main EA server.

The ranked servers which are most popular in Aus. are located at Telstra's GameArena. There are lots of stats available to see how well you are playing online, you can also compare yourself to other players included the highest ranking, rising stars (most change in points) etc.
At the moment I am averaging under 1 point per minute of game play, which is pretty ordinary. I blame the tools I use of course, a older P4, 1.5G RAM but only nVidia 5200 card means that sometimes my framerate and lag within the game are bad. I had one situation where I saw an opponent jump from another building, turn and fire in 3 lagged frames, naturally my ability to evade death is limited in that situation.
With all these handicaps :) I still have made Sergeant (2500 points) and now face the next rank of Staff Sergeant (5000 points).
At 1 per minute of game play I am looking at about 2200 minutes = 36 hours of game play to reach the next level, if I manage to double the rate, it is still 18 hours of free time to make the next rank. The highest rank is a whopping 100000 points, which is 97600 minutes of game play, If I was to play 8 hours every day it would take 203 days to reach that rank!!
I am not sure what the lifespan of the game is and whether the best players would have moved on by that stage, along with the majority of hosted servers to the next best thing by the end of 2006.

Naturally given these calculations gives pause to thoughts extended solo games and the social aspect of playing with mates in a squad kicks in, as does the weird and amazing kills and deaths which occur in the game.

Have Fun