The game designers did a good job creating a fun game, but a HUGE number of technical issues make this game overly fustrating.
  My BIGGEST gripe is the copy protection.  In a BRILLIANT move that transfers the burden of piracy from the software company to the end user, EA uses a network key in addition to needing the original CD.  I can't tell you how infuriating it is to try to jump into a game only to be kicked off by the message "CD KEY IN USE".  Some pirate out there gets to play while I, who paid for the game, suffer the consequences.  Brilliant EA- just simply brilliant.
  BF1942 (currently version 1.31) is full of bugs.  It will play for about 5 minutes and crash on me two or three times, with no error message, before I can get through a whole game.  One of the included maps crashes on me constantly- I have never been able to complete it.  EA tech support is not much help either.  They suggest running BF1942 from a clean boot without running anything else before.  This does help.  If I run another game, McAfee, Outlook, or Internet Explorer, before BF1942, BF1942 will crash constantly until I reboot.
  The menu system is horrid.  The server browser has very little filtering, no favorites, and is locked to 640x480.  Some of the in-game player-player options are even worse.  If you want to add a player to your buddy list, you have to open a text console, type game.listPlayers, scroll to find the player ID number that matches your friend's name, then type game.addPlayerToBuddyList #.  Then, the the server loads a new map, you have to do the whole thing over again.  The voting interface is the same way.
  When everything is working perfectly, it is a fun game, but you'll need a beefy CPU, GF4 or newer gfx card, broadband, and find a server with pleanty of bandwidth (It's fairly common to see players jumping around from lag).  BF is definately a resource hog.
The game designers did a good job creating a fun game, but a HUGE number of technical issues make this game overly fustrating. My BIGGEST gripe is the copy protection. In a BRILLIANT move that transfers the burden of piracy from the software company to the end user, EA uses a network key in addition to needing the original CD. I can't tell you how infuriating it is to try to jump into a game only to be kicked off by the message "CD KEY IN USE". Some pirate out there gets to play while I, who paid for the game, suffer the consequences. Brilliant EA- just simply brilliant. BF1942 (currently version 1. 31) is full of bugs. It will play for about 5 minutes and crash on me two or three times, with no error message, before I can get through a whole game. One of the included maps crashes on me constantly- I have never been able to complete it. EA tech support is not much help either. They suggest running BF1942 from a clean boot without running anything else before. This does help. If I run another game, McAfee, Outlook, or Internet Explorer, before BF1942, BF1942 will crash constantly until I reboot. The menu system is horrid. The server browser has very little filtering, no favorites, and is locked to 640x480. Some of the in-game player-player options are even worse. If you want to add a player to your buddy list, you have to open a text console, type game. listPlayers, scroll to find the player ID number that matches your friend's name, then type game. addPlayerToBuddyList #. Then, the the server loads a new map, you have to do the whole thing over again. The voting interface is the same way. When everything is working perfectly, it is a fun game, but you'll need a beefy CPU, GF4 or newer gfx card, broadband, and find a server with pleanty of bandwidth (It's fairly common to see players jumping around from lag). BF is definately a resource hog.