Battlefield Series Past & Future

A bit of history
The Battlefield 2 title was released in the summer of 2005 and introduced the concepts of a squad-based system with built-in VoIP. These features excited many at Tactical Gamer and offered new ways for a teamwork oriented community. With ranked servers to compete against, support of up to 64 players, poor in-development admin tools, providing supporting member privileged access, and making the game work within TG's ideals / Primer... building a BF2 community at TG was not going to be a simple task.

Tempus graciously volunteered (we waterboarded him) to lead the cause as the BF2 Game Officer. Little did he know how much of a positive impact his leadership and the BFx titles would have at Tactical Gamer.

Tactical Gamer was not nearly as large in 2005 as we are now in 2009. Off the top of my head I'm guessing there were between 3k-5k members. But don't hold me to that. Tempus put together a solid admin team from some dedicated TGers. This team, with Tempus' leadership, focused heavily on building a TG:BF2 community, advertising TG's style of play on public forums, and meeting and educating new players that ventured onto our server.

These tactics brought a new stream of players to the Tactical Gamer community. As our population grew we saw more after-action reports... more strategy & tactics discussions... and a need for more support.

We were fortunate to have several individuals with development expertise. Squad-less kick scripts and a powerful supporting membership reserved slot system made their way onto our servers like no other servers have seen. Along with these scripts Tempus continued to build up the admin team with new fresh faces. Our servers and game play were making their mark.

Our BF2 un-ranked server offered a haven for some gamers who had almost given up on the Battlefield title.

The BF series also brought about a resurgence of the in-house squad system. Some folks are under the assumption that the BF titles started the IHS system but that is not the case. The squad-based feature of BF2 simply offered hand-in-glove a way for these squads to form, practice, and grow.

Eventually mods (POE / PR) were released to extend the life of BF2. We even had our very own Tactical Mod for BF2. TG:POE was the #1 most active USA POE server and #2 overall. TG:PR continues its domination of PR servers as the #1 ranked PR server and #6 (give or take a few) most populated BF2 server of any type. That's right... #6 of all ranked, un-ranked, modded, and vanilla BF2 servers.

Then came along the futuristic BF2142 title and Tactical Gamer made the decision to host a ranked server. With all of the restrictions on ranked servers, we successfully implemented our squadless & reserved slot scripts. Our ranked server also ranks in the top 20 of all BF2142 servers.

Now our growth has not come without some pains, however Tempus has done a tremendous job of weathering the storms and righting the ship. When it comes to teamwork oriented, objective-based BFx servers, Tactical Gamer is at the top of the list.

Out with the old
So why do I share all of this information?

It's because Tempus has finally decided to take an extended vacation from the GO position. He's not leaving TG... he's just handing over the BF reigns to the next TG leader.

Before I announce the next BFx Game Officer I wanted to say thanks to Tempus for doing an awesome job for the past 3 1/2 years!

In with the new
The new Game Officer joined Tactical Gamer shortly after the release of BF2 and has been a BF admin for nearly as long. He's been through the ups and downs of the titles and has been a part of making the series great at TG. I have full confidence that he'll be able to continue what Tempus started and keep the BF titles a positive mark on our community.

Please welcome and congratulate FBMantis as the new BF Game Officer at Tactical Gamer!