There was an unexpected issue with the account server just as we completed rolling back the unlocks exploit. This was a one-time incident and should not occur again. Account uptime is our number one priority.

Obviously, as I noted, downtime is something we work closely with our partners (particularly GameSpy) to avoid. Of course, were it not for having to correct the malicious work of a community exploiter, there would not have been any downtime, so there you go. :)

Our goal (excluding scheduled downtime) is that players can access Battlefield 2 multiplayer any time they choose. We don't expect something like this to happen again, but realistically there's always the small chance that another exploit could be discovered that would cause a similar issue, requiring a small amount of downtime to fix.

I've had nothing but a positive experience working for EA over the last six and a half years, so I'd have to say that my view is both positive and biased. :) I've had the good fortune on working on some fine titles (like Battlefield 2) though, so that helps.

We have tons of stuff coming for the community in the next few months, including new content, the mod tools, new community features and much, much more. We're very excited about the ongoing support planned for the Battlefield 2 platform and we can't wait to get these things into players' hands.