Battlefield 2142 booster pack Producer says, "No new boosters."

Firingsquad.com had an opportunity to interview the producer of EA’s upcoming Battlefield 2142 booster pack, Northern Strike.

The discussion involved the typical cheerleading and repetition of feature information that has been available for a few weeks, but there was one big bombshell dropped in the latter half of the interview:

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FiringSquad: Can you talk about any future booster pack releases for BF 2142?

Kristoffer Bergqvist: As we’ve been listening a lot to the community’s concerns of dividing the player base when releasing exclusive content there currently are no more booster packs planned for Battlefield 2142.
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Although I am reluctant to do so, I must channel WoW players for a moment…

QQ more, Mr. Bergqvist.

Concerns about playerbase fragmentation have been around since BF2’s expansion pack (and persisted through BF2’s boosters). I cannot believe that EA/DICE is acting like those concerns are new, or that they haven’t had time to address them.

I also cannot believe that their response to a very reasonable, long-running desire among players is to stop trying - or, at least, talk like they’re going to stop trying.

No booster packs doesn’t necessarily mean no new content, but wouldn’t DICE want to acknowledge that? Because his response absolutely doesn’t.

Frankly, this whole thing reeks of, “Blame the customer.”

His response makes it sound like it’s our fault for wanting a single, unified playerbase and a game that integrates new content elegantly. They speak as though it’s unreasonable for us to expect new content to build on the original game, not replace it.

And in another universe they might be right. But here in the really-real world, games as old as Planetside and Ultima Online figured out customer-considerate new content integration more than 5 years ago, so there’s really no excuse for not anticipating this need or being able to work it out.

I’m disappointed, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t expect this in some way, but as an idealist I’m hoping that they work it out and give us a nice Springtime surprise.

jf