^ Frankly, given their record in many of their games, not just BF2, I don't trust EA to publish games that don't suffer from similarly poor design, implementation, and support. EA is long and hard practiced at making buggy, poorly or even unsupported games. Look at how their latest "it" game Crysis turned out; riddled with bugs and the most immense resource hog I've ever seen...
Just another over-hyped, rushed-to-retail EA game to throw on the pile.
Short of some miraculous turnaround, I wouldn't touch BF3 with a ten foot pole. I certainly wouldn't rush out to pick it up off the shelf even then. It would be several months of listening to people's opinions of it on forums like these (because the review sites are all on EA's payroll in one form or another
and can't be trusted).