June 30th, 2014. That was the date my favorite game of all time was supposed to die. EA and DICE neglected us, the loyal fans who were stupid enough to buy every Battlefield ever released because of Battlefield 1942.

In 2014 EA and DICE stopped supporting Battlefield 1942, Battlefield Vietnam, Battlefield 2 and Battlefield 2142. – All the classic Battlefields – the games that actually got me into this franchise in the first place, the games are strictly being supported by the community now.

In 2012 they released BF1942 v1.612 for free on Origin as a 10 year anniversary thing, they didn’t bother to update anything within the game, they simply made it into another version so you had to download Origin in order to get it to work. A few old players returned for a little while, but they also let all the hackers in, who no longer required a CD-key in order to join.

In 2017 Battlefield 1942 turns 15 years old, but does it still hold up? I have played around 4000 hours of Battlefield 1942.

Prologue

I have been playing Battlefield since 2005, in 2004 when I was around 8 years old my parents divorced – my father was an alcoholic – one night he forgot his keys to our apartment, my mother had to call the police, she didn’t want to let him in, he almost destroyed the door – That’s when my mother told me we we’re moving, a week later we were gone, my entire idea of what a family was supposed to look like got destroyed, I lost most, if not all of my childhood friends as I couldn’t hold any of my appointments, changed schools and became joy deprived, and I guess my mother thought that giving me a new PC would cheer me up. – I found my actual first PC in a dumbster, inside of it there was a CD of Quake 3.

In December 2004 she gave me a game called Battlefield 1942 – I barely took notice of it, because with it came another game Battlefield Vietnam which totally had me hooked. Battlefield Vietnam was the first game that I really played for hours on end, around 1000 hours in total. I often accredit Vietnam for my great music taste. – It’s probably hard to believe for people who know me now – but back then I used to be a helicopter pilot. Today I mostly tank in 1942, my favorite song was “The Box Tops – The Letter”[link] by the way. I also love “The Kinks” and started listening to other 70s music while I played.

I often blamed myself for my parents leaving each other, I would often have to go down my bunkbed – then down the long hallway – into the livingroom so I could tell my parents to stop fighting, because I couldn’t sleep. I was always jealous of my sister, because she barely took notice of it as she was already sleeping. My parents had been together for almost 30 years. I stopped talking to my dad when I turned 18, he doesn’t realise alcohol ruined his brain, as well as his family, and his smoking also pretty much ruined my left lung. I literally get sick by being close to him.

My parents divorce made me into the gaming nerd that I am today (anyway enough about me, gosh – so egoistic…)

Battlefield 1942 (released 2002)

I no longer had sleepless nights because of my parents fighting, I barely knew any English at the time, Battlefield Vietnam had become increasingly less populated and I thought it was about time to move on. I was looking for another game to fill its shoes, that’s when I rediscovered Battlefield 1942.

I started skipping school and eventually got caught. I remember thinking “I must have been dropped on the floor as a child” – That’s how I came up with my nickname “Whoopz” All I wanted to do was play video games, and nobody could stop me!

Like Battlefield Vietnam has made me interested in 60s and 70s music, Battlefield 1942 would eventually make me interested in World War II and history in general, I decided to run my own infantry server around 2008 on 1.6 – I literally ran it from my laptop – This is where I would meet a lot of the players I still play with today.

Battlefield 1942 servers support up to 64 players by default (and yes, it is probably worth mentioning that there’s still up to 64 players on some servers, perhaps even more if we’re lucky) there’s 5 diffrent game modes: Conquest (CQ) Co-Op, Team Death Match (TDM) and Capture the Flag (CTF) as well as Objectives which was only added to one map – obviously Conquest is the big boy here.

Battlefield 1942 includes 5 diffrent classes: Assault, Anti-Tank, Scout, Medic and of course the Engineer, each with their own unique ability, for instance, the medic can obviously heal people while the engineer can repair tanks – I am of course the best engineer in the game, the scout can call for artillery and the anti-tank can be a jackass. Assault does the most damage and is pretty much the grunt of the game.

Some classes were actually removed from the game, including that of a Pilot which never saw the light of day. Nothing had been done on this scale before, some larger maps were eventually cut from the game due to technical limitations, some maps were even supposed to include tank factories due to the unrealistic tank spawning.

Battlefield 1942 includes 52 diffrent vehicular devices in total.(?)

Battlefield 1942 has 21 maps in total – 4 of which were added in version 1.6

(Coral Sea, Battle of Britain, Liberation of Caen and Operation Aberdeen)

Battlefield 1942 has 2 different expansion packs, Road to Rome, which was also included in the Deluxe Edition of the game, and Secret Weapons of WWII. Which added jetpacks, helicopters and jets to the mix.

There’s still somewhere between 250-300 people playing Battlefield 1942 everyday.

You can check the masterserver list here if you dont believe me.

I remember the day my mother told me she was pregnant with my 2nd sister – obviously with another man than my dad – I was humming to the sound of the 1942 theme[link] that was a great day, that was 9 years ago. I still hum to the same good old theme.

“I remember the day my mother told me she was pregnant with my 2nd sister, I was humming to the sound of the 1942 theme, that was a great day, that was 9 years ago.”

The campaign is nothing special – it’s basically just singleplayer maps with AI controlled bots – but something unique for the campaign was the fact that it showed player specific stats, something which multiplayer has never done to the same kind of scale.

I accredit Battlefield 1942 to the fact that I learned English because of playing, some people even thought I was American at one point.

Competition

In 2012 I took a short break from the game, but as I knew, I would return again in 2013.

I finally got convinced to join BF-League[link] and decided to join a clan called =|Joker$|= they were in desperate need of members, originally I joined as an infantry, but one day the leader told me “Whoopz you have to take a tank” I went 17-1, from that moment forth I was pretty much considered a permanent tanker in =|Joker$|= I became a “sort of” Co-Leader of =|Joker$|= brought in some members, but ended up in a disagreement with 2 other Co-Leaders over the fact of if we should play against {FG} a clan we could actually win against, or not, while the leader was on vacation in Italy. As it turns out 5 kings of one castle were just too many. I ended up getting kicked out of the clan. I had to talked somebody else about creating a clan. So I was considering leaving anyway.

In 2014 I would create that clan called “lop| – lack of players” both alongside friends, Jazzy and Twigs. Who I had met on my server, but also alongside completely unknown players I had never talked to before, SleveN, Breaker, Viitapiru, RäKaN, MuSeN, LewiQ, M1ke, Sommarel, Quagmire, Gio, Uraw and Dmyorky2026. As well as Kobra who I played with in =|Joker$|= The name is quite ironic, we didn’t know if we would have enough members in order to participate in the league, I think some of us thought we would be dead by the end of the season. I really think the name reflects on the current state of the game. The clan quickly became my extended family, I hate and love them all, our 3rd season as a team we won the league 2016.

“I love you all, but I love Quagmire the most” – SleveN 2017

Believe it or not, even in 2017 there’s still eSports in Battlefield 1942. BF-League has been around since 2007, back then it was largely dominated by German clans which is why you can still find a lot of spelling mistakes around their website, today it’s more of an international class.

The league isn’t especially innovative, it doesn’t really add anything new, it doesn’t really try too hard to add anything new – people fight over the hugh prize of a picture award, but for the 9 clans playing there I think it means the world. – Without the league they would all be dead by now. It seems like most players who play in the league aren’t that interested in playing public games anymore, so the community is relatively tight-knit, in generel people seem relatively uninterested in playing nowadays, recently we had 4 random public players join our teamspeak, a sign that the public servers might be dying.

The league admins recently added this new feature of “banning” certain maps, apparently because the clans aren’t good enough to play them. In addition they added more custom maps, that nobody I know wants to play. It doesn’t really matter which custom map you vote for, because they will always be the same pretty much every season. Recently my clan played a PCW (practise clan war) against a team with 3 league admins – we wanted to practise a map they had banned in the league – they thought we were trolling them, so they decided to all spawn snipers and teamkill each other to the point of -30 points like some kind of kindergarden. – disappointing from 3 league admins.

The standard games are as they have always been, 8vs8 Conquest.

Sunndae and Mace Windu created some awesome matchreports for ¤)ßmÇ(¤ back in 2015, I think they actually deserve some recognition for them, but then they became semi active and lost to lop| – no more matchreports. Gué also created a nice player spotlight for 1 person (Shadowtrooper) – unless the rest are private.[link]

“Back in the day” we considered 2vs2 for “clan wars” which I consider kind of pathetic today, occasionally you can still find some of us playing 8vs8 at 1AM, just like it should’ve been back then.

It’s probably worth mentioning there has also been other leagues, which unfortunately are no longer with us – CALeague – The Cyberathlete League also know as CAL, was created in March 2001. As well as TeamWarfare[link] (TWL) which still exist outside of 1942.

If you are not interested in the 8vs8 clan wars there’s also a 1vs1 tank or inf ladder you can participate in. You dont need to be in a current clan in order to join.

Modding

As always it’s worth mentioning the modding community. The modding community is still alive, largely thanks to 1942mods[link] at the time of writing this they recently held an event[link] with at least some 30 odd players – I really feel like we could have been so many more though – playing “Galatic Conquest” a Star Wars modification.

The first modification I ever installed for Battlefield 1942 was “Interstate 82″[link] a mod obviously inspired by the game with the same name released in 1999. IS82 is currently being updated with its new “Gold Map Pack”[link] by GoodDayToDie, definitely something worth checking out!

In 2014 GoodDayToDie tried connecting the diffrent communities within 1942 into something called bf1942communities similar to that of the “Revive Network”[link] for BF2. In the end it never really worked out for him – feels bad man.

Probably the most famous mod – and I think the one everyone wants to hear about is obviously Desert Combat – is it still alive? And here the answer would be yes indeed, there’s 2 large ukrainian communities as well as an American server called “EA 117 – DC Fan Favorites”[link] which is not associated with EA by the way. Personally I don’t know anything about the skill level as I have never played DC.

The last mod I would like to mention is “Battlefield Pirates” developed by Guy Smiley in 2003, it could have been the predecessor to the recently released Early-Acess game called “Blackwake” – Naval combat is obviously the big thing here – but it even includes more features such as the ability to defend a fortress or ride around in air balloons.

In 2015 my clan would held a small event called “One Dying Wish” our friend LewiQ was moving to Vietnam, and he really wanted to play Pirates, we managed to gather a small crew of at least 35 diffrent players. – Perhaps it’s about time we replicate that event. Sunndae created a short video from the event.

Battlefield 1942: Game of the Decade for me.

People keep saying they want a remake of Battlefield 1942 – I keep thinking “fuck no” please don’t ruin my appreciation for this game.

“Only a dead Whoopz is a good Whoopz” – Knaso 2017