This is going to bother people who are obsessed about avoiding clutter. Other people? A modern, BF3-capable rig should have enough RAM to handle a little browser window. A lot of people will leave a browser and other junk open in the background anyways. Who bothers about closing all of that these days?
Bothers a lot more than you think. There isn't software around that doesn't eat up RAM and cause problems while sitting idle. Both IE and FF are horrid at recapturing RAM and not growing to the size of a basketball sized tumor.
It just comes down to really bad design decisions to have a server browser OUTSIDE of the game. I can imagine how fun the load times are going to be getting into the game.....
Hell, BF2 still has crappy load times and it is all done ingame. What it comes down to is EA/DICE are really shitty programmers when it comes down to broswers and load times.
We haven't even touched on how shitty BFBC2 is for updating...wonder how BF3 will be? They insult their PC users by saying everything is too complicated to release an SDK, but then they can't even fix shit in their own game. On top of that, they have NEVER addressed hacking....
Saw an article on the BF3Blog that said they are going ot have "7 times more DLC". Well, if it ist he type of DLC they offered in BFBC2, I wouldn't want it. Rehash old maps with new game types. Whoopity dooo. I can gurantee you that the DLC for BF3 will NOT BE FREE.
Everything EA/DICE has done as far as web design, front ends, DLC, microtransactions, etc. was leading up to the release of BF3. I don't think anyone can argue that their websites appear to be designed by a class of elementary school kids in the "slow" program. How many sites have they released in the last 5 years for just 3 games? First we had Veterans, then the Gun Club, now Origin. I think they went through 5-6 different iterations of web sites just for the Veterans program....AT DIFFERENT LOCATIONS.
The more I find out about the game the less inclinded I am to get my pre-order ordered again...and I know they don't give 2 shits about me as a consumer - which is sad, as I have been pretty loyal up until now.
/edit: Oh, and I close all that stuff....I don't like things running that I don't need. What for? Maybe it stems from the 3.1 and Windows 95 days, running games with a boot disk, streamlining as much as possible...I dunno. Or maybe it was because my folks told me to put stuff away when I am not using it. Worked.....I have my own home and it isn't cluttered either.
This comment was edited on Aug 13, 2011, 01:02.