Where did you hear that Proton8?  I hadn't heard anything like that, but coming from EA I don't doubt it.  That's one of the reasons I really like Bungie, they do a lot of things for their fans.  For example, the multiplayer map pack for Halo 2 was eventually released for free, and not that long afterwards.

However, I'm a little excited for BF2142 for several reasons, although I'm not sure if I will buy it.  I will definately wait for some reviews and word of mouth information.  Things that looks interesting:

-Walking vehicle support:  Very important for a mod such as ours

-Cloaking tech: Interesting possibilities for this one, TIE Phantom, Halo mod w/active cammo?

-Titan mode: Very important for the Star Wars universe

-Integrated AI: Yes this is possible, there are personal defense robots that are launched as a weapon and they basically watch your back, this would become very cool for things like autocannons and automated base defense

-Passenger dependent vehicle features: This was confirmed in an EA interview where it was revealed that the APCs could cloak if you had enough people in them.  This would be important for things like ships that need a certain number of crew to operate them.  For instance you wouldn't be able to take off in a Shuttle unless you had at least two people in it.  Could be very useful for encouraging teamplay and discouraging the non-strategic uses of transports (using it as your personal transport without taking team members).

-Large moving ship support:  It should be obvious why this would be important to a Star Wars mod.  I was a little angry that they took this out for BF:2, naval warfare was really cool in BF:1942.

-Relatively easy porting from BF:2 to BF:2142:  I heard that EA was working on making it very easy to port from BF:2 to BF:2142 which sounds like the first smart, community helpful thing that they have done for a long time.  IMO, making it easy to port from 2 to 2142 would be very smart for EA because many of the mod teams would probably be excited for the new features, but reluctant to port due to time and workload issues.  If it were easy to port, then teams wouldn't have to spend another year in development, instead they could use all of their existing work and release quickly, therefore starting the mod-base for 2142 very quickly.

I still have mixed feelings on 2142 though.  IMO the best move EA could make would be to put off 2142 untill it is READY to launch WITH a mod editor ON RELEASE and all of the compatability issues have been resolved for porting.  This would give mod teams more time to get some releases out, and it would help EA get a better product out that people would enjoy more.  Releasing 2142 too soon would, once again in my opinion, be highly detrimental to sales due to BF:2 still being a viable game with a highly active mod community.  Why would gamers want to switch (and pay extra money) when they have everything they need already?

yea EA has quite a "colourful" history with gamers, they thorw in a whole bunch of "features" into a game, and in the end only a small number of them makes it into the game
but it aint really that big of a deal, the game is still fun to play, lets just wait til the game comes out