f13.net forums - EA Downloader - Spyware or just a crappy Steam?

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July 21, 2025, 06:07:54 AM

we're back, baby

I bought BF2142 a couple of days ago, based on the fact that the .au version lacks spyware and it being 50% off. I'm considering downloading Northern Strike, based on the cheapness of it, however, you need the EA downloader to do it. So I'm wondering if anyone has any experience with it - any spyware, and does it have decent speeds for downloading apps? Because it's taking 5+ mins to download the 12meg ead-installer.exe, and speeds like that to download an expack or anything of decent size are totally unacceptable.

It boots up REALLY slow. I'm not a fan.

My interest extends as far as wondering if I should gert Northern Strke, really. Then if possible, I'll never boot it up again (till there's something else worth downloading/buying...)

Quake Wars is around the corner. Why bother with BF2142?

The next BF game should come out early next year. Why bother with Quake Wars?

not that i bothered with 2142, or quake wars...

Because everything I hear now says Quake Wars won't at release handle 64 player maps.
Because Quake Wars has Ads and thats part of the reason I didnt' bother with 2142.

Because I'm still holding out for Unreal Tournament 3, over Quake Wars. On the PC mind you not some console.

Quote from: Sky on July 02, 2007, 12:55:04 PM

The next BF game should come out early next year. Why bother with Quake Wars?

Because Dice has proven they cannot build a good Online Client, and their insistence on using Gamespy crap. with its Crap Password/account retrieval bullshit, because it lost my password and won't retrieve my account from BF2 when I clearly had the password and email it was tied to written down on a little note sitting next to my computer when I re-installed BF2, so lost was 81 hours worth of stats info collecting plus the name I had grown attached to all lost, and EA Tech Support keeps dodging.

And Dice/Gamespy stupid insistence on not clearing out names that were taken merely to be taken message when after 2 years they haven't been used once to score any points with. Hello if the account name hasn't been logged in to play with in 60-180-360 days open the farking name up so others can use the stupid name.

Honest to goodness, the best online menu/client for me was Unreal Tournamet 2003, with the tabs to see different game types. Unreal Tournament 2004 was as smoothe click wise, and it had a drop down menu to pick different game types which I was not a fan of, involved more movement to see the different gametype servers. the 2003 client was just smoother imo.

The Northern Stike maps for BF2142 are fun. The Goliath is awesome. Plus you play it for 4 hours and you get 4 additional unlocks.

Quote from: Lorekeep on July 02, 2007, 12:38:35 PM

Quake Wars is around the corner. Why bother with BF2142?

Half price sale, and I enjoy/ed BF2. Also, no ads in Australia.

The fact that QW seems to be buggy as all fuck does not appeal. Lack of ingame VOIP is a bad move, though I kind of feel like it'll be patched back in. As with many of these things, I'm sure Ill pick up QW once it's been out for 6 months or so and has it's shit worked out, and we'll know by then if the Aussie version also has the ads excised.

Call of Duty 4 also looks interesting. I wonder how the MP will work out, though...

The ad's really aren't that intrusive at all. I literally rarely ever notice them if I am not looking for them. So far, no garish colors or animations. As for the DOwnloader, yeah, it's not that good, but you pretty much have to use it to get expansion packs and game patches. They save in a cache directory though, so you may be able to copy that file over and save the d/l time if you ever wipe your computer clean. Honestly, my biggest gripe is that it's less than intuitive when you go inside the Downloader to get game patches. You have to hunt around for it, which means you have to dig it out of all the other crap EA is selling through the DOwnloader. But it's not that big a deal.

BTW, there is a little note showing inside the game before you hook to a server that says something like.. " A battle will soon be fought in the sands/desert!" The NS expansion is pretty fun, but only a couple servers near me run it.

I couldnt manage to stop the POS from autoloading when I booted up my PC, so I uninstalled it. Hopefully NS will still work without it being installed. We'll see...

I can't remember how I stopped that. It might have been right in the Prferences of the program, or I might have had to delete the program from the "Startup" folder, or it could be that ZoneAlarm/SpyBot alerted me that it was trying to set itself up to start at boot and I mashed the NO! button with a finger of fury. YOu can stop it though, just poke around. I only run it when I log in and see there is a patch I need.

Spybot Teatimer seems to catch that wacky stuff. You can always search the registy for the executable name; I can never remember where the startup junk is.

Couldn't you just use "msconfig" to prevent it from loading on startup?

If I knew how to use "msconfig", or more accurately knew to use it a few days ago I probably would have instead of uninstalling it.