So since I had BFBC2 I figured what the hell, let's pre-order thru steam and see what this is all about. I have a busy day of work tomorrow, so I'll keep this brief for now. I just wanted to share my .02 with my favorite community!

First off, I am aware that this is a beta, and lacks polish. But please keep in mind, people have been raving about the MP of this game all week, as if the game seemed "near complete" and "balanced". A little background, so you know where I am coming from. I got hooked on FPS gaming with the very first MoH, MoHAA. Arguably one of the greatest PC FPS games of all time. From there I played Unreal 2k3, 2k4, CS, CSS, CoD2 and CoD4. I skipped MW2 for obvious reasons. I am by no means "leet" or a pro, but I have played competitively in CSS and CoD4.

First, I will start off with the good!

Good

1.) Graphics obviously. I will admit the game looks great. I played with everything maxed at 1920x1200 on a 24" LCD with a 5970.
2.) Sound - There are some new sounds to go along with some they used from BFBC2. With my headset I could more or less tell where shots where coming from
3.) Map usability - Pick and building, and there are multiple floors, rooms, etc to move in. (Not limited to 2 floors like CoD4 was)
4.) Asset variety - There aren't just 3 types of rock, or 3 blends of grass. The maps are vibrant with detail and best of all variety (Which gives plenty of places to hide)
5.) Upgrade system - a better implementation of CoD4's weapons upgrade menu system (not that important, but worth mentioning)
6.) Game type - I do like the variety in the objective based game type. Each "section" of the map you have a slightly different objective.

The BAD

1.) No Lean, no Prone - I'm sorry, but if any game ever needed prone and lean it is this! They said they removed it to stop camping, but it encourages it! There is no way to safely check around a corner or peek down the street from a window without exposing your entire body. Your opponent just has to sit in a corner and wait. Why is this bad? See #2
2.) no recoil on ANY weapon - The weapons literally have NO RECOIL. In fact, there is no benefit to picking one weapon over another, since they can all shoot like a laser across the map. Why bother with a sniper rifle when you can just as easily use an AK-74u.
3.) Like BFBC2, you STILL can't strafe while moving forward, you must stop moving forward to go side to side.
4.) Moving and jumping does not feel crisp like CoD at all. In fact, it feels rather clumsy and you constantly get "stuck" on objects in the map. (A beta I know, but just mentioning it)

Again, for a weeknight it is getting late for me because of work, so I can't go into immense detail, but I wanted to put something up for those of you who don't have the beta. Me personally, it's rather early to set anything in stone, but I doubt I will keep my pre-order on this. I will play throughout the weekend and give it an honest shot, but so far I see an arcade style shooter that will easily appeal to the MW2 crowd looking for nicer graphics and such. For the competitive community that reads these boards, not a chance in hell. Like BFBC2, this will just be another "fun" pub game to kill some time.

Considering lean and prone were confirmed for BO, I think I will hold out hope for that. We know the engine plays the way we want it to, we just need to cross our fingers for mod tools and server files. In closing, if you don't have the beta don't sweat it, you aren't missing anything epic.

So all the talks about how they've improved since the BC2 beta and release are blank, as I expected. Nothing you wrote came as a surprise, and people tell me I have "no right" to complain, bitch or criticize without having played the game. I haven't tasted blank too, but somehow I know I'm not going to enjoy it .

Is there a hardcore mode at least? How's the nade spam? Bullet penetration? All those achievements, experience points and all that console blank - does it take too much of your screen and is it as distracting and annoying as it is in Modern Crapware 2? The knifing animation in BC2 is lame and not natural, this looks almost the same from the gameplay vids - does it really feel as clumsy and bad as it looks? Is there any performance increase on your machine compared to BC2 beta and BC2 retail and what hardware do you have? Lastly (for now), how big is the installed game?

ohhh wait.... sound? omg its crap, blank... when you reach killstreak its blow my head, bad quality...

gameplay is the worst ;/ no recoil, no dynamic, inflexible movement, no lean, no prone, mouse is working like crap... i heard before "fast paced" yeah sure cod, cs, moh and fast paced, blank ;p moh is slower than cod.

where is destruction 2.0?

Whilst xkaan has gone off to work, allow me to update those that have not joined the Beta on how this is progressing (at least for me and a few others).

I pre-ordered on Wednesday via EA store after getting confirmation that most other places had difficulties issuing the Beta codes before the 21st. So I thought, the safest place surely is EA. Pre-ordered and not 2 minutes later the code arrived.
This is still officially the 16th, but in an attempt to avoid the masses that were due to hammer the MoH sites on the 17th I tried to redeem it early. Big fail. Not possible. After some tweeting to and fro I was informed that the code could be redeemed in BFBC2. So I did just that and shortly afterwards, the Gunclub showed my pre-order and I had now fulfilled both requirements to access the early beta. So far so good.

Morning of 17th...in central Europe at 07:30 the sun is already over the horizon and things are looking good indeed. Sit down by pc and start the login procedures. http://www.medalofhonor.com http://www.gunclub.ea.com .
Gunclub, all is ok so shutting it down. Useless right now. The homepage kept showing BETA coming soon so off to work I went. I sporadically checked the twitter and only around 3p did the info filter through - in my case via Twitter and then confrimed on the EA forums that the start was 7pm CET. No access would be given prior to this time. Fine I thought. Finish work and get ready to queue with the masses.

Well, guess what happened at 7.01pm (19:01)? Yeah, the site went down faster than "a hoe's knickers" and stayed down too. No way of downloading the beta client either. Initially there was nothing but total chaos. About 5 minutes later messages came through that Fileplay and some other sites were open for dl's. Went there and started dl immediately. I can only imagine that the sites were prett much hammered too and that ppl had to queue to get started. Steam at this point had not. Messages on the EA forum stated they would not open up until the next day. As I said, Mr. Chaos was having a good day.

During the download, I read twitter messages between GamerOfFreedom and Bazajaytee that the code was coming up as "in use". We are now talking around 8.30/8.45pm central european time. Not a good sign but fingers x'd none the less.

Approx 30 minutes later my client was downloaded and install process started. Smooth as butter. No problems what so ever. Game installed, time to fire it up. At least I can give some initial feedback...the menu screens look as if they actually belong there and do not feel like an overlay like it does on BC2. Nice feel to them and look good too. I messaged MoH to find out if any lessons had been learned from the BFBC2 release not that many months ago. Surprisingly, there was no answer.

Now, key code entered and yes, message received in return that "code is already in use". Hm. Message Bazajaytee and MedalofHonor + check website for any help/advise. Alas, they were not able to help at all. Whilst the site remained down the code could not go through the finalisation of the redeem process so we all had to just wait. Waiting is what we did.
The MoH site basically suffered the exact same "DoS attack" that BFBC2 suffered. Servers got overloaded, went "wtf? BBQ!" and shut down. Bazajaytee tried to escalate what info he had and it is quite clear that whilst he and others tried their very best, they were only relaying info given to them by HQ. The medalofhonor site remained down.

I finally surrendered and went to bed just before 2am, some 5 hours later and no sign of this getting fixed.

8am Friday 18th and whilst checking twitter I see that some are online and playing. Great. This has been now been fixed. Time to frag! MedalofHonor site is up. Now we're talking...BUT NO, my key is STILL "in use" and I have nothing. Nowt. Nada. Ziltch.

It is now as I write this 11:59 CET and no sign of this being solved at all. To say I'm a bit pissed is THE understatment of the year.

No lessons learned from the BFBC2 beta. No changelogs, nothing. Some get "through", most people it seems not at all.
As far as I can tell, at this point in time around 500 people have gotten through and are actually playing. That would leave a few thousand(?) out in the cold - still.

This is not very impressive from an AAA game developer. The deja vu's experienced by the users surely MUST have been felt by the dev's as well. How could this so totally and utterly NOT work?

To make matters worse...after getting the message that "code already used" the very helpful link provided to EA Support reveal the following message:

"Do not redeem your beta code for Medal of Honor through your console or PC!

You must first go to http://www.medalofhonor.com/beta and redeem your code through the site. Once your redeem your code through the site, you will be given further instructions on how to download the beta to your console or PC.

The codes are not platform-specific, you can choose the platform of your liking when you redeem the code through the code redemption website.

NOTE: The site is currently unavailable. Please stay tuned to the Medal of Honor Twitter page to receive updates when the site becomes available."

But...the website is back up hours ago. Omfg, they can't even update a support page to contain correct or at least remotely up-to-date info.

I sincerely hope I am the "one off" and that you guys all got in alright. I am not impressed. Pre-ordered this game from EA as I said at around 60 USD. Could get it a lot cheaper from Amazon but no pre-order codes were available.
Whilst I won't tell people what to do, I can see myself cancelling this order and getting it from Amazon nearer (and cheaper) the release date...IF I like the game at all.

I am so not happy right now.

@liquid

You asked about spam...well within my first 10 minutes of play I died 4 or 5 times ONLY from rockets. (It's like the gustav spam in BFBC2)

Yes, they flash blank all over the screen like MW2. I actually liked the way kills, rewards, points etc. were implemented in BFBC2. (small and understated) But in MoH this is not the case...everything is huge, colorful, and tons of bass come out of your speakers after you do something "special"

ZOMG this game is so bad atm.

< EDITED. Dearest Coppersnake...i'm not one for warnings...but, today I'm being nice. DO NOT call folks names on here. I don't stand for that crap. Look up ad-hominem in wikipedia JY>.

. played the game for atleast 4-6 hours straight to give it a real chance
i ran it maxed aswell and its looked blank compared 2 cod and 2 bfbc2.
they have take bfbc2 mad it cod like game play and then turned the graphics back to cod4 would have been like if it came out a year earlier. its terrible only the grass looks better.
no recoil.
i used a javilin missile shot it at someone behind a small piece of sheet metal and NOTHING the sheet metal survives and no damage bullet penetration seems very bad.
its got a rush kinda mode and when u arm the bomb "c4 in this case" you actually have 2 be right next to it 2 protect it since sound is terrible you cant here people more unless they are right next 2 you. DICE CLEARLY HAD MININAL INPUT IN THIS. or it was the interns or maybe the kids from the local special school came along to help out cos it sucks massive balls.
gun models are kinda crap.
if you press y to chat u cant type and the chat bar gets stuck there and u cant close it. BUT u can still shoot and spin around really weird so u end up having 2 restart the game.
already sniper is best weapon i reckonl.
a gun fight isnt about skill atm its about who opens fire first they could shoot at your feet but as long as they just keep shooting if they shot first they win unless your a complete gronk and cant even hit them.
the APC looks so bad like so bad they took the one from bfbc2 and back dated the graphics.

they took bfbc2 and then removed all the good elements out of it like awesome looking models, destruction, sound etc and removed them and then dumbed the graphics down and then didnt add climb lean or prone.

pros
didnt seem 2 be any lag atm.
im currently not playing it.

DO NOT PREORDER it until they make some serious changes like OMG its so bad. i know its a beta but still i had the bfbc2 beta and i loved that even though it had all those lag issues etc.

"ZOMG this game is so bad atm. the guy a few above is xxxxxxx."

Were you referring to me? If so:

The game at 1920x1200 maxed settings looks quite good actually...much better than CoD4.

The positional sound is a step back from CoD, but still better than most if you are using a headset. I was more impressed with the "bullet-whizzing-by" sounds etc. (The types of sounds, not so much quality)

I agree on the splash damage. if someone is behind some bricks or a piece of sheet metal nothing in the game can even tag them.

Also I agree on the gunfights. IT comes down to who fires first. One thing I noticed is unlike COD as soon as bullets start to hit you your avatar is "locked" and you can't jump or maneuver out of the way or around to fire back, you just die. That was one thing I liked about CoD: If your opponents aim was sub-par and you get tagged you could do a number of thigns to survive or kill them. You could jump, spin, and fire back to kill them, or turn and go prone etc. In this game none of that is possible at all. (Again, arcade style shooter)

One other thing I forgot to mention is the horrible grenade physics. You don't need to "arc" your grenades in any special way to get them through a window etc. just make sure your cross-hair is pointed where you need it to go and it will get there!

Also, they kept mentioning this "skeletal" hit detection system, but as Copperhead said, it matters not WHERE you shoot someone, as long as you hit a part of their body the damage seems to be consistent.

ok seriously just tried 2 play some more COULDNT getting a refund tomorrow its that bad. instead of using frost engine graphics etc for models they have developed them based off the unreal engine its so bad. its ugly its no joke been developed either by interns or the retarded brother locked up in the dice basement boo radley.
they used the single player models its SO BAD. i find it hard 2 explain.
DONT GET IT.
they have 2 start again if its going 2 be worth it atleast bfbc2 had nice 2 place right away this makes me cringe so much. dont pain yourself buy trying it SERIOUSLY DONT.
ok im going 2 put it out there its worse then mw2 combined with airbourne combined with xbox and ps3 combined serious omg lol i know im rambling but WOW.

eg the weapons in each class so the snipers for insurgents and rangers sound pretty much the same even though one is a m21 and the other is SVR

sound should help to spot enemy, in moh i really cant locate direction of sound ;p some sounds are from bf2 lolz

maybe this movement was quite good in bc2, here is really bad. Cod4/mw2 have prone, and its more dynamic than moh...

Yup. That is why avatar movement is one of the first, key items that developers should sort out when making a game. EA/Dice went straight to eye candy and missed that completely in BC2 and here they even missed the eye candy. They claim this is a skill based game but if, as in both BC2/MoH, the character movement is choppy and if you cannot strafe and run and other things related to gameplay (such as being able to stop a gun reload 1/2 way and return to fire should an enemy come upon you while reloading - like you can even in United Offensive, CoD2, CoD4, WAW) it is no more than an arcade game, which this is. Maybe some of this has to do with the frostbite engine and if so, it is clearly not as good as we thought.

Also, we often speak of graphics. What are graphics? It includes the beutifull skies and folliage, and the rendering of the flames, explosions, etc in the maps. It also includes things such as gun skins and the rendering of the avatars (including their faces and uniforms, etc) and the way the avatars fall when killed. In both BC2 and this MoH beta, the avatars fall like a raggedy ann flop doll. This is embarassing for DICE/EA b/c if they are making a new game, then all aspects of their competitors games must be done better than before. Go watch any of the 1000s of CoD2/4 frag videos and pay attention to how the avatars fell when killed. They seem to fall the way a real person would. IW actually coded that into the game at the time to be like that. That is how much attention to detail they paid to it (irregardless of what IW is today). Bottom line. This game for all the reasons stated by everyone above, is like BC2, not even as good on fundamental items as the best of the best that was put out 3-5 yrs ago.

This game has confirmed to me that DICE/EA is an arcade FPS developer and nothing more. The good new is the bar is still very low for any indie or other dev to come in and make a real game again. So I also will put my hopes into BO since as xKaan said, at least we know the game plays the way we like. As far as I am concerned, if that game plays only as good as WAW, MoH will not touch it. It may end up playing and being far better. Fingers crossed.