Has EA/Dice lost its way or just fell off the short bus?

After a few weeks of BF3, and some updates (and several hundred dollars worth of system up-grades), I have concluded this game is a nightmare at its best. There are a large number of potential players that have been experiencing major issues with what EA/Dice has not delivered in a quality product and/or gaming experience.

As reported by Rock, Paper, Shotgun, some astute Escapist forum users have noticed an interesting clause in EA’s Origin End-User License agreement that basically give the company carte blanche to collect and use data from your PC. From section 2 of the EULA:

Story By Bennett Ring | Oct 4, 2011

Battlefield 3's Frostbite 2.0 engine promises to push your PC's silicon to melting point, but how does it look when running on the consoles? With the beta eating into our sleeping hours over the last week, we found the time to grab some 360 and PC footage to see just how different Battlefield 3 looks when you spend a grand on PC hardware.

 

There have been a lot of technical details regarding the new Frostbite 2.0 engine, which powers Battlefield 3. But we’ve never gotten anything concrete, for instance, what is the engine capable of doing when it comes to multiplayer maps? We know the maps made with the previous version of Frostbite (1.5, in Bad Company 2), were somewhat limited and a lot smaller than those found in Battlefield 2.