So I put in a few games, enough to just get to Rank 5. Its in much better shape than BLOPS at launch. Theater mode works, had no problem getting into a game, although I think due to the nature of the p2p the hit detection its kinda iffy at times.
Example, I see a guy, I move behind a column, hear and see the bullets, then I am just dead. In the killcam he is spraying left to right, I am not on the screen, but he is getting hit markers everywhere. OK...so I check it in theater mode, and the same thing. A couple of times I got dropped from what sounded and looked like one shot, but they werent head shots. Its just a little strange, but you can probably find similar instances in Battlefield.
The dedicated servers are somewhat tricky to find. When you go to play it puts you in the playlists system. You have to go dedicated server, which is where you go to set up a private match, then enable dedicated server browser. I only played two games on it, but the admins didn't have all the guns unlocked, just 5 preset classes. It might have been that create a class wasn't unlocked yet for my profile, but I was expecting all the weapons to be unlocked. Anyways, I went back into the playlists to rank up a bit more, as its not sure if admins are going to unlock everything, preset stuff, or based on what you actually unlocked.
The problem I'm having is the actual movement. I guess I always forget COD is this way, but the character is slow, runs out of breath fast (need marathon or MW3 equivalent), can't reload while sprinting, etc. I guess you hear from console players how fast COD is and you start to think it, but BF...both BFBC2 and BF3 is much faster.
And its probably common knowledge now, but the snipers are deadly as hell. I heard this thwap, thwap, thwap then dead. Look in the killcam and it was a sniper firing a bolt action just about as fast as you could click the mouse button. Firing like a semi auto gun. And its a one hit kill.
So...there is nothing wrong with it. If you like COD you should like this. The number of players on all the matches were somewhat small, like 24 or less. You can find more action on some BF3 maps like davamand, canals, bazaar, but its not bad. The weapons seems laser accurate, and killing 3-4 guys at a time with one magazine was doable. If you like COD, I'm not sure why you wouldnt want to get it. Ranked dedicated servers aside, its still COD.
EDIT: I should also point out that there were 100K players online, so its probably going to be around for awhile.