Running up Levels in Battlefield 2

This really should be titled "How I Was Introduced to Levelling" or "How Battlefield 2 Stole My Life". I've never really played games that involved levelling or levelling up before. Basically levelling is the term for gaining experience in a role playing game, so as you do more and more of the same things, your power/strength/endurance/whatever increases. Since I play mostly first person shooters I've honestly never been exposed to this before. So needless to say I wasn't really sure what the heck the fuss about "ranked servers" in Battlefield 2. The idea basically is that the more stuff you do, the more points you get, the more points you get, the higher rank you get (following military ranks), and as you hit each rank you get weapon unlocks. I started out not really caring, and now I'm playing every night in hopes of hitting my next ranking. Currently my stats have me with 800+ points left to get to the next rank and next weapon unlock. The beauty of the ranking system in BF2 is that you get points not only for getting kills, but also for:

• healing teammates (playing as a medic)
• giving ammo (playing as support)
• being in a vehicle where the driver gets a kill

So last night I was able to get hooked up with a pretty decent chopper pilot and basically sat in the gunners seat and ran up close to a hundred points by pretty much doing nothing. Hint hint folks, getting points in BF2 has nothing to do with skill. So now I'm dreaing about this at night, playing as soon as I get home at night, and picking up random dropped gear (in the game) hoping to get someone who has an unlocked weapon to play with. Now I'm starting to understand some of the jokes around levelling, and have that deeper level of understanding about some of the conversations I've had with guys at work who have spent months building characters up and then selling them for considerable money in "Real Life". I can only imagine what will happen when BF2 fixes some of the huge UI problems they have and I don't feel like it's an epic just to get onto a server....