I wasn't there for Battlefield 1942 but I did start playing with Battlefield 2 on a computer so weak it could barely even play the small singleplayer AI Bot matches at the time. It's actually because of those first moments that I still prefer Bot Matches compared to playing with others.
I have played every single Battlefield game since then both online and their Singleplayer and COOP modes. Even to this day I still feel like Battlefield 2 was the perfect experience before Destruction was added in Battlefield 3 and the later games. I absolutely love the Destruction in those games but really hate the fact we couldn't do AI matches like we could in Battlefield 2. Sure they had Campaigns but it just isn't the same.
Everyone keeps telling me that the best way to play Battlefield is in full matches with other people and I won't disagree with that. However the reason why I like AI Bot matches more is mainly because they are simply less stressful in general because I don't have to worry about what everyone else on my team thinks about how I am doing since I feel like I am always on the bottom of the leaderboard when it comes to the amount of kills I have every match.
AI don't care about that and using 2042 as an example they also allow me to play on ANY MAP on ANY MODE whenever I want to even if the maps and modes I want to play on are the most unpopular maps in the game compared to the others (Tehran Highway in Battlefield 3 is a good example of this).
That is why I am trying to push for this so much. Because for some of us this really is the best and sometimes only way we can play this game at all.