Make a server in your region. Anyone can easily make a verified-mode server with very little effort. You will probably see that the problem is that no one plays it, and you just sit in queue waiting for people to join your server. Until you convince people in your area that your community server is persistent, and is the thing you say you guys want, what you want is not the thing you utilize. I don't know what the solution is that is necessary to change habit.
The thing that you say you want, already exists. You act like it should be EA's job to force people into your server, when everyone chooses to matchmake instead. It's a choice. It's a habit. It's not EA's job to force people into the persistent servers you (collectively) choose not to use in your region.
If I need to convince people to join a persistent server in portal because it is difficult to find and hasn't really been advertised as a possibility it is 100% Dice's responsibility to fix it. The issue is that when matchmaking puts you into a server that server should automatically be:
None of this currently exists, and I'm tired of having to play with bots when there's plenty of active players in my region that just happen to get flung across to different servers every game.
This is EA's job... Not mine.
