EA clearly didn't intend for the closed playlist to be the default. They just added it to appease the players that are unwilling to accept the change. You can tell this is the case because of design decisions such as the weapon sling, which wouldn't make sense in a closed system.
They never gave the closed playlist a fair shot, as seen by their attempts to give it a less prominent spot/hide it from the main menu. Many of us already suspected that they'd misuse the statistics from the open beta to push for the open playlist.
They should have made a clear choice from the start. At this point, the blog comparing the two seems deceptive at best