I just bought this game on Steam and I found my way here looking for servers to play on. Before you can even access the multi-player tab of the game, you have to log in with your GameSpy account. It gave a URL to the site where I should create an account, and I went there. Upon my arrive I saw a large post on the home page about GameSpy's closing. So my question is, how do I create a GameSpy account, and if I can't, how to I get past the login screen?

Thanks in advance for your help!

********
So sorry! I just found a thread that answered my question. I should have looked around a little harder! If you can tell me how to delete this thread I would gladly do so, or if you can delete please do.

Just a question 1.0 or 1.1 version ?

I have version 1.1.

Just click on the "Join" tab

you can create the gamespy account ingame using the menu option upon going online, or do as Mich sigguest and join without one, you will play as what ever is on your saved data file.

You can also download and install gamespy arcade to make or change account setting.

I play via Game Ranger https://www.gameranger.com and while SWBF2 2005 has server control flaws and is easy to crash by lames, I still see 50 humans in one of the 4 popular servers daily. That is pretty damn good as it has been 12 years since SWBF2's release.
Not everyone likes the new Dice SWBF. When it dropped xmas 2015 I did see the game ranger BF2 servers become graveyards, only 15 players where it had been 50.... Few days later player load was back to its usual numbers.

I expect the same thing with Dice's SWBF2.

You can either use GameRanger (Where community is known not to be skilled, according to most players), or else use SWBFSpy, which is a Masterserver like GameSpy was. So instead of running a program to play, all u need is to replace the battlefrontII.exe for one of these, or else, patch ur game urself.

http://www.swbfgamers.com/index.php?topic=10570.0 Here's the link to all th downloads.

According to 20 SWBFspy players. Gameranger is the only active swbf2 community.

The SWBF2 community uses GameRanger. The SWBF1 community uses SWBFSpy which is a Master Server just like GameSpy was. Download the official patch here https://swbfmodders.com/index.php?topic=5.0