Battlefield Heroes

Battlefield Heroes is a cartoon-style action game developed by EA Digital Illusions CE.
The game features context-specific third- and first-person shooter perspectives. Heroes will be the first Battlefield game to be released under Electronic Arts' new "Play 4 Free" model, which will see the game released for free with revenue generated from advertising and micropayments. Advertisements will appear on the website and the 'front-end' of the game although none will appear in-game, while micropayments may be made for additional items to customize the appearance of players' avatars without any gaming advantage. The game is said to be placing less emphasis on skill and strategy, and will be less demanding on computer specifications than the previous games of the series to increase the audience base. In addition, a system will be in place to match players of similar skill levels together for fair play.


Gameplay
Battlefield Heroes features a modified conquest mode providing each team 50 tickets and eventually one flag at the start of the round. Killing enemies and holding more flags than the opposing army will progressively reduce their number of tickets. The game also features matchmaking, to keep players of the same level together. Developers of the game have talked about levels going as high as 40 or 50. The two armies are called the National Army (possessing a red base color flag) and the Royal Army (possessing a blue base color flag). The game is third-person only at this point, but senior producer Ben Cousins has stated if first-person is really wanted, it may be added in at a later date. Spawn times are 5 seconds (compared to previous Battlefield games' 15), allowing for less waiting and more action. Players do not pick spawn points since the game has an "Intelligent Spawn System" putting players closest to the nearest battle. Four maps will be available on release.

The point system in Battlefield Heroes will be called the Metagame. It will allow characters to fight for a territorial position during each match. The land gained will then be recorded as a win for each army, and at the end of the week everything will be added up and both armies will be given money based on percentage and land conquered. Players can choose whether or not to participate in the Metagame.

Like previous Battlefield games Battlefield Heroes also has a class system, which has been reduced to three basic classes: the Soldier, Gunner, and Commando.
A screenshot showing early gameplay shown in the official trailer.
A screenshot showing the Metagame shown in the official trailer.

Players may also purchase bandages to regenerate health and wrenches to regenerate vehicle armor points (which is the same as health for out of vehicle players).

Vehicles
There are several vehicles in the game, all patterned after real vehicles of the Second World war. Included are two "light tanks", in the style of the M4 Sherman and the Panzer III/IV. Wheeled Vehicles are also in game, and are patterned after the Kubelwagen and The Willy's Jeep. Finally there are two Aircraft, these are also made to look like the Me-109 and the Spitfire. All vehicles have passenger slots, the tank a commanders seat, the wheeled vehicles have a passenger and back seat, and the Aircraft have slots on the wings. All passengers can fire weapons from the vehicle.

History of Battlefield Heroes
Closed beta
On May 6, 2008 the first phase of the game release was an invitation only closed beta and the invitations were given to professional beta testers only. More information about the open beta and signing up will be released in the coming weeks prior to the closed beta's release. Following the selection of beta testers, the amount of traffic caused the site to crash for a short time. Once the website was placed back up it was revealed that third-party professional testers would be testing the game, and several open beta phases would begin in the near future. The purpose of these beta phases is to test server capacity as players download the game and whether the servers provided can handle the intense use. The current closed beta players are under a non disclosure agreement, disallowing them from releasing information about the beta. On August 29, 2008, hundreds of beta keys were given out at the EA booth at the Penny Arcade Expo on small cards to anyone in attendance. The closed beta ended on November 14, 2008.

Beta key
DICE stated in a post, that they would be handing out extra closed-beta keys for the first 20 comments on their new posts. This was posted on the official Battlefield Heroes website on July 31, 2008. It was revealed that the first of these posts would be made on August 4, 2008. This caused so many users to be on the Battlefield Heroes website at the same time waiting for a beta key, that it caused the Battlefield Heroes server to crash, delaying the release of the keys until maintenance could be completed.

Two days later on the August 6, the method was changed so that users had to solve a riddle to win a beta key (although the first 20 comments were still awarded beta keys on this occasion, since it was not made clear that the format had changed). On the August 9, the second beta-key riddle was released (being harder, this riddle was available for a longer 5 minutes). Users were told that the riddle would be released at 7 pm, however, there was a degree of confusion over which time-zone was meant (being based in Sweden, DICE used the GMT +1 hour time zone, which was clarified later with the third riddle).

On August 27, 2008, DICE released another set of keys, this time 400 were given out. Another 200 were released on September 11, 2008; these were used up in 22 minutes.

Delayed
On July 29, 2008, it was announced that Battlefield Heroes will be delayed until sometime 2009 in the first 4 months of the year EA CEO John Riccitiello stated that they are going "to increase its focus on some of the social networking features".

Closed beta Part 2
In January 2009, the Battlefield Heroes Beta Key Signup page was opened with another set of Battlefield: Heroes keys on a "first come, first served" basis. The closed beta has already started, and users may stand in queue for a beta key. On February the 6th; it was announced that the Battlefield Heroes Closed Beta Sign-Up had reached over 100,000 in participants.

On February 10, 2009, it was announced that the closed beta would be re-opened on the 11th of February, 2009. Many fans incorrectly assumed that thousands of beta keys would be handed out on that day, however, only testers from the first phase of the first phase were able to access the beta on that day.

On February 16, 2009, 2000 beta keys were given out to some of the fans who had signed up for the previous stage on QABoss, and an additional 2000 the next day. DICE will announce when all of the testers from QABoss have keys, so they can start giving out keys to new testers. On February 24, it was announced that the QABoss beta keys were all handed out and have moved on to those who signed up on the site. Some fans seem to be having problems: there are still those who have signed up on QABoss and did not receive a key. DICE said that either they signed up too late or it was just a simple mistake.

On April 2, 2009, DICE sent out 50,000 new beta keys to people who registered for the beta.