Posts with tag: battlefield-heroes

Digital Illusions and Electronic Arts' upcoming free-to-play shooter Battlefield Heroes is a bit of an experiment, at least for a major game publisher. So it's not exactly a shock to find out that perhaps there are some things that still need to be worked on before it can be officially launched.

In a message on the game's official web site, Battlefield Heroes senior producer James Salt states, "On Friday evening (6pm CET) we will be closing down the current Closed Beta and moving our focus to polishing the backend. So for a while there will be no closed beta available to play. We expect to re-open the beta early next year." He used an iceberg analogy when describing what the "backend" of the game was like. Let's hope there's no major collisions that will cause stuff to sink.

[Via Blue's News]

What a week. We started with the long awaited BioWare Star Wars MMO announcement, then had the official word on E3 2009 getting big again and ended the week with friggin' NAZI ZOMBIES!. You can't get much better than that.

Exclusive features

• Previews: We got an invite to the big Star Wars: The Old Republic press event and have a full report on what may be the next big MMO game.
• Reviews: We have the final verdict on the PC version of Brothers In Arms: Hell's Highway.
• Interviews: We have interviews with the dev teams behind Call of Duty: World at War, Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir, Battlefield Heroes and Wanted: Weapons of Fate, plus a chat with MMO dev Turbine on their future expansion plans.
• E3 Booth Model Retrospective: We look back at over 10 years of E3 booth models in this gallery feature
• Celebs take over Red Alert 3: So what famous actors and MMA fighters are in the cut scenes in the upcoming RTS game? This gallery feature has the answer.
• Mac Monday: Our look at Mac games takes a look at the special edition of Hollow Ground.
• MODMonday: This week our mod column takes a look at the Doomsday Engine which puts some new features in old Doom engine games.
• Indie Showcase: Our indie games column this week takes a look at four game titles you may want to check out.
• Boot Disk: Our look at classic PC games is for a true classic title, Doom
• Big Ideas: Our weekly column about game industry themes looks at the coming of the mature gamer.
• Freeware Friday: Our look at free games is all about the online multiplayer shooter Continuum
• Virtual Bargain Bin: Want a cheap game to play? This week our column picks the action-RPG Sacred Gold.
• BigCast: It's our regular weekly podcast on all things PC gaming.
• Contests: You like free games? We have three copies of Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3 we are giving away to some lucky readers.

Free-to-play titles have been popular in Asia but this particular form of game has only begun to make inroads in the Western market, and then only by smaller companies. So it was a surprise when Electronic Arts announced plans for Battlefield Heroes, a multiplayer-only PC game that would follow the basic free-to-play model with microtransactions for additional content.

The game, developed by Battlefield's creators at Digital Illusions, is still in closed beta, but Big Download got the game's producer James Salt to answer a few of our questions about the game, including its art style, its gameplay matches, community support and more.

This new trailer for Battlefield Heroes shows off some gameplay, along with a new area called Victory Village. Battlefield Heroes will be a free-to-play online shooter using cartoon graphics. The game is currently scheduled to release late 2008.

Download the Battlefield Heroes Victory Village HD Trailer (99 MB)

While the game industry is beginning to understand that they can sell high profile games any time of the year the truth is that the time period between the first of September and the first week of December remains the biggest time of the year for new games to be released. 2008 seems to be no exception to this rule as PC gamers have a ton of new and promising titles to choose from this year.

So which games are we most looking forward to playing this fall? Well it so happens that we have created a feature gallery that has our picks for the PC game titles we most want to play in the next few months. That list include a long awaited MMO, a new expansion pack to the biggest MMO, an alternate history RTS game, a number of great looking first person shooters, a post-apocalyse RPG and a title that some are already declaring "the greatest game ever made." (in fact you can get a clue as to one of the games on our list from this custom case mode we saw at QuakeCon).

Our list of games is ordered by their scheduled release dates. Keep in mind while checking our picks that release dates can and do change at the last minute. Our picks represent the best info on these dates at the time of the posting of this article but if any changes are announced afterward we will report on them on the news site.

Click on the image above to continue reading "Most Anticipated Fall 2008 PC Games"

Digital Illusions has been running a closed beta for several months for their free-to-play shooter Battlefield Heroes. Yet that seems to be enough to call the game "released', according to DICE producer Ben Cousins. While a recent announcement by EA CEO John Riccitiello said that the game was being delayed from a summer to a late 2008 release, Cousins claims that isn't the case at all.

In a new chat at gamesindustry.biz, Cousins states, "What's interesting is that we never announced a date, we talked about the game being released in the summer of this year and that's still the case. Actually, we're in the closed beta already, so the game is already out and you can't delay a game that's already been released and already been played by people." Cousins adds that they plan to ramp up the closed beta to the point that "every hardcore gamer in the world will probably be able to get a key if they want to."

Discs are so 2003. Though existent to some degree before Steam premiered in November of 2004, Valve's juggernaut digital distribution platform relieved gamers of the stress entailed in searching frantically for lost disc keys (and discs), multi-disc installations, and finicky sales reps who refused to replace CDs and DVDs if they were scratched or otherwise unusable. It seems a new publisher or developer adds classics or new gems to Steam's growing flock of downloadable titles every week, and despite having more than its fair share of kinks to work out, digital distribution seems to have finally become more convenient than buggy.

Although I intended to honor my commitment vows to digital distribution, the honeymoon has ended. No longer able to satisfy my demanding hardcore gamer's needs, I've begun a steamy love affair with web-based games that offer an even greater convenience: digital distribution eliminated discs, but web games require no installation other than a plug-in or two. Casual fans have been swimming in the web pool for quite some time, both casual and core gamers are being treated to fast, frantic fun with developer DICE and publisher EA's Battlefield Heroes, a stylish shooter with its roots firmly planted in the classic Battlefield franchise.

Remember late last month when we reported that Digital Illusions was planning to give out more beta keys for their upcoming free-to-play shooter Battlefield Heroes and that they were going to do it by given them out to the first 20 people who commented on a news item? Well that plan apparently caused a ton of folks to start checking out the web site constantly looking for a news post.

The end result? The site got swamped and blew out the server. A new note on the site (which doesn't count as one of those that people can get a beta key from) states, "We'll be doing some maintenance over the next day or two; we want to make sure that the site can handle all you Battlfield (sic) Heroes enthusiasts." Stay tuned . . .

Were you dissapointed in learning that the release of the upcoming free-to-play FPS Battlefield Heroes was being pushed pack from summer to late 2008? Apparently so were the development team at Digital Illusions. So on the game's official web site they have announced that . . . well, they actually express it best themselves:

Starting next week and ongoing for 4 weeks, we'll be posting a news item twice a week, at a random time.

Why is this so special, you might ask.

Well, here's the thing:
the first 20 people to comment will get a Beta key sent to them within a couple of days.

A cool side effect of this is that those people will then be able to enter our weekend Beta key contest and win even MORE keys to give out to friends.

Kind of cool, huh?

The Digital Illusions-developed multiplayer shooter Battlefield Heroes represents a new direction for the franchise; a free-to-play download only game that's supported through in-game ads and microtransactions. The game was originally set for a full launch later this summer but now it appears we will have to wait a little longer.

During the Electronic Arts quarterly conference call with financial analysts, execs revealed that the game's launch date has now been pushed back to late 2008. EA CEO John Riccitiello stated that the development team wanted to work more on the social networking features of the game as well as put in new features and add in more input from beta testers.