I try to stay fairly “up” on the various online game projects in the works (because it’s either that or actually work around the house when I get home every day), but somehow Digital Illusions Creative Entertainment’s Battlefield Heroes managed to completely fly beneath my radar, despite the fact that it enters closed beta next week. DICE, by the way, in addition to being the developer of the immensely-popular first-person-shooter Battlefield series (of which this seems to be the latest installment…this time online), is an EA company.

At this point, I’ll take a moment for everyone to get the screams of “EA IS SATAN!!!!” out of their system, then I’ll continue.

This game seems to have a pretty good shot at success; however, if looking good on paper was all it took, we’d all be playing Horizons and Star Wars Galaxies at this point instead of World of Warcraft. However, it does look good on paper:

• Free to download
• Free to play
• Seemingly designed for the sometimes neglected casual market
• Designed to run on low-end PC’s
• Microtransactions
• A distinctive art style
• Hell, a distinctive style period
  

To illustrate that last point, here’s the first trailer they released about Battlefield Heroes:

And now, we’ll pause to let everyone get the screams of “That looks like Team Fortress 2!!11!!” out of their systems before moving on.There is one interesting thing here, though…will this be a “true” MMORPG? (And if you don’t think that question can stir up the ol’ forums, ask a rabid fan of Guild Wars.) On the surface, it appears to be…but not so fast, Gunga Din! In this video, watch what Senior Producer Ben Cousins says:
“It’s kind of like an RPG,” “We’ve followed the example of an MMO”…to me, it doesn’t feel like they consider it an MMO. However, let’s look at the points that have been announced for this game:

• Cartoony graphics
• Designed to run on a low-end PC
• Friendly to casual players

If you look at that list, it looks an awful lot like the Blizzard “WoW” model is being followed…at least to some extent. (And when they say “low-end PC”, Cousins specifically refers to a PC having “a 1Ghz processor and 512 meg of RAM” being able to run the game just fine…and all in a 500meg download, no less.)

This might be one to put on the “keep an eye on” list.

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Tags: Battlefield Heroes, EA, games, gaming, mmo, mmorpg